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Although panelists at an Afghanistan conference last week presented visions containing little consensus on how to move forward in the war-torn nation, they all agreed on one thing: something needs to change.
"A great power can’t leave a country like Afghanistan a great deal worse than it found it,” said Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Headlining the panel in D.C. -- which was hosted by The Afghanistan Study Group, a creation of both the liberal-leaning New America Foundation and the Center for International Policy -- Pickering repeatedly called on policymakers to abandon the current counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and reaffirm their commitment to staying the course in the former Taliban stronghold.
"We can only leave if leaving in a way that at least establishes some stability, some openness and some safety," he said.
But most indicators reveal Afghanistan is becoming less safe.
Since President Obama's Dec. 2009 speech announcing he would send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, casualties for both U.S. military personnel and Afghan civilians have risen dramatically -- though the surge was always expected to see increased violence . According to Defense statistics, 436 U.S. soldiers died fighting in Afghanistan in 2010, making last year the deadliest on record since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001.
And this year promises to be just as deadly. So far, 74 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan this year. The civilian numbers, while harder to measure accurately, paint a much starker picture of the Afghan reality. A March Congressional Research Service Report said that nearly 2,800 Afghan civilians died in 2010, almost double the number of civilians killed by the Taliban and other anti-government elements in 2007.
Pickering -- who also served as a former U.S. ambassador to India and Russia -- argued that Afghanistan's instability continues to rise, because the president did little to course correct President Bush's counter insurgency model when he remapped the Afghanistan-Pakistan mission. With only 100 active al-Qaeda operatives left inside Afghan borders, Pickering questioned the utility of devoting 30,000 additional ground troops to hunting such a small number. And while he agreed on Obama needed to follow through on his other promise -- to open the door to negotiations with the Taliban -- Pickering said the military objectives reinforce the total victory ideology that dominated the first years of the Iraq war.
A vital interest?
To diplomats like Pickering and longtime Foreign Service professionals like Paul Pillar, the current U.S. strategy only proves that the Obama administration and the military view the counter insurgency as an end in itself -- a far different goal than the original mission.
"We've had a nine-and-a-half-year-long mission creep where we've lost sight of why we initially went there," Pillar, director of Georgetown's Center for Peace and Security Studies, said. "A U.S. military victory in Afghanistan is not going to determine whether or not the U.S. is safe from international terrorism."
A former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia, Pillar said the United States accomplished most of its progress in Afghanistan during the first few months of Operation Enduring Freedom and has made little headway since. Though neither President Bush nor President Obama made a “Mission Accomplished”-like blunder in Afghanistan, Pilar said Obama's "we keep at it mentality" and his rallying cry against quitting on the Afghan people, mostly explains why the current strategy is so disconnected from what is actually achievable on the ground. Since the United States entered Afghanistan in 2001, Pillar explained, the military has bombed so much of the country that terrorists have little incentive to leave their strongholds in northwest Pakistan.
But that assertion is a point of contention within the foreign policy community. While Pillar firmly believes the lynch pin of U.S. foreign policy should NOT be preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a terrorist safe haven, others argue it is a vital American interest.
"When Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, every Muslim insurgent group was headquartered there," Peter Bergen, director of the New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program, said.
A terrorism analyst for CNN and author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America & Al-Qaeda, Bergen said the Afghanistan mission is more than a moral obligation to produce a somewhat stable state and still has real implications for American security. The rise in casualties over the past few years has given a renewed credibility to the danger a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan allied with Islamic terrorists. Citing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bergen argued that preventing the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan would directly impact the number of global terrorist attacks.
"The Taliban are the Taliban," he said. "The idea that they will turn into a group of Henry Kissingers over time is ridiculous."
Managing the Afghan future
That raises another question: Are Afghans ready to manage their own future?
Yet Joshua Foust, author of Post-Soviet Central Asian Interests in Afghanistan, argues that’s the wrong question altogether. "We should be asking if this is the right government," he said. "Afghans know how to run themselves. They're illiterate but they're not stupid."
Foust expressed his hope in the in the country's progress, despite its deteriorating security. Since 2001, Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product has increased 300%, and seven more million children, including two million girls, attend school than when the war began.
Afghans, Foust added, are more optimistic about their future because they are much better off now than in the recent past. While admitting "it's not perfect," he insisted conditions in Afghanistan have improved enough that Afghans are now capable of running their own affairs. But the current government could present an obstacle to continued improvement.
