Sanger: The U.S. Could Be in Afghanistan for Next 30-50 years

The United States could be enmeshed in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas for the next 30-50 years, according to The New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger.

In San Francisco to promote his new book, The Inheritance, Sanger told members of The Commonwealth Club of California Wednesday that securing the typically unaccessible border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to be a cornerstone of American foreign policy for decades to come. “I suspect no American president can afford to allow that sanctuary to continue along the border and while there is a border for us, there's no border for them,” said Sanger. “This is why you're going to see President Obama extending the U.S. military operation and the covert operations over the border into Pakistan.”

The mountainous region know for craggy cliffs and impassable roads feature a unique opportunity for insurgents to hide from military intervention. This is the area that includes the infamous Tora Bora region where Osama bin Laden was able to escape capture shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. “There are not really many places in the world that are really effective sanctuaries for al Qaeda and the groups that will succeed them,” Sanger told Commonwealth Club President and CEO Gloria Duffy, who moderated the program. “There was a lot of talk after 9/11 about where does al Qaeda go when they no longer go the tribal areas? Well, the answer is: they go to the tribal areas.”

With Afghan presidential elections slated for the summer, Sanger doubts that a nation that has never been effectively held together by a central government can do so in the future. “If you decide that the country is going to be run by a series of different tribes and then you go out and do the equivalent of what we did in Iraq -- buying off the tribes -- to keep the peace and keep the country from again being that sanctuary,” said Sanger, “everybody who has looked at this hard says to me and everyone else, This is harder than Iraq.”

While the Obama administration has ramped up efforts to eventually switch the focus of military operations from Iraq to Afghanistan, Sanger says the strategic political question lies in Pakistan because of the prevalence of nuclear weapons in the country and the United States' interest in keeping those weapons from falling into the wrong hands. Sanger says he believes that the Pakistanis do a credible job of basic security of their weapons inventory, but he worries about their ability to keep nuclear knowledge within the state's laboratories. “Pakistan is a close ally on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for their own reasons, they have been supporting the Taliban,” said Sanger, “I don't think the civilian leadership wants to do that, but certainly elements of the army and the ISI do, and they want to do it because they think we're leaving Afghanistan and when we do the Indians will move into Southern Afghanistan and, to their mind, will surround Pakistan and crush them.”

In the end, the troubling conundrum that faces the United States is, When does your ally become your enemy? While having drinks with a senior military officer, the source told Sanger, “You know David, the problem with Pakistan is: 'How do you invade an ally?' That is the Pakistan problem.”

Acclaimed author and expert on the Taliban Ahmed Rashid will discuss the issues involving the Afghanistan and Pakistan border in addition to his new book, Descent into Chaos at The Commonwealth Club of California on March 11 at noon.

In Farewell Bush Is Unrepentant Until the End: A Personal Reaction

President Bush looked tired. His hair gray. His neck visibly thin, barely filling his starched white collar. His farewell address last night revealed that certain charm that initially created a brief bond with a certain swath of America. He thanked Dick Cheney, had loving words for his wife, daughters and even mom and dad. You almost felt sorry for him. Some tender part of you might miss him -- maybe not his policies -- but his goofiness, his rebellious smirk and the ubiquitous notion of him as the Everyman-in-Chief.

Empathy for President Bush only goes so far, though. He can't hide from his cocky hubris. It is so much a part of his soul that he cannot stifle it. Many early news reports of the address focused on one quote: "We must never let down our guard." It was as if we were transported just for old-time's sake back to 2003 when the mainstream media walked in line with everything we now know was false about the invasion of Iraq. Bush is still fighting the terrorists while the rest of us are fighting the debt collectors.

Bush's retro bravado is not the most intriguing part of the speech. Instead, three sentences beforehand, he says, "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict." The United States did nothing to provoke the ire of the perpetrators of 9/11 and the Middle East? The line is a sharp jab in the eye to the entire region.

(For an earlier look into the president's thought process on defense and America's priorities, read the text of Bush's 2002 speech to The Commonwealth Club, or listen to the audio.)

If this was the rationale for the crumbling of the next six years, was it all worth it? I don't think so. Actually Bush's imperviousness to the facts is the hallmark of his presidency. His perception in a highly insular world allowed him to think he could repeatedly lead the nation wherever he wanted to take it, but like he once said, "Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. We can't get fooled again."

I don't think there was a singular event that caused al-Qaeda to attack seven years ago, but over 50 years of American intervention in the region. Arrogance that continually slapped the region's downtrodden adherents of Islam in the face, though in a usually covert manner, rarely as upfront as the style Bush preferred. The U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran because he wanted higher earnings from the oil he sold to the West. We have bankrolled the seats of power, at some point, of nearly every nation in the region, more often than not, propping up murderous despots who ruled their nations with iron-fists. Since seas of oil were first discovered on the Arabian Peninsula, it has always been about oil.

I think the U.S. did plenty to deserve 9/11. It did not deserve the loss of 3,000 innocent people, but then again, our government has not been very careful in differentiating insurgents from innocents, either. Bush long ago staked his presidency on the invasion of Iraq. By stubbornly clinging to the idea the U.S. was attacked without reason, the arrogance that so many Muslims sense from our government continues to permeate until Bush's last days in office.


--By Steven Tavares

Do you agree with Tavares that the U.S. provoked the 9/11 attack? Do you think President Bush is correct that it was unprovoked? Are you sad to see President Bush exit the national stage, or are you eager to have him gone? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Mukasey's Back on His Feet

Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters he was feeling "excellent" after an apparent fainting spell last night at an address to the Federalist Society.

Mukasey, who replaced embattled former AG Alberto Gonzales, made a memorable appearance at the Commonwealth Club of California in late March of this year when during the question-and-answer session he defended the Bush administration's use of wiretapping and remarked on a little-known Al Qaeda phone call placed from Afghanistan to the United States.

We shouldn't need a warrant when somebody picks up a phone in Iraq and calls the United States," Mukasey said. Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. You've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald took a detailed look at the alleged 1999 phone call from Afghanistan and wonders why the 9/11 Commission never knew about it.

In the meantime, the 67-year-old Mukasey says he ready to get back to work.