American soldiers are dying in vain in Afghanistan. Or so Brij Kindiharia writes for The Moderate Voice:

In Afghanistan, the US is heading towards futility if not defeat mainly because no policy maker in Washington or its allied European capitals is willing to notice the bull in the china shop obvious to others.

Washington and its NATO allies are focused on the awful recent elections. They are running in circles trying to establish democracy and rule of law in country where the lifestyle of rural folk dominated by clans and tribes has not changed significantly in 1000 years.

What is obvious to non-Americans is that Afghanistan is in the midst of several civil wars that have nothing to do with keeping Americans safe from Al Qaeda or installing democracy of any kind. Ordinary people are fed up of being the collateral damage of violence from all sides. They turn up to vote hoping for some sort of breathing space. Their allegiance is to safety in their communities, not to building a cohesive, viable or democratic nation.

I encourage you to read Kindaharia’s entire post. He says a lot of things you have to think about, whether you agree or disagree with him.

In any case, I can’t help but notice that the war in Afghanistan is strangely quickly becoming the new Iraq War. Liberals said for years that US soldiers died in vain in Iraq. This war could not be won, they said. It was time (whether it was in 2003 or 2008) to withdraw.

Then Bush did what had to be done, sent extra troops, developed a new strategy and turned things around. Suddenly anti-war activists were nowhere to be found. Barack Obama did win the elections, of course, but the anti-war crowd did not even mention Iraq once. The reason was rather obvious; things were finally going just fine and Americans knew it. They could complain, advocate immediate withdrawal, but no one would fall for it.

So they had to find a new obsession, a new reason to condemn “American imperialism” and the war on terror. A new excuse to advocate isolationism and surrender to forces that wish to destroy the West.

They looked around, trying to find a good cause. They tried Venezuela but that one didn’t work. Americans don’t like socialists. Iran, then. But Americans fear Iran and there’s no war going on between Iran and the U.S. Not at this moment anyway. North Korea then? Nope. Not a good ’cause’ either.

Luckily for the left things went wrong in Afghanistan. The coalition ran into serious resistance. In fact, the Taliban seemed to make a comeback. They pushed government and coalition forces further and further back and controlled an constantly growing area.

And so they finally found their new cause, their new obsession through which they could feed their anti-American hunger.

The troops have to be withdrawn! The war effort in Afghanistan is doomed! The Taliban is too strong! We shouldn’t ever have gone to war with this country anyway! Bush lied, people died!

The tactics the far-left uses share close resemblance to the tactics they used to discredit the war effort in Iraq. In fact, they are exactly the same, including pretending that the war was illegal or at least unnecessary.

Lest we forget, Afghanistan was attacked because the country’s government protected Al Qaeda, which attacked America on 9/11/01. The war on Afghanistan was an act of self defense, not of aggression nor ideology. It was meant to destroy or at least severely weaken organizations and the government that killed thousands of innocent Americans on that black day.

The goal wasn’t to bring glorious peace, democracy and prosperity to the Afghan people but to weaken Al Qaeda and the Taliban so they couldn’t attack Americans on American soil anymore.

And whether or not you’re happy with the strategy used in Afghanistan, you have to admit Al Qaeda lost an important safe haven when Bush gave the order to attack Afghanistan. Even those who are (or at least appear to be) sympathetic towards Al Qaeda do. Read for instance Abdel Bari Atwan’s book “The Secret History of Al Qaeda.” Heck, other Jihadis (like al-Zarqawi) were even angry with Bin Laden because of his decision to attack the U.S. They knew it meant they would have to move; and true safe havens, like Afghanistan was, aren’t that easy to find.

The war in Afghanistan is going less well than most of us would have hoped. But that doesn’t mean the war effort is useless. The opposite, even. The West has  made life incredibly difficult for the leaders of Al Qaeda. As Atwan explains in his book, the leadership of the organization has difficulty communicating with lower ranked members; they can’t travel safely, they can’t go on the Internet or use phones. They’re constantly on the run. Why? Because of the war in Afghanistan. If the West withdraws, the Taliban will once again rule the country and Al Qaeda and similar organizations will be able to plan attacks against America and Europe without worrying about being caught / killed. They’ll use technology as they did in the past and lower ranked members already do, which will enable them to kill more Western civilians than ever before.

So, are American and other Western soldiers dying in vain in Afghanistan? Quite the opposite.