Bush's 'Decision Points'

Former US President George W Bush came out of retirement this week to launch his memoir "Decision Points", in which he has tried to justify the wars he started in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ruinous judgements he made in the process. Some excerpts of the book appearing in the press spotlight the decisions leading to the war in Afghanistan, imbued with the hubris that characterised his presidency.
For example, he talks of Colin Powell's September 13, 2001, telephonic conversation with General Pervez Musharraf, telling him he had to decide whose side he was on, and gave him "non-negotiable demands," including breaking relations with the Taliban and denying al Qaeda havens inside Pakistan. Clearly, he does not think much of pressuring another independent country to do things that it may have seen as being contrary to its interest. Pakistan should have had the choice to stand aside, while the US sorted out its enemy. Bush had no right to force Islamabad not to take a neutral position. But this country ended up fighting America's war on America's terms. The result, as Bush indirectly acknowledges in the book, is that Pakistan "paid a high price for taking on extremists".
At another point Bush recalls his frustration late in his presidency when, according to him, during a meeting with the US special forces returning from Afghanistan a troop purportedly pleaded with him, "we need permission to go kick some ass inside Pakistan." Considering that by the time his presidency neared end, it was more than obvious that the US had lost both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one in their right mind would have talked of provoking a third war in Pakistan. And yet Bush narrates the preceding story, apparently, to cover up his disastrous follies by blaming Pakistan for the unaccomplished mission in Afghanistan.
Bush admits that Pakistani security forces were successful for several years in targeting al Qaeda militants crossing the Afghan border. But he also says "some in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, retained close ties to Taliban officials. Others wanted an insurance policy in case America abandoned Afghanistan and India tried to gain influence there."
As a matter of fact, in the early days of the conflict, General Musharraf had publicly stressed the need to differentiate between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, reasoning that the Taliban were Afghans and could not be ousted from their own country. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, was an outsider using another people's territory to pursue its political agenda through violence, and hence ought to be defeated. Time has proven Pakistan to be right.
The US has given up trying to vanquish the Taliban, and is in indirect negotiations with them to end the war and go back home. Obama administration's Afghan strategy, formulated after lengthy discussions and debate, is now focused on defeating al Qaeda. And it wants to use Pakistan's old contacts with Taliban leaders and its unique physical location to find a safe exit from Afghanistan.
In his memoir, Bush also says, Pakistan's co-operation was impeded by its "obsession with its historic rival India. In almost every conversation we had", he regretfully recalls, "Musharraf accused India of wrongdoing." As regards the question of obsession with India, it exists on both sides because of history and the disputes it bequeathed the two nations. General Musharraf's successor General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani continues to designate India as the main security threat. Only a resolution of the issues of conflict, especially the core issue of Kashmir, can end the obsession.