Maybe I’ve let my subscription lapse on Far-Right Talking Points Weekly, but at what point did conservatives get together and decide that the war in Afghanistan is going well?
Two months ago, Ann Coulter told Fox News, “Things are going swimmingly in [tag]Afghanistan[/tag].” This week, Bill [tag]O’Reilly[/tag] went even further, saying that the notion that conditions in Afghanistan are getting worse is a “myth.”
[Monday] on Fox News, host Bill O’Reilly tried to argue that Afghanistan has been “successful” and that “there’s no danger at all of the Taliban reclaiming that country.” At the worst, he said, the Taliban will be “annoying.” When his guest, Harvard University professor Sarah Sewall, pointed out that people on the ground disagree, O’Reilly dismissed her, stating, “I talked to everybody.”
Supreme NATO commander Gen. James Jones recently stated that Afghanistan is close to becoming a “narco state,” whose $3 billion dollars in annual drug profits are financing the Taliban. Council on Foreign Relations Afghanistan expert Dr. Barnett Rubin said that Afghanistan Afghanistan is at a “tipping point” and that the Afghan people believe “trends are going in the Taliban’s favor.” Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO’s 32,000 troops, warned that unless coalition forces begin stepping up reconstruction efforts, 70 percent of the country could decide to back the Taliban. Doesn’t sound like O’Reilly talked to everybody.
I realize the war in Iraq has become an embarrassing tragedy for Republicans and their allies, but have we reached a point in which the right also has to politically prop up two wars that are going in the wrong direction?
Apparently so.
Right-wing talking points notwithstanding, Afghanistan’s deterioration is anything but a “myth.” Indeed, O’Reilly’s timing is unusually bad given the news out of the country.
The conflict in Iraq is drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists aspiring to battle the West turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan, European and U.S. anti-terrorism officials say.
The shift of militants to Afghanistan this year suggests that Al Qaeda and its allies, armed with new tactics honed in Iraq, are coming full circle five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban mullahs.
And this.
Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.
He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.
“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.
And this.
U.S. military officials tell ABC News cross-border attacks by the Taliban are up “300 percent” since President Musharraf declared a “truce” with tribal leaders in the troubled Northern Waziristan region that borders Afghanistan.
Going “swimmingly”? Taliban resurgence is a “myth”? I suppose the real question at this point is why anyone could possibly find right-wing talking heads credible.