Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause with al Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government. Gradually, the Taliban has begun to control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating attacks of terrorism against the Pakistani people.
Now, throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq. When I took office, we had just over 32,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the peak of the war. Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive. And that's why, shortly after taking office, I approved a longstanding request for more troops. After consultations with our allies, I then announced a strategy recognizing the fundamental connection between our war effort in Afghanistan and the extremist safe havens in Pakistan. I set a goal that was narrowly defined as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and pledged to better coordinate our military and civilian efforts.
Since then, we've made progress on some important objectives. High-ranking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed, and we've stepped up the pressure on al Qaeda worldwide. In Pakistan, that nation's army has gone on its largest offensive in years. In Afghanistan, we and our allies prevented the Taliban from stopping a presidential election, and -- although it was marred by fraud -- that election produced a government that is consistent with Afghanistan's laws and constitution.
Yet huge challenges remain. Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards. There's no imminent threat of the government being overthrown, but the Taliban has gained momentum. Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border. And our forces lack the full support they need to effectively train and partner with Afghan security forces and better secure the population. Our new commander in Afghanistan -- General McChrystal -- has reported that the security situation is more serious than he anticipated. In short: The status quo is not sustainable.
(From the transcript posted at TPM.)
I was not a fan of the surge in Iraq, and I am still skeptical that the surge was the sole or even the main reason for the major decrease of military casualties there. I'm also skeptical about the efficacy of a surge in Afghanistan. To me, there seems to be a great possibility with this escalation of simply appearing to be more of an antagonist, and setting up something of an "equal and opposite reaction." But then again, I'm not a military strategist as Gen McCrystal is, and I'm not much of a student of history; I can only say that to me, Afghan history looks like tribal anarchy periodically interrupted by invasions, of which ours is just the most recent.
At the same time, I am not skeptical about the efficacy of force as a tool to subdue belligerents, nor am I of the belief that it can't ever be the proper tool. Many Americans, and especially those on the left, are tired of this war. The prospect of leaving behind an Afghanistan better than we found it was enchanting when Bush was making seem so plausible, but in the cold light of day, to build a better Afghanistan, we are still working with....you know. Afghanistan. There is a reasonable probability, with a government that doesn't have great confidence or a security force that is ready to defend it, that the Taliban will re-install themselves, not necessarily because of the will of the people. Just because they can. Because stability is enticing--even if it's a religiously-obsessed and unjust kind of stability. It is because of that I look forward to the idea of there being work towards a civilian solution, as well as seeing the Obama administration pay more attention to how Pakistan and India can exert influence in the region.
With respect to my fellow liberals who really disagree with this--I don't see simply pulling out as a viable solution. I don't see this as simply a political decision or as caving in or as being Bush 2.0. As early as 2007, Obama gave signs of favoring the value of the Afghanistan effort and expressed his belief that the devotion of resources to Iraq took away from the actual fight against those who attacked us. What he said this evening should not come as a surprise. By being willing to devote the resources to this, make the final push, and have a timeline to see it through, his strategy is actually reassuring to me. I feel that this decision did come from a consideration of many alternatives.
But with not exactly as much respect to the right, the complaint regarding the very existence of a timeline from such a venerable "bitchy-britches", as John McCain doesn't really move me. To me, that argument is Bush reheated. Again and again, Bush resisted offering a "date certain" or "benchmarks." Why? I always moved between believing that Bush was numbers-paranoid, a poor student who was phobic about poor grades, and thinking maybe he wanted to procrastinate seeing an end to the war until he was out of office--after all, you can't lose what you didn't finish.
What bothers me most about both sides is how much we've become trapped in the cliches about war that the Bush/Cheney White House drilled into our poor little heads. "Surge good, timeline bad." " We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" (although shouldn't the national security on US soil be by and large a domestic effort?). We are supposed to axiomatically believe that the Iraq surge worked, even though Iraq is by no means restored to the pre-invasion stability, and we are also, for whatever reason, lulled into a constant comparison of apples to oranges to durian fruit: Iraq and Vietnam and Afghanistan are all different wars. When we fall into that kind of knee-jerk axiomatic speech, I fear we think that way, too, and become resistant to change. To those who hear the echoes of the happy lies we heard from Bush, the 9/11 references and the warnings that there is still a terrorist threat, well--it's like tradition, now, isn't it?
Which doesn't mean there isn't still a threat. It just isn't the same one we were expecting. Not another 9/11. But rather, perhaps another Mumbai attack. Or a destabilization of the Zardari government in Pakistan (which we should be very concerned about, as they have the nukes.) This part of the world can not be ignored. Nor dithered with, as Bush/Cheney had done.
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