Though a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 62% of Afghans approve of Hamid Karzai's government, Foust argued the current constitutional system is the wrong government for Afghanistan. Beyond the reported corruption, the district level elections promised in 2005 have been indefinitely postponed. This not only prevents a large portion of rural Afghans from having a stake in the new government (Afghanistan has 398 provincial districts); it also centralizes power in a country where strong governance is completely foreign. This has Foust and Pickering trying to shift the conversation in Afghanistan from asking when Afghans are ready to govern to a separate -- and maybe more important -- question: If the current government is right for Afghanistan.
"We cannot substitute western paradigms like federalism," Pickering said.
A trust deficit?
This question of legitimacy complicates the U.S. position, especially when it comes to negotiating the transition of power that will ultimately need to take place. Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, claimed the president and the Pentagon continue to struggle producing a viable economic plan for Afghanistan operations, because they remain unsure of how long the U.S. will need to stay. While the Obama administration has said it wants to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by 2014, in those three years, according to Katulis, there are a whole host of objectives American strategists need to achieve -- and have no idea how.
"We need to check our American exceptionalism at the door," Katulis said. "We can't do it all. We simply cannot do a lot of things and were going to keep running in circles in Afghanistan if we don't realize that."
Katulis argued those inside government failed at the strategic level by allowing the military to clear areas of Taliban and other anti-government elements, only to let those sectors fall back under opposition control because U.S. forces lack the necessary troop levels required for population protection. Now, as the Karzai government continues to press American diplomats to agree to a long-term strategic partnership or leave Afghanistan, Katulis believes this bullish attitude of all or nothing creates an ideological block to negotiating a U.S. exit.
"Negotiations can only succeed if they don't have to succeed," James Dobbins, director of RAND Corporations International Security and Defense Policy Center, said.
Author of After the Taliban, Dobbins said leaving Afghanistan is so difficult, because a majority of policymakers still view America's withdrawal as an admission of defeat in a war vital to U.S. interests. In Dobbins’ view, United States diplomacy in Afghanistan has a credibility problem. Even though the U.S. military officials and diplomats have been negotiating with both the government and the Taliban since the latter days of 2001, defeat is still not an option.
And then there are the U.S. attitudes about the war. “Nobody gives a hoot about it around here," Richard Vague, co-founder of the Afghanistan Study Group, said. "The only time Afghanistan comes up is in campaigns and someone is saying cut and run or inciting votes against it. The rest of the time it’s on autopilot,” costing the U.S. a significant amount of money.
A co-chair for the New America Foundation, Vague reasoned most lawmakers remain mum on Afghanistan because they do not want to rile public sentiment at home by advocating abandoning the cause abroad. The human toll of the Afghanistan mission makes speaking out against the war a risky political proposition, he said. Because so many troops have given their lives fighting the Taliban, politicians fear coming out against the war now would desecrate the American sacrifice in the minds of voters and create considerable blowback in the next election.
Republicans quiet at home
This is especially true in Republican ranks. Grover Norquist, the conservative president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Republicans and conservatives in general do not engage in a substantive discussions on leaving Afghanistan.
"You have this caucus of Republicans," Norquist said, "who don't feel like they have permission yet to speak out against this."
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Forget about moving FORWARD it's time we get the f*#@ OUT!
Feisty Redhead Roselle, IL
Forget about moving FORWARD it's time we get the f*#@ OUT!
I'll drink to that.
When folks start caring more about the President's birth certificate and his college transcripts and such like bushra as I have heard for the last 2 years and less about the fine young folks that he was chosen to command and thier mission undertaken on our behalf then yes it is time to whiz on the fire and come on home and let them have a little peace in thier lives for awhile.
But girls, Obama said this was the war that had to be won. Obama said he would win it.
Was Obama lying, just trying to act tough, trying to get some national security cred when he made those statements? Just another great, tough sounding speech with nothing behind it?
Evidently, huh?
Redneck,
Birther stuff? Interesting.
Funny, Obama has so little credibility, so few trust him, that more doubt the certificate (before today) than doubted before.
That is pretty much the same kind of problem Obama has in Afghanistan and around the world. No credibility. When you announce a pull out date, you announce that you do not have the will to win - you have only the will to stay for so long.
No credibility. That is why the Taliban knew they had won. The people of Afghaanistan from the Karzai government to the poorest goat herder understood it too. The world knew it.
Only the genius from Harvard failed to understand the absurdity of his policy.
