And this fuels a bad narrative for Dems, too. Literally seconds after Reid’s statement hit the wire, Republicans blasted out a press release mocking the Dem disarray on this issue with this tagline: “Great moments in August Democratic Messaging.” This just makes the Dems look weak, unorganized, cowardly, and unwilling to take a stand for principles they plainly believe in.

Probably because the Dems are weak, unorganized, cowardly, and unwilling to take a stand for principles they plainly believe in.

Yeah, yeah, nobody has a jetpack.

~a friend from Afghanistan (he means our countries)

Yes, it’s rather sensationalist. The basic point is still correct.

When Time published this, elements of the blogosphere opposed to the war were outraged that someone would dare to do something like this. Who are these people, to remind us of the likely consequences of our country’s actions?

Because really, this is true. If the U.S. leaves, Afghanistan breaks down into civil war–real civil war, like it had before–and a lot more eighteen year old girls lose their noses. And ears. They also cut off her ears.

So there are three forms of denial:

1. Sure, there would probably be a nose-cutting civil war, but that isn’t our fault.

2. Sure, there would probably be a nose-cutting civil war, but that doesn’t matter.

3. There will be no nose-cutting civil war.

Andrew (hat tip for the image) takes number 1.:

We were not responsible for these evils when they were perpetrated for years before 9/11. And we are not responsible now. After ten years, I’d say the American soldier’s burden in trying to alleviate the awful consequences of Jihadist rule is completed.

Really, Andrew? Flashback. It’s 1979, and Wikipedia has just been invented:

The U.S. saw the situation as a prime opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of a Cold War strategy, in 1979 the United States government (under President Jimmy Carter) began to covertly fund forces ranged against the pro-Soviet government, although warned that this might prompt a Soviet intervention, according to President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski described the U.S. activities as the successful setting of a trap that drew the Soviet Union into “its Vietnam War” and brought about the breakup of the Soviet empire. Regarding U.S. support for Islamic fundamentalism, Brzezinski said, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”^[85] The Mujahideen belonged to various different factions, but all shared, to varying degrees, a similarly conservative ‘Islamic’ ideology.

Here is more Brzezinski:

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

The Mujahideen you must remember, are now largely enemies of the Taliban. The Northern Alliance and the warlords are largely the same crowd, though of course there are many Mujahideen.

The Mujahideen, with our weapons, money, and training, provoke a Soviet invasion, and then go on to defeat the Soviet puppet government. Then, with our weapons, money, and training, continue to fight the Soviet Union’s equivalent of our Karzai government. In doing so, they destroy the country’s infrastructure and commit all sorts of atrocities. My Afghan friends over here tell me they used to behead people with swords. When the Mujahideen win, they begin to fight amongst themselves.

Into this violent power vacuum, which was created by the weapons, money, and training of the United States, emerge the Taliban. They’re a fundamentalist Pashtun movement originally from Kandahar. This causes two major Mujahadeen leaders, one Uzbek and one Tajik, to unite and form the Northern Alliance. Both of these groups are very conservative and fond of Shari’a. The distinction is mostly ethnic: Taliban are Pashtun, and the Northern Alliance are non-Pashtun.

Two detours. One, ethnicity: Pashtuns are the largest group, but the other groups all together outnumber them. Pashtuns are the historic leaders of the country, and they do not like sharing power. They also have a much more cohesive ethnic-national identity than any other group. The Taliban are almost all Pashtun, as is Karzai and his government, which is why Karzai is not willing to do what it takes to defeat them. Pashtuns live on the other side of the meaningless border with Pakistan, which is where they do most of their recruiting and coordinating. That’s why we bomb Pakistan with predator drones. Pakistan lets us, even though they want the Taliban to win, because we give them money to fight the Taliban, which they use to prepare for war with India. There’s no figuring countries in cold wars.

Second detour: the Tajik Mujahideen leader is called Ahmed Shah Massoud. He is moderate as these guys go, friendly with the West, and ambitious. In April of 2001 he gives a speech in Brussels saying that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are allies, and that a major terrorist attack is imminent. On September 9th he is killed by a suicide bomber.

