Obama Administration Repeating Mistakes of 1980s Afghanistan Conflict

Yesterday's New York Times had an article entitled alluding to a "shadow war" being fought by the U.S. in Yemen and northern Africa. As I read the article my mind was having flashbacks to literature about the Soviet-Afghan War and our involvement in that conflict. In the 1980s we wanted to fight the Soviets without actually fighting them: we paid others (mujahedeen) to do the work and ran covert operations through the CIA to accomplish our goal of bringing down the Soviets. It worked, but the resulting consequences 20 years later were devastating.

The details of what the American government is doing in places like Yemen are disappointing to anyone hoping that this country would avoid, at nearly all costs, another Soviet-Afghan War situation. To begin with, the CIA is becoming more militant and the Pentagon is focusing more on covert operations dictated by secret Executive Orders. Combine this with that fact that the government is using military contractors in "territory hostile to the military" (which, I have to imagine, is pretty substantive in the Middle East) and the utter erosion of oversight is disturbing. Look at the death of Marib Province's deputy governor in an American strike intended for Al Qaeda: Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh took the blame. There is simply little to no accountability for these "covert ops."