American deaths for 2009 doubled while Obama tried to come up with that politically expedient plan instead of a true, serious plan. Since then ....... another 550 Americans have died. We lost 414 Americans under Bush in 7 years. In a little over two years, Obama has almost doubled it.
April? The deadliest April of the war ....... doubling the combined losses of all the Bush years!
Yea, Redneck ..... our troops deserve a lot better ....... they deserve a competent Commander in Chief!
Hey bob - maybe Obama was carnival barking about Afghanistan, the debt ceiling, Gitmo, and all the rest back in 2007 and 2008.
Hard to have credability when you say one thing in 2008, then the exact opposite in 2011. My favorite was the whole "yeah that stuff about the debt ceiling and leadership, I was just kidding you all/ what me? I was just a silly senator."
But now if anyone does exactly what HE did in 2007 they are irresponsible and stupid. And that of course is but one example of his rather fundamental inability to be consistent. Or is he in fact just a consistent carnival barker? Hmmmm.
Kinda a goose and gander situation - it was all good when he was the goose to spout all kinds of silly stuff, but now he's the gander in charge so no more "silliness."
So was he smarter then when he believed all that stuff - wars bad, Gitmo bad, debt ceiling bad, OR is he wrong now?
What can you cut and paste for us Bev.?
Yeah, what Feisty said x 2!
Where's the OUTRAGE?
Massachusetts Legislature just votes to eliminate collective bargaining for public employee unions.
We need to organize a sit-in in the Capitol. This can't be happening in Massachusetts, can it?
You think the fine intrepid reporters around here might do a story on the Mass. debacle?
I also wonder where the SEUI is? Are they massing in the Mass. state capital? Are they chanting against those EEVVVILLL state congressmen and women?
I wonder if Pat is staging a sit in. I know she hates her some republicans, and only republicans would ever dare to eliminate public employee collective bargaining.
So Pat looks like you are our "man on the street." What you got?
The First Read article was published this morning – 8 hours ago.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/27/6541960-bay-state-showdown-mass-dems-move-to-curb-union-rights#comments
Once again, the truth is settling in for the unions. After having their tantrums and riots in Wisconsin, the taxpayers across the country have realized that they have gotten a raw deal from their state governors and representatives. Unions elect Democrats, Democrats paid off the unions, and it’s the taxpayers that have done the paying. Now as the unfunded mandates of the states have piled up, the states have to deal with these out of control deficits. Three options: 1) Raise taxes 2) Lay people off 3) Eliminate the cozy relationship between the governments and the unions.
The taxpayers across the country are demanding that Option 3) be the one taken. And the unions? They’ve learned to live with it. It’s not like they have a choice, because taxpayers vote.
dennis - some outrage from the left, 9 comments as of this post commenting on this FR nws this morning..
9 comments cause it was at frigging 6:00 in the am.
So how about it Dennis, is Patrick gonna veto that bad boy? If he doesn't he must be a "Koch whore" right?
Say Bev, what role did those eeevvviiill Kochs play in this little diddty?
Man those dude must have some real juice. No wonder you libbies are so afraid of them. :)
spanky - LMAO at the thought of bev, pat or even anna posting outrage over this. Even chihuahua fiesty is looking for a cracker.
Hi IR, Condolences to the families of the nine Americans who lost their lives today in Afghanistan. My thoughts and prayers are with their families.
Poor Feisty and Bev - then Obama pom pom just keep getting heavier and heavier.
But this thing in Mass. - that's just Democrat on Democrat crime. Oh My!
Come on Bev, there must be something you can cut and paste us to. Or maybe it's true the Koch and republicans are super powerful and just Jedi mind tricked the hapless dems into screwing the public unions.
This really is going to be a fun few months. I mean crap, we'll all be hunkered down on the computer all summer, what with no one being able to afford gas and all. :)
Afghanistan: Obama’s war.
Maybe Obama should have asked Oprah what to do about Afghanistan when he visited her show earlier today. Oprah knows everything.
Source: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/07/obama_afghanist.html
JoAnna proves daily that she doesn't know anything, other than her e-mailed RNC squawking points!
Got a *cracker*?
What exactly does the word ignore mean to you Feisty?
And really Feisty why won't Obama get us out? I seem to recall him saying something about getting us out back in 07 and 08. But then again he did say a lot of things then that no longer seem to be his truth now.
Interesting, right?
How many God-damned times do we have to remind you? If this is "Obama's War" isn't it because President Bush didn't fight it when he had the chance?
