Obama’s Afghan Plan

By Ryan Kosyla

On Tuesday, December 1, President Barack Obama gave a speech at West Point Military Academy outlining his plan to send some 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan and begin bringing troops home from there in July 2011.

” These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan,” Obama said.

Of all my conflicting feelings regarding our current war in Afghanistan, it comes down to this: this plan will not work. We are leaving Iraq – long overdue. But Afghanistan is a different story.

In my mind, if you are going to war, you go. You send more soldiers than you need, allocate more money than is necessary, and overwhelm the enemy in brute force. This was the successful strategy used in the first Gulf War as part of the journalist-dubbed “Powell Doctrine.”

But if you are not going to war, you get out. This doesn’t mean you leave tomorrow, but it does mean you sure as hell don’t take your good old freakin’ time. While politicians squabble like a bunch of pre-teen girls discussing their favorite Twilight character, people are dying.

Obama’s plan, though, does neither of these things. He is facing an oncoming train and unsure of whether to jump to one side of the tracks or the other. When he stands the middle ground, the outline for “winning” the “War on Terror” is doomed to be crushed.

I put “winning” in quotes because we do not have a set goal for Afghanistan. And in order to succeed, we must define what it is we want to accomplish. What is our end? What are we striving to do? And why are we throwing more troops into Afghanistan only to take them out again (or atleat we are told) in two years?

If we hope to provide long term stability for the country, we may as well jump off a skyscraper hoping to fly. Afghanistan has been a hot bed of violence for most of its history, especially in the past 30 years or so with rival factions fighting eachother for land and political influence. The essentially nonexistant government of the Taliban there did little, and most of what they did do were things like taking bribes from Osama Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda. With troops only exacerbating the violence and while America continues to support a corrupt Afghan government, the hope of a free, independent, and safe Afghanistan becomes a fantasy.

I also put “War on Terror” in quotations because we have mischaracterized our battle against extremist Islam ever since American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north World Trade Center at 8:45AM on September 11 th, 2001. We were right to invade Afghanistan after 9/11. But we were wrong in how it was carried out. We were too slow in going after Bin Ladin and, time and time again, he got away.

We are waging war against a ghost and we’re losing. Terrorism is a tactic; you can’t fight a war against a tactic. There are no formal armies, no uniforms, no recognizable entity separate from the regular civilian population.

There is only hate. Hate from the common Afghani civilian against the United States for a multitude of reasons that only worsen everytime we build up our forces or drop bombs. The people of Afghanistan see us as no different from terrorists; to them, we are only foreign imperialists replacing the brutal regime of the Taliban. And until we start treating it as such, we will not win.

Very few wars in our history have been fought for the cause of freedom or to defend liberty. Instead, exploiting public sentiment under the government propaganda of fear and anger, we have allowed our sons and daughters to be sent to wars that have nothing to do with defending our country. The typical thank you our government gives a returning soldier is only a notice of redeployment, while corporations like Haliburton and Lockheed Martin make millions.

This has nothing to do with the ability of our troops. They are the best trained military in the world. Without a doubt, they are our heroes, too. I personally know two current soldiers, one of which has served in Iraq. I have all the respect in the world for them.

What it comes down to is that it is simply not fair to throw them into a historically violent and politically corrupt war that has dragged on for close to a decade. We left them stranded and set them up for slaughter.

I supported both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, knowing what I do now, it was wrong. Hindsight is 20/20, but I’ll be the first to call myself out on a mistake.

But enough is enough. Over 5,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the countless other civilians, journalists, and international forces. Honestly ask yourself: is it really worth it? Thousands of our best and bravest coming back in bodybags or physically and mentally maimed from a war that is impossible to win? Do the benefits outweigh the detriments?

I do not think so. Yes, our country is supposed to keep us safe. But you don’t do it by dropping our forces into the middle of a desert without a goal, a plan, or an exit strategy. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.

We were attacked on September 11, 2001 and we should not ever forget that. We should absolutely be on the offensive in covert operations and intelligence to ensure it never ever happens again. Clearly, we have entered a new era of war with different techniques, rules, and characteristics.

It doesn’t matter who is in office or what they promise to do. All that matters is what they actually do. This is an issue that, despite all the anti-war speeches and promises, crosses party lines in terms of blame. Actions speak far, far louder than words.

So what are we doing? We’re taking the easy way out. We are simply continuing a policy of more bombs, more troops, and more war. It’s easy for a politician to spend other people’s money and send other people’s kids to war.

Our military operations planning should simply reflect a practical policy of defeding our homeland that works. It hasn’t in the past eight years, and it won’t now.