Afghanistan: heeding horrid history

A Canadian think-tank, CIFP, has produced a thorough report on Afghanistan under Fragile States. It is a worthy effort to define the prevailing pandemonium posted by the neo-cons in the wake of 9/11. After delving deep into doomsday details about the AfPak area based on Millennium Goals etc, the treatise indulges in imagining the worst/best case-scenarios. It underlines the fact that: "Indeed, 98 percent of Afghan civilians are directly affected by the present conflict and Afghanistan has the tenth highest average of the people killed per million per year." The paper also tends to consider the current upsurge by the extremists as "somewhat artificial and temporary." Praising the donors for the "extent to which they have invested in Afghanistan", the brief wishes that President Obama's "promises" about "combating terrorism" will be honoured operationally through induction of more troops into the tumult. The prognosis for the worst-case-scenario tends to trust the media-hype to indicate that General McChrystal's Iraq mantra would prolong the status quo.
Despite being an excellent exercise expressly backed by brawny research, it draws conclusions which are purely hypothetical. A high-powered scrutiny like this should have been able to reveal more definitely why the 'insurgency' goes on and is becoming more threatening. What role did the Afghans play in 9/11 as per the US version of the tragedy? What is US' strategy now that she is stuck in this quagmire which has resulted in the killing of a large number of Afghans? How does 'history' of the area, generally, amply advise against such adventures? Should history be taken seriously to bring peace as the whole world appears to be held hostage by the prevailing mess? Why OBL survives as a ghost who can be cited but not traced by the best monitoring/scanning equipment? Unfortunately any thesis which avoids deliberating on such issues would be only a theoretical kick.
Simnon Jenkins writing in the Guardian on Afghanistan calls it 'Obama' Vietnam. Recounting recent history, he affirms that Vietnam trounced Johnson and Nixon besides undermining a generation of Americans. His advice: Afghanistan...obscenely dubbed the 'good war' - could do the same. If history of the two areas is any guide, the former could turn out to be much worse for the US unless, of course, an exit strategy supported by Pakistan is adopted to cut the losses and avoid a repeat of Saigon-experience. While the last administration kept up jingoistic pressures, more to fool the naïve public at home, it failed to find a way out. Obama's policy remains more complex. He has restored the dignity of his office by the use of correct/diplomatic lingo while dilating on all issues but he appears to be conscious of the Herculean challenges posed by the innate vested interests. As the media is, generally, controlled by lobbies whose pretensions historically have prevailed in defining US policy, a president has to seek compromises. He can do it as brashly as did Bush or intelligently as did Clinton. Only time will tell how Obama can make US interests triumph over peculiar complexes of smug Cabals which wield power through a mawkish lust, money, media etc. Giving him the benefit of doubt, one may not agree, generally, with Tom Englehardt that Obama "...is also president of the United States which means that he is head honcho for the globe's single great garrison state which now, to a significant extent, lives off war."