Editorial: More troops not the answer in Afghanistan
Published 11:08 am Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday, Nov. 9, 2009
It’s already been eight years since the first Americans went into Afghanistan.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants to place 40,000 more U.S. troops in harm’s way to prop up another corrupt government.
America lacks the will and resources to continue underwriting open-ended nation-building for a government unprepared to sustain it once we leave.
A year after winning the White House and Congress with a hopeful campaign theme, President Obama and the Democrats face 10.2 percent unemployment.
Reeling Republicans are reviving, winning Virginia and New Jersey governor races Nov. 3.
Polling indicates a political landscape much changed by the Wall Street bailout, stimulus funds and health care reform, which U.S. Rep. Fred Upton voted against when it cleared the House Saturday.
The House bill would make the biggest changes in the U.S. health care system since the creation of Medicare 44 years ago, guaranteeing virtually all Americans access to care.
While the U.S. military becomes more deeply entangled in a second war, remember that its initial objective was to defeat the Taliban and to capture Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, who apparently long ago left for Pakistan.
The number of our troops deployed has tripled in 18 months, yet who among us can even articulate anymore what Washington’s mission might be?
Rather than enlarge the amount of Americans exposed to mortal peril, President Barack Obama should be reducing it.
Al Qaeda flourished by aligning itself with the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that took control of the Kabul government after the Soviet war.
Allied forces invaded after 9/11 and drove the Taliban across the frontier into Pakistan’s isolated border region, but insurgents keep regrouping.
The objective is to keep the Taliban tamped down and to support President Hamid Karzai’s government.
He broke with the Taliban in 1999.
Karzai has been trying to rally Afghans around his regime since he became leader in 2001.
Karzai led vote-getting in the first round of August presidential balloting.
An international audit, however, concluded he stole a third of his votes.
Under U.S. pressure, he submitted to a run-off with runner-up Abdullah Abdullah, who withdrew.
There is considerable corruption, with government officials soliciting bribes and skimming from billions of dollars in military and economic aid.
Karzai’s brother in Kandahar province has been identified as a major player in the opium trade.
There are some 68,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan, up from 26,607 in January 2008.
They try to disrupt Taliban movements across the border with Pakistan and gain control of strategic provinces.
McChrystal’s idea with the surge would be to persuade Afghans in those key provinces that the United States can shield them from Taliban insurgents until Karzai’s government trains enough Afghan soldiers and police to shoulder the job themselves. Problem is, that is not expected to happen anytime soon.
The deep-in-debt United States can ill afford resources for such a large-scale nation-building operation of indefinite duration – especially in a nation with such an extensive history of factions uniting to expel foreign interlopers.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a frequent visitor, points out that for the cost of supporting one soldier in Afghanistan for a year, the United States could build 20 schools.
It would be more difficult for the Taliban to build popular support among Afghans without U.S. troops as a scapegoat.