Off target in more ways than one

I have a lasting image of the war in Afghanistan. It came a week into the war. The U.S. had fired a missile, which in turn had lit a fire that sent a cloud of smoke arching in the air for hundreds of feet up. It stood starkly against a clear blue sky. The smoke reminded me of the fires at the World Trade Center on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. I know the horror I felt at seeing that smoke, and in that moment, I understood how the Afghan people must have felt.

A lot of bombs have gone off target in the Afghan war. In their wake, entire families have been left dead. "Look at their savageness. They killed all of my children and husband," said a victim from a London Independent report about a U.S. bomb that went off target in 2001. This has since become the norm for Afghanistan.

Two things were more than clear before the U.S. started its war: The nation of Afghanistan was not responsible for Sept. 11 (most of those hijackers were Saudis), and al-Qaida and the Taliban were the spawn, in large part, of the U.S.'s proxy war against the Soviets.

In the 1980s, the U.S. built up the most fanatical Islamic forces it could write checks for and arm with Stinger missiles. I recently read Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars," a book about the CIA's work during the Soviet occupation. He quotes Gust Avrakotos, one of the heroes in the film "Charlie Wilson's War." Avrakotos says, "Do I want to order bicycle bombs to park in front of an officers headquarters? Yes. That's what spreads fear." You read that, and you start to understand where Osama bin Laden came from.

Now, eight years down the road, the U.S. is enmeshed in its own Afghan war. The likelihood of a stable Afghan government with a Western slant is seeming more and more illusory. The country is largely ruled by tribal leaders and warlords, many of whom were built up by the U.S. at the expense of the central government. All this as part of the U.S. effort to "get bin Laden."

Which brings us to the present moment. There is in Afghanistan a fundamental problem for the U.S. empire. Retired colonel, former West Point instructor and Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich put it like this in "The Limits of Power": "A great army accomplishes its assigned mission. Since George W. Bush inaugurated his global war on terror, the armed forces of the United States have failed to meet that standard."

The current reevaluation of the war in both the Pentagon and executive branch seems more about confronting defeat. The debate over whether to increase troop levels, hold steady or draw back is framed by the perils of getting drawn in deeper. That is what the surge in Iraq was about — how to put aside notions of victory without openly admitting defeat.

What the U.S. and the U.N. forces have done in Afghanistan these past eight years has done nothing but extend and amplify the horror of the Afghan people. As for the Taliban, they are not a force for good, but the U.S. war has done nothing if not breathed new life into them.

The simple truth is that the U.S. is not a force for good in Afghanistan either. It is time for us to get out and leave Afghanistan to the Afghanis.