It was a busy week. President Obama signed into law a $787 billion stimulus plan. He unveiled a $275 billion housing plan. He weighed a request from GM and Chrysler for a total of $39 billion in emergency federal loans to save America’s auto industry.
Oh, and by the way, President Obama also ordered an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan in order, he said, “to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires.”
The news about Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan kind of got lost in all the financial news. But it’s the most important news of all. An additional 17,000 troops increases the American presence in Afghanistan by almost 50 percent. And, we are told, there are more to come, bringing the total American troops in Afghanistan to 60,000, up from 36,000 today. Several NATO allies, meanwhile, are pulling their troops out of Afghanistan.
Ironically, Obama’s announcement came the same day that Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned that a resurgent Taliban had “stalemated” U.S. and NATO forces, and predicted that American forces would have to remain in Afghanistan up to five more years. McKiernan also revealed that 60,000 troops represented only about two-thirds of the number of troops he requested for Afghanistan.
The ordered redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan also occurred on the same day President Obama admitted that military force alone would not do the job. “I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means,” he told reporters from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “We’re going to have to use diplomacy. We’re going to have to use development.”
Most Americans think of the war in Afghanistan as the “good” war, the war we should have finished instead of rushing off to the “bad” war in Iraq. It began as the legitimate response of the United States to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. President George W. Bush launched “Operation Enduring Freedom” in October 2001 with three stated goals: to capture Osama bin Laden, to destroy al-Qaida and to remove the Taliban from power.
Seven years later, however, not one of those goals has been accomplished. Bin Laden’s still on the loose; al-Qaida has regrouped and grown stronger; and the Taliban’s back in charge of much of the country. Not only that, violence against NATO troops has increased; the Karzai government is ripe with corruption; and, just over the border, Pakistan has made a deal with Islamic extremists allowing the practice of Shariah law – the same repressive measures enforced by the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
In other words, things have gotten worse in Afghanistan, not better. But it’s by no means certain that sending in more American troops is the answer. In fact, President Obama, himself unsure about a military solution, has ordered a 60-day review of the situation by special envoy Richard Holbrook before adopting a new administration policy on Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, the decision to send more troops was made and announced while the policy review was just getting started.
If, indeed, Gen. McKiernan is correct and U.S. troops wind up staying in Afghanistan another five years, that would mean a 12-year U.S. presence there, with no guarantee of success even by then. It would be two years longer than Soviet forces stayed. They invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and pulled out in humiliation 10 years later. Haven’t we learned anything from history?
Granted, it’s too early to criticize Obama’s plan for Afghanistan because he either has no plan or we don’t yet know what it is. But it’s not too early to ask two important questions: What’s our mission in Afghanistan? And what’s our exit strategy?
Those are the questions candidate Barack Obama repeatedly asked of President Bush’s war in Iraq. Those are the same two questions that we must now ask of President Obama’s war in Afghanistan.
Obama insists that the war in Afghanistan is “winnable.” Maybe so. But the last thing we need is to go from being bogged down in one war to getting further bogged down in another one.
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