David Corn

So finally the Bush administration is concerned about Afghanistan enough to review its entire policy regarding that war-torn nation. This was the front-page news on Sunday. Talk about arriving late to a disaster. Afghanistan has been getting worse for years, and the Bush White House has failed to focus on this mess--and the same can be said about Congress and much of the media. Afghanistan has been the forgotten war. And it's rarely discussed on the presidential campaign trail. Democratic candidates do tend to say they want to end the war in Iraq and apply more resources to winning the fight in Afghanistan--without going into details about the latter. But when was the last time you heard any Republican candidate say anything significant about the current situation in Afghanistan? I'll pick on Mitt Romney for a moment. In the 5000-word article he (or his aides) wrote for Foreign Affairs outlining his foreign policy views, there was not one reference to what he would do as president regarding Afghanistan.

But back to where the real problem is: the Bush White House. For years, it has treated Afghanistan as a sideshow. Over a year ago, I wrote a piece for The Nation reporting that there was no single senior-level Bush administration official responsible only for policies and actions in Afghanistan. At the time, the Afghanistan portfolio was being managed by deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who has since bailed out of the administration. But O'Sullivan also had another knotty matter on her desk: Iraq. Yes, the person in charge of Iraq for the White House was also in charge of Afghanistan. You'd think either one might be enough for a full-time job. Moreover, O'Sullivan was hardly an expert on Afghanistan, as I noted:

Several months ago a leading American expert on Afghanistan was meeting with Meghan O'Sullivan, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush White House. The topic at hand was the attitude of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, toward the revived Taliban insurgents operating out of Pakistani territory. Musharraf's government seemed (as it does now) to be willfully ignoring the Taliban, or perhaps even providing them with safe harbor and assistance. Why would Musharraf do either?

The expert explained that many factors shape the difficult Pakistani-Afghan relationship. He pointed to the decades-long conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan and mentioned the Durand Line, the supposed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 1,600-mile-long line, imposed on Afghanistan by the British in 1893, divides Pashtun and Baluch regions and separates Afghanistan from territory it has claimed as its own. Afghanistan has never officially recognized the Durand Line, which has been a great source of strife between the two countries.

By referring to the Durand Line, the expert was noting that US efforts in the region are complicated by pre-9/11 history. O'Sullivan, according to this expert (who wishes not to be named), didn't know what the Durand Line was. The expert was stunned. O'Sullivan is the most senior Bush Administration official handling Afghanistan policy. If she wasn't familiar with this basic point, US policy-making on Afghanistan was in trouble.

So it's no surprise that the administration is now sorely in need of a top-to-bottom review.

The administration's failings in Afghanistan have been somewhat obscured by its more obvious failings in Iraq. Had Bush not invaded Iraq he might have been held more accountable for the worsening situation in Afghanistan. But what a lucky guy he is. It turns out that when it comes to ducking responsibility two messes are better one.