Few targets, fewer objectives: a U.S. door gunner keeps watch north of Kandahar

There are turning points in every great scandal, moments of searing clarity that are often triggered by the curiosity, indignation or cold-blooded anger of investigators trying to wheedle out the truth.

Ten days ago, a world away from Afghanistan, the Congressional probe of the Bernie Madoff affair shook loose some highly entertaining and revealing testimony – followed by a visceral release of star-spangled outrage that might usefully be redirected, right about now, at the U.S. military command in Kabul.

At issue in Washington on February 4th was the blind incompetence of the Securities and Exchange Commission. For nearly a decade, the SEC failed to heed repeated tip-offs about the alleged fraudster Madoff.

“You’ve told us nothing,” New York Rep. Gary Ackerman bellowed at a cringing SEC regulator. “What the heck went on? What went wrong?”

Then the congressman went nuclear:  “You guys couldn’t find your backside with two hands when the lights are on. You have totally failed in your mission.”

Congressman Ackerman, a word of advice. If the SEC spikes your blood pressure, better not drop in on the U.S. leadership in Afghanistan. If the energy of hands groping for backsides could be harnessed, Kabul’s chronic electrical blackouts would be history by now.

Whether it’s the hypocrisy of U.S. condemnation of President Karzai (his Kabul kleptocracy is entirely a creation of Bush era strongmen) or the Pentagon’s enthusiasm for repeating the blunders of the Soviet military in the 1980’s (an over-reliance on aerial bombardment, the promotion of tribal militias) it’s clear that the lights are on in Washington’s fortified Afghan outposts, but there is definitely no one home - at least not anyone whose hands have had occasion to locate their backsides.

Does that assessment seem a little harsh? Let’s remember that while Bernie Madoff has been branded as the Fifty Billion Dollar Con Man, the Pentagon is spending at least 2.3 billion tax dollars each and every month in Afghanistan. And to what effect?

This week the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed that the Pentagon has failed to keep track of some 87,000 assault rifles, grenade launchers and other arms given to the Afghan National Army and Police. The auditors acknowledge that some of the weapons could now be in the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

An isolated oversight? Not according to the G.A.O. Last June, the government watchdog reported that after $16 billion spent since 2002, the Defense and State departments "lacked detailed plans and cost estimates for completing and sustaining" the Afghan National Army and Police.

With a new administration taking shape in Washington D.C., there’s always the chance that America’s blowback-haunted adventure in Southwest Asia might finally benefit from a course correction. But if some of President Obama’s appointments are anything to go by, it seems that compasses are still in short supply at the White House.

Witness the outrageous spectacle of General Karl Eikenberry landing the job of U.S. Ambassador to Kabul. Eikenberry served two previous tours in Afghanistan, including 18 months as commander of U.S. forces – during which time the Taliban insurgency gained murderous momentum.

Eikenberry was also part of the Pentagon brain trust that refused to help international anti-narcotics forces, including America’s D.E.A., clamp down on Afghanistan’s heroin trade. First let’s defeat the Taliban, he insisted, then we’ll talk drugs.

This was an enormous strategic error:  heroin profits helped fuel the Taliban’s war effort. Yet Eikenberry’s failures are rewarded by promotion – a sad commentary on the vision of American leadership on this, the 20th anniversary of the Soviet military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan on February 15th, 1989.

It took General Boris Gromov and his political masters nine years to find their backsides with both hands and admit failure. Unhappily, today’s masters of the Afghan military universe have learned nothing from the Russians’ mistakes.

Gromov this week ventured to lecture President Obama and his generals, saying of General David Petraeus’s plans for an Iraq-style surge of U.S. forces, “One can increase the forces or not — it won’t lead to anything but a negative result.”

Admitting to reporters that “Afghanistan taught us a valuable lesson,” Gromov intoned: “It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force.”

Generals Petraeus and Eikenberry will likely shrug off the old Red Army warhorse, and his advice.

Much as the SEC shrugged off warnings about Bernie Madoff…