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August 18, 2010

The U.S. has dug its own graveyard in Afghanistan, Gul

The Canadian Charger

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A war, if it must be fought, must serve a clear national purpose and have a clearly defined political objective, else it degenerates into a soul-destroying, self-perpetuating exercise in violence for its own sake. After nearly nine years of war in Afghanistan, that is precisely what the U.S. and its lapdog NATO allies have created.

Psychologically, militarily, morally and politically “the allies” are defeated. In the words of former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul theirs is a lost cause.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Gul argued that the war had no rational foundation and that the U.S. will have to negotiate a peace with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar whether it wants to or not. (The similarity to the tragic end of the U.S.’s failure in Vietnam is too obvious to miss.)

Gul explained that the U.S. never had a legitimate reason to attack Afghanistan because the FBI had no solid evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks on New York and Washington.

Even if going after bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan were a defensible rationale in 2001, in 2010 it is now pointless.

In the intervening nine years, Gul said the global terrorist movement had moved on to places like Yemen and Somalia, leaving the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan to exhaust themselves in a drawn-out irrelevant conflict.

Because the U.S.-led occupation has no legitimacy or purpose, Gul said the West must accept the Taliban-led Afghan insurgency as a legitimate national resistance movement, analogous to the mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s. (Analogies to the Viet Cong and the Vietnam War are also inescapable.)

Also, the U.S. must negotiate with Mullah Omar because he speaks for the entire insurgency and is the only man who can guarantee that no terrorism will be exported from Afghanistan.

Given the combination of poor U.S. intelligence, lack of a defensible purpose, and home-field advantage for the Taliban, time is on the side of the Afghan resistance, and defeat for the U.S. is inevitable,

“In such a situation, to hope to win would be absolutely hare-brained,” Gul said. “I would advise President Obama: ‘please, do not listen to your military, because militaries have [the] unfortunate tendency never to accept their defeat.”

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