The inquisitive mind might ask, "Why didn't President Bush finish the job in Afghanistan when he had the chance?"
...but I guess that's not you, is it?
Da Noid, I can answer that question unequvically:
Bush had NO BALLS!
Agreed Da Noid.
The inquisitive mind would wonder why 7 of Bush's 8 years without finishing the job despite declaring "mission accomplished" in a fine flight suit, strutting the deck of an aircraft carrier. No, this is not Obama's War, this remains Bush's unfinished Afghan war along with Bush's unfinished Iraq war. And the over $1 trillion in cost is added to Bush's credit card.
Um, guys? I hate to break up the party, but Afghanistan was relatively stable when Obama took office. It was not over, but the fighting was sporadic, and the rebuilding has begun.
Since the inception of the Obama war plan, whatever it is, the death toll for Americans has SOARED, morale among our soldiers is shot, and the Taliban is re- energized.
Great job there, Obama.
Chalk another failure up to his incompetence.
Really? So Osama bin Laden was captured? Was he killed? The members of al Qaeda were all captured or killed? Were they at least on their last legs? Did that really happen and...what...I just missed it? Was I asleep? Was I abducted by aliens when this happened?
Fill me in on the details, "no joe". I'd like to hear all about it!
I think what's needed to get things back on track in Afghanistan is a UN resolution.
And maybe have someone check with the Arab League too.
Don't bother with Congress.
Neither does Obama - http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=5348171&page=1
Rick in kentucky - you mean like obama, "qaddafi must go" send in the tomahawks, a week later "I am turning over operations to nato command to protect the citizens of Libya, but "qaddafi must go"
Some set of balls there rick, now about syria and yemen?
Oh come on Noid and the rest - you all think we will not be there at least through Obama's term?
Of course we will. Question is, will we also be in Libya? Looking like we are.
Sad really. But the simple fact is Obama is the Chief. It's his call. Fact is 14 more died there this am.
So, that's your excuse? We should just forget, then, that Bush and the chickenhawks FAILED and just point the finger at Obama and have done with it?
NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!!
Here is a timeline from BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1162108.stm
It begins at the beginning, so you need to read through pretty thoroughly.
You will notice that, within months, we had taken Kabul, and routed the Taliban. We helped them have elections, write a constitution, and begin rebuilding.
Violence began to spike around June of 2008, then declined. Of course, Obama undermining Karzai did not help matters. I presume he did not like him because Bush helped put him in office.
Of course, you could also look at the top chart on this page
http://icasualties.org/oef/
It shows you that casualties doubled in Obama's first year in office, and continued that trend in 2010. They will be pretty high this year, too.
Face it- it is just another example of the dreadful co sequences of his incompetent presidency.
da noid - are you naturally stupid or do you practice at being stupid.
As CinC, obama has the power to withdraw or stay. Live in the past if you want, many of us want to keep moving forward.
Yeah, no, Karzai was just fine and there was no corruption in his government in Afghanistan prior to President Obama taking office.
As for timeline, don't you see one major flaw in the timeline? I see no mention...zero...zip...zilch...nada...nothing is mentioned about the capture or assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Bottom line, the majority of this country doesn't give a crap about what we do to the Taliban if Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are still free.
New Obama campaign bumper sticker for 2012 - In regards to his re-election chances:
It fits right over the "Yes We Can" sticker from 2008.
Liberals don't view Obama that way. They view him more as an advocate, someone that tells everyone how to feel, what to feel. Libs don't view Obama as a "Commander", to authoritative, to harsh, and it takes on the characterization of having responsibility. And Obama can never be responsible, it's just not right, to the Liberals.
I'm naturally stupid, thank you. It never hurts to brush up every once in a while though...practice makes perfect!
Yo da Noid - Bush is gone. He sucked. Obama was supposed to be better, to be "the one."
So, realizing Bush sucked and the wars are terrible, why won't Obama [again, he's the man now, bush is gone] get us out?
And really, he knows [allegedly] that Bush sucked and wars are bad, yet here we are in Libya, another war for oil, where our bombs kill Libyans.
Why Noid? Why won't the one, a fine American citizen, get us on out?
BigBear: I agree.
So far it has only passed the House, the fate in the Senate is uncertain. Just for the record I am against any politician (democrat or republican) that tries to destroy Collective Bargaining. It was wrong in Wisconsin and Michigan and will be just as wrong in MA if it does in fact pass.
I need to see if this legislature is in fact the same as Wisconsin's and Michigan's but if it is, IT IS WRONG and I do opposse it.
