It is decision time for our involvement in that country - i.e. whether we continue or whether we pull the bulk of our troops out.And placing that decision on the back burner is unacceptable. As I said in another post it is time to fish or cut bait. Or, in Texas Hold 'em parlance, go all in or fold. Some look at those two very stark options and point out that there are many other options in between. True. But, given how this war has gone, I think those are the only two viable ones. What we're doing now, which falls squarely between them, isn't working. And variations on that aren't going to work any better. It seems to me we have to either make a concerted and focused effort to again nation build (and all that entails with time, blood and treasure), or we have to decide to leave that up to the Afghan people and concentrate on al Qaeda hunting on a much smaller scale. That, of course, would be the "fold" option. President Obama is rethinking the Afghanistan strategy he announced a mere 6 months ago in the wake of the recent Afghan election. The allegations of reported fraud have made the administration much less inclined to support the current Afghan government without dramatic changes. I have no problem with that reassessment if it is done with an eye on settling, soon, on one of the two options above. If you read what the Taliban are saying, the Karzai government is one of their best recruiting assets. The corruption and cronyism have isolated that government from the people. Of course, in counter-insurgency doctrine (COIN), the link between the people and their government is critical to success, and that link is only viable if the people support said government. That is increasingly not the case in Afghanistan. That presents the type of problem that does indeed require reassessment of strategy. We can flood Afghanistan with troops, have them at a one-to-one ratio with the population and provide the security COIN requires. But if that population has no confidence in the viability of its own government, doesn't support it and doesn't consider those trying to topple it "the enemy", the entire effort is doomed. So essentially the choice facing the administration now is to nation build or withdraw. Withdrawal doesn't necessarily mean we quit the fight against al Qaeda. But for the most part, it would mean quitting the fight against the Taliban. And I think we all know how that would end. It is quite a moral dilemma and it is also not an easy decision. While going "all in" would be the politically unpopular decision here, it would most likely spare the world the spectacle of a Taliban takeover and the resulting barbaric vengeance they would inflict on the population. There is only one nation which will bear the blame in the eyes of the rest of the world even if most of the administration's political base would support the decision. The US would again be charged with not finishing something it started. And that, as we've learned in the past, is something that other rogue leaders see as a weakness they can exploit.It will be seen not as a weakness of our military, but the usual weakness of our political will. Whatever decision the administration makes, it must avoid the status quo. That's not working now and it won't work in the future. Just as Iraq required a dramatic change in strategy to succeed, so does Afghanistan. If the decision is to continue with the current troop levels and a few cosmetic changes here and there, then the administration will be committing us to a strategy of failure. We owe it to our brave men and women there not to play political games with their lives. Whatever decision is made it must be made very soon, within the next month or so, and must be devoid of politics. Delays in making such a decision are not acceptable. It is time for this administration to step up, make a decision and let the political chips fall where they may. Don't put it on the back burner. The time is now to decide whether we're going all in or we're going to fold in Afghanistan. At a minimum, we owe our military that.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/GhexZbS7C8s/afghanistan-it-is-decision-time.html
Posted
Sep 28 2009, 12:44 AM
by
BLACKFIVE