Changing course in Afghanistan

Getting Out of Afghanistan

Editorial by The Nation magazine editors, published in the August 16/23, 2010, issue of the magazine. [See URL at the end of the post.] In what follows, I offer a summary of what I see as their principal points.

The editors of The Nation magazine have given up on President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Unless he changes the policy, they think, his chances of reelection are diminished.

More troops, more special forces, more bombing and drones, the continuing occupation overall have not changed the corrupt government structure that is “unable to deliver the most basic services.” The Afghan people want the occupation to end. Continuing civilian deaths and casualties only deepen the hostility toward the occupation.

Further, a growing number of Americans also question the war/occupation, with its rising costs, troop casualties, and no clear measure of success. The US-led attack on Marja in Helmand province last spring, with overwhelming forces, failed to keep the Taliban from returning to the district. Looking to the future, the editors note importantly “...Petraeus’s proposal for building village defense forces is fraught with problems, not the least of which is that it would empower local militias and warlords and add more fuel to the civil war.”

“Time is not on our side,” the editors maintain. With rising Afghan casualties, the Taliban have grown and this will continue. “Even if we are able to eliminate many Taliban leaders, younger and more radical ones may take their place.” Therefore: “Better to negotiate with the ones we know today than those who may be radicalized by the fighting to come.”

“The war is expensive,” and there are many unmet and growing need at home. “A drawdown of forces would allow Obama to stop the loss of American and Afghan lives, reduce the drain on the federal budget and redeploy resources to create jobs and rebuild the battered US economy.”

There is, additionally, “uncertainty over whether the administration will adhere to the July 2011 drawdown....[Thus] “In June a majority of House Democrats supported legislation demanding an exit strategy and a timetable for withdrawal, and in late July the number of Democrats voting against the supplemental funding for the war tripled, to more than 100....”

What then should Obama do? “It would be better...for the administration to clear the air with a firm timetable for withdrawal and redirect its efforts toward regional diplomacy....” Such a changed course of policy could also improve the political chances of Obama in 2012.

If the editors are right, what then is spurring Obama, so far, in the wrong direction, toward an escalation of the war/occupation? Like so many US Democratic presidents before him, Obama may be stalled in the failed Afghan policy out of fear of being criticized for “losing a war.” For a detailed and insider’s view of how this fear applied to Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, see Daniel Ellsberg’s book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.

Then there is also the pervasive influence of the military-industrial complex, the concern of losing influence in any part of an oil-rich region, and the growing influence of China.

Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/38031/getting-out-afghanistan