Back to the story. The Taliban eventually win control of the country in 1998, which they celebrate by executing 4-5,000 civilians and torturing quite a few more. But they never quite beat the Northern Alliance, who wage a guerilla war from the 10% of the country they still control. This guerilla war was ongoing when al-Qaeda carried out 9/11. The Northern Alliance was a major ally in our initial invasion of the country.

So: to recap, the United States started a war in Afghanistan thirty-one years ago and has been, on-and-off, funding and supporting a loose coalition of factions who have been, on-and-off, waging war in Afghanistan since then. So when Andrew says,

We were not responsible for these evils when they were perpetrated for years before 9/11. And we are not responsible now.

he is extremely wrong.

2. Sure, they would probably get nose-cutting civil war, but that doesn’t matter.

This summed up by Yglesias:

Defend Afghan allies from being targeted by the Taliban. Check. Avoid accidental killing of Afghans by NATO forces. Check. Women’s rights? Not so much.

And you can see this time and again if you look at statements about US policy in Afghanistan from George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, etc. We are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. …actually altering social conditions in southern and eastern Afghanistan isn’t on the list of war aims.

And that makes sense. After all “invade and conquer southern and eastern Afghanistan” is neither a practical nor a cost-effective means of enhancing the well-being of the world’s women. You go to war for reasons of national security. Those reasons either stand up to scrutiny or they don’t.

Okay. Forget human rights. Realpolitik. We leave. Civil war. We keep funding the Mujahideen. The Taliban do some horrible things they’ve been fantasizing about for nine years. But really, what’s a few ears and noses more or less? Surely generations of Afghans blaming the United States for the severed faces of their granddaughters, daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will have no effect on our country, just as funding, arming and training the Mujahideen had no effect on our country thirty-one years ago.

At present, most Afghans (yes, most) want to be friends with us, despite everything we’ve done to them. They are on our side. The non-Pashtun regions of the country are largely peaceful, Taliban-free, and friendly to us. If we leave, the Taliban take those regions back. Taliban and al Qaeda win a major victory. Radical Islamism, now a winning ideology, rises throughout the Muslim world. Afghanistan is once again a base of operations for international terrorism. They know that they can defeat us, and they know how. Plot carefully, kill American civilians, kill the Americans attacking your base of operations, kill the Americans rebuilding the country, kill the Americans until they leave, plot carefully, kill American civilians…

Our strategy in this war has in many ways been lacking, but we can win. Build the infrastructure, enlist our allies–and for all their faults, the Mujahideen are our allies–, empower local leaders and local militia (the government is full of Taliban sympathizers), bring in regional partners, especially India, who the Afghans tend to view favorably, continue to refine our counterinsurgency doctrine, recognize the nature of the ethnic divisions, see if we can’t buy Iran’s neutrality (those sanctions aren’t doing any good), start buying up poppy crops, let the boys and girls do their jobs, and give the general what he needs. But this, above all, recognize: it takes time. It will seem impossible, and it will seem endless, but with sufficient will, on the other side, we win.

In the meantime, let’s keep some perspective. We have been exporting suffering to this country for three decades and most of them still support us. We can share in their struggle for some of that time, can we not? In historical perspective, our casualties in this our longest war are low.

3. There won’t be a nose-cutting civil war.

Go on the record with that.

Key bit of information about Dresden Codak‘s setting. We knew it was science fiction, we knew it was cyberpunk, we knew it was kinda steampunk. Now we know that it’s alternate history in the American Southwest:

Not “hard” alt hist, naturally. We are talking about a floating city full of cyborgs and machines. It’s the sort of AH we call “ASB,” alien space bats. But the point is that the point of divergence is on or before 1884. As steampunk already has, cyberpunk is realizing how awesome it is to change not only the future but the past.

Bernd the Bread, your chillout-coach is in…the KiKa Lounge! Skip to 4:25 for “Chill! Chill! Chill hier Baby! In ze Haus!”

It reminds me of the Mr. Snaffleburger animations I would watch in high school.

This stuff is produced in the town I’m in, incidentally. There’s a giant Bernd das Brot statue by the town hall:

And here is the hostage video for when the squatters kidnapped him (no, really).

The Polizei got him back.

The old fellow is a survivor of the Shoah. The younger fellas are his daughter and grandchildren.

Hat tip: Savage Blog.