I agree with USNDVR and add my voice to what I hope will be many others. MA seems to be trying to be WI east; I hope they fail miserably.
Big Bear, It is the same place as the outrage for the quagmire Obama started in Libya. The same place as the outrage for the lack of pictures of the caskets of dead soldiers coming off the plane in Dover. The same place as the outrage for the war crimes Obama is committing by bombing innocent women and children in Pakistan. The same place as the outrage of Obama torturing an American soldier. Where? Libbyland of course where all things Obama are excused, ignored , or blamed on Bush.
On this matter, I think President Obama has already reached the conclusion that we have done what we can and as promised will start bringing the troops home. It is time to leave because we are now part of the problem; time to let the Afghan people decide what direction they wish to take. The best time to have fought and declared victory was the first year we were there but Bush/Cheney had already set their sites on the next target--and Afghanistan was allowed to muddle through. Our President was right to deploy more troops and give the country our best effort. There has been some improvement but the longer we remain, the more likely incidents such as today's will become more common.
Interesting. So how many more troops need to die for a war that the President no longer feels the need to fight?
When my grandfather passed away, I was allowed to collect all his left over military manuals and reports. I found a particularly interesting analysis of the USSR's status on the ground in Afghanistan during the early 1980's among these papers. Reading through it when I did for the first time in 2007, I was immediately struck by the realization that, if one replaced all instances of "Soviet," "Russia" and "Russian" with "America" or "American" where grammatically appropriate, the entire report (approaching 30 years of age!) would read like a modern newspaper article.
Instances as depressing as that sap me of the will to care.
The major difference is that the Russians killed anyone and everyone that got in their way. We are better than that, but we still ain'y winnin'.
Nice to talk with you Exodite, it has been awhile.
"Although panelists at an Afghanistan conference last week presented visions containing little consensus on how to move forward in the war-torn nation, they [leftists ] all agreed on one thing: "
"It is not Obama's fault, blame Bush!"
Where are all the antiwar protesters, these days? Did their deep seated philosophical angst about war, go kaput when a liberal is in the White House?
Were they just Democrat stooges?
So...after the 911 attacks we invaded Afghanastan as the leaders there, the Taliban, allowed Al-Queda a safe haven in their country. Al Queda has long since moved to Iraq and Yemen and countless other places to fight us there. So we're not fighting the people that planned 911 and killed over 3,000 Americans. We're fighting the people that gave them safe haven. In that effort we are supporting a corrupt regime that does not want us there, just our money will suffice. Isn't it time to re-evaluate why we are there and how it is in our national interest.
why haven't the pictures of the us troops mocking mutilated bodies been published like abu garib?
Why does network tv no longer report casualty numbers like they did during the prior administration?
Why does the media continue to talk about an economic recovery that isn't there?
tin soldier and obama coming...
If we aren't going to change the rules of engagement to protect our troops, then we should simply kill all the poppy fields, thereby taking all the Talibans income away, and leave.
Believe it or not, the US military is trying to get the war lords who control the poppy seed growth to stop growing cocaine and start growin pomegranite plants. Honest. You can't make this stupidity up.
looks like money talks, whether here or overseas.
Ira, I don't know if I could make it through the day without my poppy seed bagel and a glass of pomegranate juice. Can't have one without the other.
You round up everyone and say we are going ...its all that easy MORONS !
Get out... but the GOP would not want to hear that... it's Bush's war and has been from the start... oops... and let's not forget Cheney's in Iran..... the GOP has never met a war they didn't like (or didn't want to pay for).....
The facts are very simple here America. The war in Iraq was started by President Bush. He was very reckless, and "Brainless" in his judgements. "Chump Change Cheny" was very invested in Middle East Oil Speculation practices for over 30 years or more. The war in Afganistan, was started by "Brainless Bush" with the idea of getting Bin Ladin. Hey! President Bush where is this criminal?? You promised that our nation would get him. Well! What happened?? President Obama did not start the wars in Iraq, or in Afganistan. The GOP/RNC need to get their facts right for a change. The GOP/RNC need to learn how to read all information presented, and comprehend all historical facts correctly. These facts are very simple to understand America. The real war on terror began, and needs to end in Afganistan with the final destruction on all terrorists. Packing up and running is not the answer. Now. Leaving Iraq is the current goal that must be met immediately, and with resolve. The "Bush War" in Iraq was a huge blunder, and trying to blame President Obama is just mentally disturbed behavior. That is fact!