The "Good" War

I was pleased to wake up this morning and read the headline "Changes Have Obama Rethinking War Strategy." Afghanistan has always been more complicated than Iraq, mainly because it wasn't a mistake to go in in the first place, but I think it has become more of a fool's errand with each passing day.

Due to the neglect of the Afghan war over the last few years, the Taliban have made significant gains. Now because of a disputed election in which fraud likely took place, an already weak central government will just become weaker in the eyes of the Afghan people and will lack any sense of legitimacy.

Therefore, it is important to ask why we are in Afghanistan and what the mission should be. The President has said repeatedly the first goal should be to ensure that al-qaeda can't use Afghanistan as a base to launch future terrorist attacks. I agree that this should be an aim, but the problem is that this same goal could be applied to all sorts of nations we haven't invaded. By this logic it would be worthwhile to invade and occupy Somalia, Yemen, and especially Pakistan. Unless we do that, we're just playing a world-wide game of whack-a-mole.

Now there seem to be two options in Afghanistan, escalate the conflict with more troops hopefully bring stability, or to scale back and have a lighter footprint. Now, lo-and-behold, General McChrystal's report has been leaked to Bob Woodward and, gasp!, he wants more troops (I wish we would stop acting like the conclusion of these sorts of reports is a surprise. Generals will always want more troops). I'm sure that to execute a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy more troops would be needed, but now the White House is rethinking the strategy.

Most analysts agree that the report was probably leaked to try to box the President into committing to its recommendations, but I hope he doesn't do it. He needs to think through how such a strategy will ever come to an end, and what the cost will be. Therefore, it's comforting to know that he's hearing from voices who express such concerns, particularly Secretary Gates.

As the arrests of terror suspects in Denver and New York have shown, terrorists can just as easily be American or EU citizens as Saudis or Pakistanis. Good intelligence will be a better tool to keep Americans safe than costly wars in impoverished countries.

I do agree with the Pentagon official quoted at the end of the article expressing impatience with Obama's deliberations. People are dying in Afghanistan every day and he needs to shit or get off the pot, I just hope gets off the pot.