Freedom for Afghans is fast fleeting

The death last week at 88 of former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld coincided with the cut-losses-and-run of US forces from Afghanistan, the country invaded and occupied by a US-led coalition in 2001. The casus belli was the attack by Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda on New York and Washington and the military objective of operation, dubbed “Enduring Freedom,” was to oust from power the Taliban which hosted Al Qaeda.

By December 2001, the Taliban and its allies were quickly routed and an interim Afghan administration was established. Rumsfeld took the view “mission accomplished.” But the Taliban was not defeated and Al Qaeda and its progeny regrouped and rearmed and have joined the Taliban offensive and are regaining territory. Afghans are terrified that they will lose the fragile gains made during the past 20 years due to Washington’s failure to build a credible Afghan military capable of taking on the Taliban and to construct institutions strong enough to survive the Taliban. Freedom for Afghans is fast fleeting. The totalitarian Taliban is returning.

The fall of Afghanistan during a fresh Taliban conquest should have been expected from the outset of the US occupation. Rumsfeld waged war with minimal US and allied forces incapable of eliminating enemy forces for good.

Furthermore, the US has never made a success of “nation building” in lands it has occupied and the George W. Bush administration had no plan for post-Taliban Afghanistan. Indeed, there was no time to draw up a plan because US military action began on October 7th, 2001, less than a month after Al Qaeda’s attacks. The aim was to exact revenge from the Taliban and Al Qaeda not to rule Afghanistan.

In any case, Afghanistan was not a priority for the “gang of three” — Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney — Iraq was. On the day after the attacks on the US, Rumsfeld was trying to link Baghdad to Al Qaeda. Well before then, the trio had been prime movers within the Bush administration for implementation of the 1997 Project for the New American Century.

This aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and adopting a more assertive US policy in this region.

The Project for the New American Century put pressure on George W. Bush’s predecessor, President Bill Clinton, to attack Iraq. The unstated aim of the neo-conservatives was to make the Middle East safe for Israel. It is significant that obituaries of Rumsfeld do not mention this.

Among the signatories of the organisation’s declaration of principles were Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, ex-Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, ex-Assistant Secretary of Defence Richard Perle, Bush’s National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, Florida Governor Jeb Bush (the president’s brother), and former Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad who is involved in the current negotiations with the Taliban. While some neo-conservatives fade away, others remain in place no matter what party is in power in Washington.

Al Qaeda’s strikes on the US itself, the first foreign attacks on the US since Japan bombed on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii in 1941, were perfect for their purpose. The “gang of three” needed a dramatic “terrorist” attack on US interests to justify waging war on Iraq, a country not involved in the September 2001 attacks on the US. As long as Saddam Hussein ruled, Baghdad had prevented Al Qaeda from taking root in Iraq. This happened only after the US occupation.

To prepare the way for the second Bush Iraq war, Rumsfeld and company mounted a campaign of lies and deceit, claiming that Baghdad had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction although any such weaponry had been destroyed under UN supervision after the 1991 war waged by George H.W. Bush and Iraq’s nuclear programme had been shut down. His son’s administration’s source of false information was an Iraqi turncoat dubbed “Curve Ball,” employed by Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi who had long pushed the US and Britain to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Quality US media, including The New York Times, joined the war mongers’ drive to invade Iraq.

Once again, Rumsfeld planned a war with minimal US boots-on-the-ground. The Bush administration was, however, warned against such a war by armed forces joint chief Eric Shinseki who argued before Congress that several hundred thousand US troops would have to stay on in a conquered Iraq to stabilise the country. His assessment was flatly rejected by Rumsfeld and deputy Wolfowitz. In 2006, when the insurgency was at its height in Iraq, Central Command head General John Abizaid told Congress Shinseki was correct.

The conquest of Iraq has been the worst US military and foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam war from which the US also “cut and ran.” However, in the case of Vietnam, the country could count on the Viet Cong which had provided effective government for the north before it took over the south. This has not been true for either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Although regional experts had drawn up a plan for running Iraq once Saddam Hussein had been ousted, the Bush administration ignored it and installed L. Paul Bremer III as temporary viceroy.

He demobilised the Iraqi army and gutted the administration by firing experienced bureaucrats who were members of the former ruling Baath party. The US-backed expatriate Iraqi opposition was not only incapable of ruling effectively but a majority of its leading figures were either supporters of or beholden to Iran where they had lived in exile.

While he was not responsible for the hash US political appointees made of post-Saddam Iraq, Rumsfeld was to blame for the lack of security which followed its conquest without enough troops to keep order. He responded to the looting of the Iraq museum, one of the most important on the planet, while a US tank was parked on the road nearby by saying, “Stuff happens” and “Freedom is untidy.”

Arrogant Rumsfeld believed only in himself, in his judgement, and operated on the premise that he should have no doubts about courses of action he chose and was never wrong. He never apologised. He relied on outright lies to launch his war in Iraq. He promoted using torture to extract information from captives and refused to understand that victims would lie to halt abuse. At least 100 died of torture in Iraq and elsewhere. He favoured imprisoning terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, calling it the “least worst place” to hold them. The prison complex remains open and an embarrassment to the US where politicians do not have the political courage to close it.

In early 2006 eight US and other Nato-member retired commanders called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, charging him with “abysmal” military planning and lack of strategic vision. Bush defended him but he finally stepped down that November after the presidential election which Bush won.

Writing in The Atlantic on July 1st, George Packer stated as a matter of fact, “Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defence in American history. Being newly dead shouldn’t spare him this distinction.” He pointed out that “Rumsfeld was the chief advocate of every [US-inflicted] disaster in the years after September 11th.”