Turning out the lights in Afghanistan

Has anyone noticed that, at its recent summit in Chicago, NATO decided -- very quietly -- that it would end its mission for democracy and civilization in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The debate in Chicago centred on who should turn out the lights, and how much conscience money will be given to the Afghans after the foreign invaders have left.

Why are we quitting now, just when we were starting to see results? Apparently because the "results" weren't anything like what we hoped to see. NATO is getting its troops out of Afghanistan because its citizens' (and even its politicians') rose-coloured glasses broke long ago.

The Canadians pulled out last year, although they left behind nearly 1000 "trainers". The French will be heading out soon, which is considerably later than the other "allies" expected. That leaves the USA and once-Great Britain doing most of the heavy lifting.

So how's it going? The whole world can see that trying to bring peace and stability -- let alone democracy and civilization -- the Armpitistan is like slogging through quicksand. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. And then you die. Here's how Canadian PM Harpoon -- until now one of the principal cheerleaders for the war -- put it: "The longer a foreign intervention stays eventually the less likely its success becomes." Indeed.

And here's a trenchant comment from Jeffrey Simpson, writing in today's Globe and Mail:

It is almost always easier to enter a war than to leave it, especially when the enemy can flee the country and when the deeper conflict is not so much about defeating the enemy, in this case the Taliban, as it is about containing internal ethnic and religious differences.

These conflicts have always characterized Afghan society. The scumbag-chasers and those who thought as they did were intellectually ill-equipped to handle the pressures that arose from these conflicts. The application of military means to an essentially political problem produced what could be expected: some temporary military progress but no essential change in the underlying dynamics of the political structure.

Mr. Simpson goes on to point out that 158 Canadians who went to Afghanistan came home in bags and boxes. The body count for American and Britain, though proportionately smaller, was still well into the thousands. Tens of thousands were wounded. Billions upon billions of dollars, pounds and euros was spent, and billions more are going to be spent even after the invaders have gone home with their heads bowed. And for what?

Sands are already closing over their sacrifices, as they are beginning to close over the NATO mission, whose ambitions have been reduced to leaving with some modicum of order rather than any sense of that elusive concept, victory.