Tell me again: What, exactly, is the point of the war in Afghanistan? I’m wondering because the guy I voted for in last year’s presidential election is ratcheting up the size of U.S. forces in that godforsaken country, more American soldiers are being killed there than ever before, and I’m not convinced that’s the right way to achieve the president’s stated goals.
When we originally invaded Afghanistan in reaction to the 9/11 attacks, we scattered the country’s Taliban-run government, which had let al-Qaeda train within its borders. Osama bin Laden fled for the hills, literally, and made it into Pakistan. We then established Hamid Karzai, a former CIA contact during his nation’s war against the Soviet Union, as the president of Afghanistan.
The Bush administration then decided that Saddam Hussein was more important than bin Laden. We diverted our attention to the war in Iraq, largely leaving Karzai to fend for himself, and — surprise! — now the Taliban has made a big comeback and controls about half the country.
By the end of this year, Obama wants to have nearly 70,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to help pursue what he says is America’s new “clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” To my thinking, he may as well have added “and to get a pony for Christmas” to his list, since he’s as likely to get one as the other.
Pardon me if that sounds cynical; I want al-Qaeda to be “disrupted, dismantled and defeated” as much as anyone. I just wish someone could explain how this war — in which, once again, we set our heavy boot down in an impoverished country, enrage the population by our presence, and fight an enemy that’s hard to define and won’t play by our rules — is the way to achieve our objective.
The Taliban certainly hasn’t been hampered by our policies. Today, the Taliban makes more than $300 million a year from the poppy trade. Moreover, we don’t dare destroy the poppy crop for fear of driving the farmers into the arms of the Taliban, which is already strong enough to conduct brazen attacks in Kabul, the capital city. Foreigners don’t dare do something as simple as take a walk in most Afghan cities; and forget about going into the countryside where most Afghanis live. The situation is so bad, reports longtime foreign policy reporter William Pfaff, “intrepid reporters can interview Taliban officials in downtown coffee shops in Kabul.” The upshot of all this, according to a growing number of Pentagon thinkers, is that we would need at least a quarter-million troops on the ground for more or less 10 years — just to defeat the Taliban. Of course, by then we would have destroyed the country, creating God knows how many thousand new enemies.
No wonder an ABC/Washington Post poll last week showed that 51 percent of Americans think the war in Afghanistan isn’t worth fighting. Enough already.
It seems to this writer that the United States has to find a way to neutralize al-Qaeda without wasting our valuable soldiers, time and resources trying to “save” Afghanistan from the Taliban.
Let’s take a hint from our recent success in Pakistan, where a version of the Taliban is in retreat after a U.S. drone killed their leader, and Pakistan prepares to move thousands of troops from its India border toward Afghanistan. It’s worth noting that our success has come without U.S. troops setting foot in Pakistan (something Pakistan’s government insisted upon), thus avoiding an explosion of more insurgencies.
We should continue that policy of helping Pakistan control the areas where the Taliban and al-Qaeda operate, by offering intelligence information and airborne firepower. In Afghanistan, we should gradually pull out our troops and rely on intelligence gathering, drones and missiles to hit al-Qaeda wherever they set up shop. As for the Afghani Taliban, with our troops gone, they would probably take over the country again, and impose the kind of repressive regime they ran before we drove them out. They’re a despicable group of thugs, but that’s no reason, in and of itself, to sacrifice American soldiers and resources. There are plenty of godawful governments in the world; if it was our job to change them all, we’d never see the end of it, nor of the coffins coming home on planes.
Our goal, remember, is to hammer al-Qaeda. So, let’s hammer them: satellite intelligence, drones, missiles, whatever works. Our success in Pakistan shows that we can find these guys, even in the feared “border areas,” so let’s use our superior technology to nail al-Qaeda. If they pack up and run somewhere else, follow them and keep hammering them. That would seem sufficient for such a ragtag bunch.
The one thing we don’t need is to get bogged down in yet another Third World quagmire that will drain what little money (or rather, credit) we have left, and leave our soldiers chasing yet another ghost army that won’t fight the way we want them to.
This article appears in Aug 25 – Sep 1, 2009.
