Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defence (1943- )
The war the United States is now fighting in Afghanistan stems directly from the mistakes it made during the anti-Soviet war there in the late 1980s. During a recent speech, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates underscored the need to learn from past experience and prevent a repeat of those strategic mistakes in Iraq. Mr Gates’ belated acknowledgement means that, by supplying arms to the Afghan mujaheddin fighting Soviet troops, Washington precipitated a turn of events that ultimately led to the 11 September 2001 attacks and America’s global war on terror. Fighting al Qaeda differs much from anything the Americans have seen before and many experts are already advising the White House to start looking for a political solution in Afghanistan.
In Moscow, Viktor Korgun, the director of the Centre for Afghan Studies, fully agrees, saying there can be no military solution to the conflict. “Only if and when the Afghan authorities start rebuilding the country’s shattered economy will ordinary Afghans support the government and its western sponsors… They need more money, more energy, and more effort. They need to talk to the enemy, but, certainly not those who are neck-deep in the blood of their compatriots”.
It looks like the people at the Pentagon are finally waking up to the reality that combining naked force and persuasion to force others to give up extremism, terrorism, and support the Afghan government does not work. Some experts say that now that the Pentagon is ready from the top down to own up to past mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq, it could bring about a dramatic change in American policy in a region where a wrong decision is always fraught with the risk of the sort of military conflict that Americans have never succeeded in…
24 May 2008
Yevgeny Kryshkin
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=27476&cid=58&p=24.05.2008 (in English)
Voice of Russia World Service
