Are We Serious About Afghanistan?

After three months of contemplating his options, President Obama stated a couple of days ago that he will probably make a decision about increasing requested troop strength in Afghanistan after Thanksgiving. The White House is already hinting that the U.S. cannot afford to send any more troops, and has released figures of it costing, on an annual basis, $1 million for every soldier sent there. Fight like you mean it, or leave. In classified cables leaked to the media, U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, a former U.S. Army commander there, advised against sending additional troops. Canada has announced it will remove all its military personnel from Afghanistan within a year. The British are heavily leaning in the same direction. In light of all this, the president appears to be laying the groundwork to justify not granting Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request to increase troop strength by 40,000. He was against the surge that ultimately led to victory in Iraq, and he’s close to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. What evidence is there he will grant Gen. McChrystal’s request? The president said during an interview in China this week that his Afghan plan will include an exit strategy, and that he didn’t want to leave the situation for the next president. President Reagan had an exit strategy: “We win; they lose.” If the president does not provide all the manpower and resources his commander on the grand in Afghanistan needs to achieve victory, then the U.S. is better off to declare victory and withdraw troops immediately. Gen. McChrystal could achieve real victory with the existing number of troops by replacing his counter-insurgency strategy with one more like World War II. However, in this politically correct war where soldiers can only shoot after being shot at, and they must receive permission to engage the enemy, he will need even more troops for substantial amounts of time to win the war. Picking off Taliban leadership one by one, instead of inflicting mass casualties, will drag this war on forever. It is impossible for the U.S. to lose a war to Taliban insurgents unless the commander-in-chief abandons his top generals and lets them and their troops wither on the vine. If the president does not have the political will to do whatever is necessary to end the conflict and secure a decisive peace, he is wasting a lot of precious lives and treasure. Political will includes denying the Taliban and al Qaeda its main source of funding, the vast opium fields of Afghanistan, by eradicating the crop and destroying heroin refineries. Instead, the president abandoned this effort on the advice of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the president’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, for fear of the Afghan farmers siding with the Taliban and not with the new central government. Mr. Holbrooke must think that Afghans will view more troops as “occupiers” of their country, and not the liberators they really are. The president needs to leave fighting wars to generals and diplomacy to diplomats. Mr. Holbrooke is trying to implement a modified Marshall Plan before the enemy has been defeated. First things first: Defeat the enemy; then rebuild. Regardless of what strategy the president decides on, one thing is for certain: If the U.S. abandons Afghanistan now, the Taliban will control the country, overthrow the central government, cancel elections, kill elected officials, destroy girls’ schools and slaughter anyone who fought against them. They will be energized and, slowly but surely, overthrow the government of Pakistan. By then, a new administration will be in office to handle the mess the Obama Administration left behind. Like someone once said, “War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left.”