Afghanistan: Now it

By
Bill Press                                                                         Read Spanish Version  

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 Sharia 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 President 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.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "Train
Wreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too
Soon)." You
can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his Web site:
billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com.
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2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.