It's really unfortunate and unbelievable that killed 16 Afghanistan general people by a US militarily sailor. It is unbearable sorrow for the victim family.
we expect that they will be alert that this incident never will be happened.

firaiyamjie

Add Hillary Clinton to the people responsible for advocating the escalation in 2009. And despite his inability to keep his foot out of his mouth, credit goes to Joe Biden for advocating that we get out in 2009. Unfortunately, Obama didn't listen to him.

"Maybe he didn't for political reasons, or because commanders like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal convinced him they could turn things around. Or maybe he genuinely believed that U.S. national security required an open-ended effort to remake Afghanistan."

It's always a political decision; since WWII, no Democratic president has wanted to appear weak on defense. To offset his guarantee of getting out of Iraq (really, a continuation of Bush's policy), Obama decided to declare Afghanistan the righteous war for Americans, even though it was already evident that the Americans had squandered any possibility of bringing about a favorable resolution. So, in the face of Republican opposition to any Obama policy, a line was drawn in the sand: 2014. There wasn't anything logical in the decision; it was pure politics.

Steve,

I heartily agree with the general thrust of your article. I'm glad you have the guts to say what interventionists often won't admit: That interventions can only work under certain positive conditions, and when these are not present, one should not intervene by military means.

Aside from that, please: "Because Barack Obama has run a generally hawkish foreign policy, his Republican opponents don't have a lot of daylight to exploit on that issue"

Would it be so hard to write "his Republican opponents, with the exception of presidential candidate Ron Paul, ..."

It's not the point wether or not one likes Ron Paul and his policies. It's simply a matter of good journalism to inform readers of the full situation.

...when you look at the info in this recent post from Jonathon Turley's blog, titled: Karzai Approves Edict Stating Woman Are “Secondary” And Worth Less Than Men.

The edict codifies second-class citizenship for women, and a dreadful list of consequences thereof. It's at http://jonathanturley.org scroll to March 9

A couple of points:

Yes, while it's Obama's mistake, it's the country's mistake too in large if not larger part: Obama staying in was just a reflection of a reality he accurately perceived which was that the country *wanted* to stay in. Think, that is, of what the reaction would have been if he had bugged out: Nobody would have been saying "Thank God we've avoided this latest atrocity and all the hatred we've engendered since." Instead they'd be saying "Of course things would have just gone swimmingly if only he had held the course...."

I'd also observe that the mistake is much larger than just Afghanistan, and the bill that might still come in will in fact be simply humoungous: By staying in Afghanistan, that is, we've also seriously destabilized Pakistan, and who knows how that shoe is going to drop and what that will mean.

While, as I said, all of this is both Obama's mistake and the country's, we ought not overlook the fact that once again it's been the neo-cons who really pushed us trying to occupy Afghanistan and then especially remain there. While I think Americans in general liked the idea of just *trying* to pacify that country, the neo-cons just like the idea of us being there for other reasons. Same as us being in Iraq. Indeed you can still hear their reasons why in their writings: Having U.S. troops sitting on top of the arabs and on the border with Iran is, for them, just a great idea all alone, period.

So anyway we've had our destructive little adventure now, and the fantasy ought to have been burst, and it ought to be clear that not only do we not know the true cost of what we've done already the longer we stay the worse it will get. And thus now the only question is just how much more of ourselves we are going to feed into the grinder trying desperately to pretend that we weren't stupid by trying to occupy the grinder in the first place.

The same could be said of boxing. You can’t go into the ring without hurting and getting hurt, that’s a transcendent aspect of the exercise. The same in Afghanistan, you kill them, they kill you. It will go on until one side is knocked out or everyone tires of it. Simple. If we had a global authority with cojones it might put a time limit on these activities, say six rounds of 28 days each.

To me, one of the most ludicrous features of both wars was the idolization of these two bureaucrats. Remember the Congressional hearings in the summer of 08, when Petraeus was the military genius who "saved" Iraq? Their "triumphs," in my opinion, were primarily triumphs of public relations, which triumphed by buying the Bush administration just enough obfuscation that they could avoid making any real decisions and instead dump the matter off on the next administration. Cuz we all know, the Iraq invasion's only a failure if you call it a failure.

…In a word, they are by nature incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so (History of the Peloponnesian Wars 1.70 trans. Warner).

He was, of course, writing about the Athenians, but if the cap fits…

Once again, there are at least two ways to look at a grievous problem. Once again, blaming the president is the easy way out and taken without much thought. Contrary to the Walt view, it isn't being in Afghanistan or places like it that creates or empowers rogue soldiers.

The real culprit in some of the recent disgusting outbreaks of military criminality seems to have been crappy military administration. Army administrators did not compel the guards at Abu Ghraib to take the official training into in how to run a prison; a sociopath filled the gap. The sport murderers of 5th Stryker were so deployed that boredom and bullying were their main companions during their service in Afghanistan. And the news media for some years have abounded in accounts of the military's blotchy record in ensuring the mental health of those who bear arms while serving in harm's way during the mess formerly named the global war on terror. Any way you look at the Panjwai incident, it clearly was terrorism, but will never be described as that officially.

We have read for years that an increasing share of GWOT veterans kill family members of their returns from service, or kill themselves. We have read reports that the army, to save money, seeks to have emotionally damaged service personnel officially passed as okay or else, messed up in ways not military business. We have read that major disorders, PTSD the most famous, have reached epidemic levels among serving military personnel.

