For all those who believe that Afghanistan is turning into Obama’s Vietnam, may I suggest that the two situations are far from the same. For the first part, we are in Afghanistan because of an unprovoked attack on the United States. Second, leaving Afghanistan before we have secured it vastly increases the risk of a repetition of such an attack. I am not saying that we won’t get attacked if we stay there. But the likelihood of an attack is greatly increased if we leave before we have done the job. Simply put, we will cede safe space for Al Qaeda to organize against us. One of the reasons we haven’t seen another spectacular attack is because we have degraded their abilities in Afghanistan so effectively. To that extent, the Afghan mission has already been a success. We need to make this a self sustaining long term situation.
If we are going to use Vietnam analogies, we should think about our failure to build up South Vietnam’s own military forces to a sufficient extent before we left. We may be repeating the same mistake in Afghanistan. We need to build up a large – a very large – Afghan National Army. Holding territory is as important as the initial act of clearing it. Keeping coalition troops in Afghanistan forever is not acceptable, both for us or for the Afghan people, who support our presence for now. Fighting the Taliban and training the Afghan National Army is not, however, an easy job. We can’t achieve these aims without the required resources. We wouldn’t be in this situation if we hadn’t under-resourced the Afghan campaign in the first place (in addition to ignoring civilian governance). At this moment, that means we need to send more troops.
www.dailyexception.com
Wrong, my misinformed friend. We are not in Afghanistan because the people had anything to do with 9/11. The old and new Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We went into Afghanistan because Osama bin Laden who directed the 9/11 attack was living there under the protection of the Taliban. We removed the Taliban and Osama fled to Pakistan where he remains today. Our target was, and always should have been, and still should be, Osama.
Stay focused now. Our goal should be to track down those who committed terrorism against us as well as those who are actively planning future attacks. The Afghan people are not and I don’t believe the Taliban have a missile that can reach our allies or the U.S.
If we are in Afghanistan to preserve a government that is corrupt and apparently incapable of having an honest election after 7 years of our influence, I say they have had their chance and it’s not worth the life of another U.S. soldier.
We tried regime change and instituting democracy in Vietnam and we were not successful. We tried regime change in Iraq and we have not been able to bring peace or democracy there. We tried regime change in Afghanistan and look at the mess we are in there.
Another reason given for our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we will stay there only as long as it takes for the local forces to stand up and take over so we can stand down. We spent 10 years and billions of dollars trying to do that in Viet Nam. Didn’t work. We’ve spent over 6 years and nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq with minimal success. We have spent 7 years and billions of dollars in Afghanistan with minimal success. How much more time should we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan? How much more money should we spend? How many more lives should we sacrifice? Send more troops? I wouldn’t.
Why are we having so much trouble winning these pesky wars? I think its partly due to supporting personalities rather than achieving specific objectives. We supported Thieu in Vietnam instead of changing the conditions on the ground that would make the South Vietnamese government more popular than the North Vietnamese. We were seen as just another foreign country invading and occupying their country. When I was there the locals only seemed interested in getting us out of their rice paddies so they could grow a crop to survive. They didn’t care about our purpose of stopping the ‘domino effect’ of a spreading communist empire. We lost that war and are now trading with their communist government, as we are with China and Russia. Was our effort worth 50,000 American lives? I think not.
“W” entered us into a war with Iraq for what? ‘They tried to kill my daddy!’ They had nothing to do with 9/11 or exporting terror to the U.S. What is the number, 16 of 18 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and what did we do about that? Nothing. We ‘cherry picked’ our way into that war and we should ‘cherry pick’ our way out.
Now that Osama is no longer in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, should we invade Pakistan? I know some of the neo-cons out there who supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq, say yes. They convinced Bush to invade Iraq and now want us to invade Pakistan. I say let them go fight their war instead of using our money and young men and women as cannon fodder. The author of this “…Send More Troops…” article (Manish Thakur?) can join them.
Thanks for your comments. Just to make it clear – i do not advocate a wholesale invasion of Pakistan. i am not sure where you get that from. And i am not a neocon.
We are in Afghanistan because it provided safe havens for terrorists who did strike the US and would strike again. There has been a radicalization (in Pakistan’s madrassahs) such that many in the Taliban seek to reimpose a global caliphate or atleast hit out at the West. We cannot deny these people safe shelter to reorganize. Trust me – one more specatcular attack on the US, and suddenly everyone will be asking “Who lost Afghanistan”
i do not advocate open ended US involvement which is why i talk about a much bigger effort to build up a local army. I am not happy about the corruption in the Karzai government, but this will ultimately be something that the Afghan people will have to work out for themselves.
Remember – we were welcomed in Afghanistan after 9/11. Their subsequent disillusionment and ire at us today is not that we “invaded”, but that we didnt bring enough resources with us (development aid, social infrastructure, military forces). The Bush Administration blew our chance when we had it in his misguided obsession with Iraq. We need to try to rectify the situation now, not turn our backs. We are still accepted by most Afghans. If some Afghan tribesmen are defecting to the Taliban, it is not because they hate us. Rather it is because they no longer believe that we will stay and finish the job – leaving them to face the wrath of the militants on their own. Just as you are suggesting.