Afghanistan
The rhetoric is heating up among not only the politicians, but the military as well, on our Afghanistan strategy. The military leadership is very publicly calling for more troops. When is it the military does not call for more firepower and personnel? The Republican leadership is siding with the military, while the Obama administration seems to be divided over the proper course.
I wonder if we have forgotten what happened to Russia when they tried to bring Afghanistan under control. We claim we need to stabilize the country by diminishing the position of the Taliban, and eliminating the possibility that Afghanistan will be a safe haven for terrorists. I think neither goal is reachable. And further, terrorists do not need a country that is a safe haven; they can, and do, operate anywhere.
It is said that without more troops we will fail. I do not think it is possible to succeed. We should begin to withdraw troops rather than send more to face the perils of war.
2 Comments on “Afghanistan”
Leave a Reply
Your reply will be reviewed before it is made public.
Richard Gilmore said:
I was in Viet Nam, where more troops did not mean success. Unfortunately, there will always be those who would try to destroy our way of life. They do not need a centralized location to work from, but are all around us. We will never win in Afghanistan until we earn the respect of those who live there who will, in turn, drive the terrorists from their country. The time to fight in Afghanistan was years ago, before we were sidetracked by invading Iraq. If the President feels he can salvage the situation, he will make a decision based on judgment, not emotion. I would hate to see more lives wasted, as I did before.
Stuart Lay said:
A couple of very respectfully offered comments –
Concerning the impression that the military is always asking for more: By law, the only times the military may ask for resources are when the President or Secretary of Defense give the military a mission (such as the one in Afghanistan and Iraq) or as part of the Department of Defense’s 5-year Planning, Programming and Budgeting Process. Anything else one hears from the press is uninformed, inaccurate reporting.
Further, the military does not always think more is the right answer. I served on the Air Force staff in the Pentagon in the early 1990’s, right after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved. Through personal experience, I know there wasn’t a single, credible voice during these years that fought against the downtrend in military spending. The reason was simple — the enemy we had prepared to fight for 50 years went away. Of course, we should reduce.
It would be rare for a newly-appointed theater commander, such as Lt Gen Stanley McChrystal who replaced Gen McKiernan in Afghanistan in May, not to conduct a thorough review of the mission and the resources needed. Press reporting indicates that President Obama gave him clear guidance to not only prosecute the current strategy but also to assess alternatives and provide recommendations for what we should do next.
McChrystal apparently has conducted his review, and on the basis of his experience, he is asking for more resources because he believes he needs them to do two things. The first is to acommplish the mission (and remember, it was the President (Bush) who gave him the current mission). The second is to protect the lives of the tens of thousands of American service member lives placed in his care. Nothing places U.S. lives at greater risk than to give them a mission without with resources they need. To do anything else than ask for what he truly believes he needs would be unethical and immoral.
I am incredibly impressed with the Commander-in-Chief’s deliberate, thoughtful process for deciding our future course in Afghanistan. He has questioned everything from the assumptions underlying our involvement to the strategy to the resources needed. Just what the country and the military that carries out his orders needs, in my opinion.
On the comment concerning safe havens. In the last fifty years, the only wars the United States has fought (with the exception of the incredibly short first Gulf War in 1990-1991) have come in the form of counter-insurgency affairs. We, as well as every country that has fought one of these in the last hundred years, has come away with a couple of lessons, one of which is do not allow the enemy a safe haven.
The British learned this following WWI when they searched for ways to achieve their objectives in a several of their colonies “on the cheap”. They tried to prevent insurgents from having access to territory and a safe harbor to rest and regroup through the use of air power. It failed.
The U.S. learned this lesson in spades during Vietnam when political restrictions prevented us from attacking key locations used by the Viet Cong to rest and regroup. I’m not asserting this was the reason we lost in Vietnam, but current historians (military and civilian) believe this was a primary factor.
And we are learning it again today through Pakistan’s unwillingness or inability to deny Al Qaeda safe haven in their country.
Al Qaeda depends on this safe haven to train and rest fighters, plan operations and raise money. Without safe haven, their leadership would be constantly on the run (think Saddam after the fall of Iraq), unable to have time and space to plan, lead, create propaganda, and many other functions that are essential to maintaining a fighting force.
The time is ripe for a complete re-think of our Afghanistan policy. Given our economic woes and President Obama’s direction in foreign policy (multi-lateral approaches, alliances, etc), and the abject disinterest shown this theater by the last administration, we need to look at this war again. I only hope Mr. Obama spends a goodly portion of his time in prayer as well as meetings.