Seems like a risky gambit for the Reactionaries to remind voters of Shrubya in the lead-up to the elections, as well as split the Reactionary Jingo Consensus.

Related news, pundit Joel Brinkley writes off Afghanistan, Dumbass Gingrich cracks open a newspaper,  Michael Steele thinks Obama started the war (in his alternative reality shared by scary man-woman Ann Coulter) and our military continues to blow up Afghani civilians.

*Update 7/21/10* HuffPo has video montage of a bunch of Repug pols repudiating Shrubya’s Afghanistan Adventure.  Or is that refutiating?

“We’ve heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front,” he said. “Where are these successes?”

Good question.  Seems like things are heading South again, with increasingly brazen attacks reminiscent of the Groundhog Days of ’04 and ’05.

In the same post, Juan Cole discusses how affairs between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq are heating up around the flashpoint Kirkuk.  Those of you who aren’t afflicted with American Amnesia might remember how we called Kirkuk out as a flashpoint way back when, and how the Kurds have been continuously working to reclaim demographics and control on the ground in this oil-rich city.

I guess with Obama shifting his focus on our other failing occupation, and with our gradual troop removal the Petreus plan to stabilize the Iraqi Civil War is slowly and painfully coming off, like a band-aid on a hairy leg.

“Our biggest fear is that this opportunity will be lost because pressures for the appearance of success, particularly internationally, will lead to money being spent in the wrong way, on the wrong kinds of investments,” said Paul O’Brien, advocacy coordinator for the U.S.-based aid agency CARE International. “What we need is long-term, sustainable benefit for Afghan people so that we help to create an environment where they can rebuild their country.”

The U.S. has paid $60 million to build schools, provide textbooks and train teachers. However, Afghanistan’s cash-poor government is responsible for paying the teachers — and it doesn’t have the money. Teachers are quitting and schools closing because warlords who helped the U.S. military during the 2001 war — and received money and weapons in return — are resisting Karzai’s order to hand over an estimated $800 million in annual tax revenue.

“We have to worry about our priorities if we can’t find enough money to pay teachers $100 a month,” said Paul Barker, CARE’s director in Afghanistan.

In March, Washington agreed to give $35 million in financing and political risk insurance to Hyatt International to construct a five-star hotel where the legions of entrepreneurs and aid officials can stay when they visit Kabul.

Yet the city’s estimated 3 million people live without such basics as a sewer system, and there is no plan to build one.

Meanwhile, the New York Times chimes in with a report on the natural corollary of our failure to rebuild the country — the resurgence of the Taliban:

As the weak central government has failed to extend its writ in isolated parts of the south, Western diplomats say, the Taliban are trying to fill the vacuum. In many districts, the only evidence of government authority is a district leader protected by a small group of poorly paid and ill-equipped police. Residents complain of lawlessness and say that while they do not support the Taliban, they miss the strict law and order they enforced.

Some of the stepped-up Taliban campaign has involved basic propaganda. “Night letters” left in villages and cities play on the lack of aid and a sense among Pashtuns that they are not adequately represented in the new national government. Residents are told that the United States is simply interested in occupying Muslim countries, not in aiding them.

. . . Afghans who cooperate with the government or the United States are being killed. Two police chiefs, two pro-government imams, and more than 30 policemen were killed in the south and east in July and August, Afghan officials said.

An attempt to assassinate the governor of Helmand Province was thwarted in early August.

. . . “They have a sophisticated strategy of going after local people,” a senior Western diplomat said. “The mantra they use is that the Americans and the international community will leave someday, and we will come back.”

Colonel Donohue, as well as Afghan officials, said the struggle in the south would be won by aid workers, not soldiers. The problem is stabilizing the area so they can create jobs and gain popular support.

“Those are the guys who are going to win it for us,” he said, referring to aid workers. “That’s how we’re really going to defeat the root causes.“

But like any good Hollywood producer, he’s laid the groundwork for a sequel to the Afghan conflict as well. While lavishing more than $80 billion on the Gulf War II, he has apparently reneged on his promise to rebuild Afghanistan. Although the U.S. maintains a military presence in that country, its activities appear to be focused on a futile and expensive cat & mouse game on the Pakistan border as well as protecting “our” bully, Afghani President Karzai (although apparently the privatization-minded Administration has actually outsourced the latter to the corporate mercenaries at DynCorp).

This neglect of the folks we “liberated” in this last war is causing the same sorts of unrest that led to the original emergence of the Taliban from among the numerous thugs and warlords pillaging Afghanistan following the end of the Soviet occupation. In an eery echo of Dubya, Karzai’s brother recently summarized the current situation: “It’s like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem.”

I’m confident that the Oily Men in the White House won’t neglect Iraq completely. My prediction is that U.S. aid, funded at least in part from Iraqi oil revenues, will go into rebuilding Iraq’s petroleum industry. Oil Slick Bush will “pass the buck” for the remaining reconstruction, if any, to its patsy friends in Europe and the U.N. If Afghanistan is any indication, this won’t be a high priority for Dubya. So expect to see these new blockbuster hits:

Afghan War II and Gulf War III!

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