If president Obama has failed, it would be that he has paid too little attention to all these red flags about the mental states of personnel in harm's way. I know of no evidence that he has failed that way.

Today's Walt bitching about the Obama surge is just plain empty and forgetful. The incoming president found on his arrival that the Bush promise to train Afghans to defend their own nation through a skilled army and police force simply were not being implemented by the American elements of ISAF. Soldiers sent to Afghanistan as trainers weren't being deployed as that. Rather than fixing the problem, the military decided to hide it by trotting out an Afghan military unit,the Kabul Rockettes, to give visiting reporters dazzling displays of how well they could march. The size of this sparkling unit? It seems to have been a platoon, the one shining example of how terrific US training was at that time.

Back in the Petraeus-McChrystal years, defense secretary Gates told a NATO meeting in Europe that the shortfall of American trainers was in the thousands. Back home, journalists and semi-wise men such as Walt paid no practical attention. If what Mr Gates said was true, it implied that some US military thinking was of Afghanistan as a lengthy career-building American commitment rather than a terminable ("We will stand down when the Afghan forces can stand up": Bush) one. Mr Obama did attend to this business and keep the Bush promise, and by posting more troops to theater for the first time he made the training program more than a publicity stunt.

If we believe that America has a responsibility to train up the Afghan army and police to professional levels -- and perfesser Walt doubtless believes that -- the president has created the best way to to meet that responsibility in good order and minimum time. We are supplied with frequent evidence through news media reports that Obama as military commander in chief is achieving the training outcomes that the Bush administration never really ordered. Good for him.
______________________
PS In his passing reference to the evil of My Lai, the perfesser airily passes by the fact there were two types of evil. First, there was the massacre. Then there was at senior levels the official military cover-up, which succeeded lengthily until two crackpot soldiers -- a photographer and a helo pilot -- figured out a way around it.

The instinct of senior military officers to cover up and hide evil or incompetence within their commands is no new thing, and did not vanish when the troops came home from Vietnam. Recent examples appear frequently in another foreignpolicy.com blog, Best Defense. The dreadful news from Panjwai this week suggests that even more revelations have been needed; and that other people, let's say Stephen M Walt, haven't been paying due attention. Instead, just chiming in late; doing the easy, irrelevant stuff; blaming the president. No help for nobody in that.

"And third, because it was all so unnecessary. " Hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, injured in Iraq, Afghanistan from US drones. No need to wonder why so many folks in those neighborhoods hate what the US has done and continues to do.

Steve what can you tell us about the Afghanistan government asking the Bush administration to provide hard evidence that OBL's fingerprints were on the 9/11 attacks. That the Bush administration either refused or could not provide irrefutable evidence at that time. I had the pleasure of getting to know a Fullbright scholar studying in Ohio from Afghanistan between 2004 and 2007. I learned so much about his country, his religious beliefs his family (who he missed terribly), the war with Russia etc.

He shared with me the story of the Bush administration not providing the government of Afghanistan with hard evidence linking OBL to 9/11 at that time. i have since read several articles about this. But what do you know about that claim?

"Obama could have pulled the plug on this failed enterprise at the start.
Maybe he didn't for political reasons"

Professor, perhaps you have been burned once too often
by venturing opinions on cause and effect
which place the powers-that-be in your university, and your general milieu,
in an unflattering light.
In any case, it seems to me that intellectual honesty
would demand that you not just say
"Obama was merely following the advice of his generals"
but address the issue of why he followed their advice
rather than the better approach, recommended by you
and, for example, Michael Scheuer.

In particular, here is a question you might want to address:
Just why is it that Michael Scheuer,
despite having been so right on predicting the course of events in Afghanistan
(in particular in Chap. 2 of Imperial Hubris)
has been so shunted to the sidelines of
the policy-making and opinion-shaping fora re Afghanistan?

I think the answer is obvious:
He made himself obnoxious to the American Jewish community by his outspoken and unpopular views on Israel.
But what is your answer?

Want any more hot potatoes :-)

As long as we're taking victory laps...

I did say many times in the comments here that his Afghan strategy would fail, and, as I said then, I think you are partially to blame.

Because you promoted the Kerry campaign talking point that the Afghan war was the 'good war' as opposed to the Iraq war, you helped set up a false (and certainly not realistic) dichotomy. So, when the Dems recaptured the presidency they fell into the trap of their own rhetoric, feeling the need to escalate in Afghanistan, when there were clear and good rason for a light touch.

You guys forgot that labelling Afghanistan as the 'good war' was simply a campaign tactic, nothing more.

This was a really horrible tragedy, but it is unfair to blame Obama's foreign policy for this. Anyone can go crazy at any time. It is easy to blame the place where they are and all of the circumstances surrounding it. This man obviously had some mental health issues, and this could have happened anywhere, or rather in any war situation. I don't even think it is fair to quote about Obama's foreign policy as it has literally nothing to do with this issue.

Because name calling is the only weapon they have. These are the same people who took their balls and left the playground when they didn't get their way as kids..

"Is rio orange war always forfait mobile" inevitable ?"
MaximB

One of the most ludicrous features of both wars was the idolization of these two bureaucrats. Remember the Congressional hearings in the summer of 08, when Petraeus was the military genius who "saved" Iraq? Their "triumphs," in my opinion, were primarily triumphs of public relations, which triumphed by buying the Bush administration just enough obfuscation that they could avoid making any real decisions and instead dump the matter off on the next administration. Cuz we all know, the Iraq invasion's only a failure if you call it a failure.

I totally agree with this quote!