Something weird happened during our war in Afghanistan. We messed up. There’s no other way to put it. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of ground troops in Afghanistan, said in an Aug. 30 memo to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the U.S. needs to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. With this strategic maneuver, according to McChrystal, the U.S. military would only be at medium risk for mission failure, as opposed to the apparently complete failure they’re headed for right now. The citizens of the U.S. may not care about mission failure anymore: a Sept. 15 CNN poll showed that only 39% of U.S. citizens are in favor of continued war in Afghanistan.
What happened? Remember how, not even six months after the September 11 attacks, NATO successfully eliminated Taliban rule in every major Afghani city?
Nobody else does, either. After a successful year in Afghanistan, our country shifted its focus to the eradication of Saddam Hussein. Our war in Afghanistan became secondary. The Taliban took advantage of our weakness and regrouped, and have come back as a well-organized force capable of inflicting serious damage. McChrystal appears spooked –and with good reason.
Let’s go over a few basics before continuing. Our war in Afghanistan, specifically, is with the Taliban, a radical Islamic group who ran Afghanistan from 1996 until we evicted them from power in 2001. There are two branches of the Taliban–the Afghani branch and a Pakistani branch. It’s believed that the majority of high-ranking Taliban officials reside in Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden was staying with the Taliban when the September 11 attacks occurred, and it was from that nation that he controlled the day-to-day operations of al Qaeda. After the Taliban’s fall from power, it’s unclear where Osama bin Laden went. In the ensuing power vacuum, Talibani leadership and al Qaedic leadership have become nearly one and the same.
It’s important to note that the U.S. is not alone in its fight against the Taliban. It was a joint NATO force that evicted the Taliban from power, and it was the same NATO force that assisted in putting a new government in place. The new government fully came to fruition at the end of 2004, when Hamid Karzai was elected president. Many of the people who ran against him in that election boycotted the vote, accusing Karzai of fraud; an outside agency did, in fact, find evidence of fraud, but decided that it didn’t affect the overall outcome of the election.
Karzai’s government came together slowly, but much of its credibility was lost in the aftermath of the second set of Afghani elections, which took place on Aug. 30. Karzai appeared to win these elections, but nearly a third of his votes were deemed fraudulent and thrown out. A runoff election will be held on Nov. 7 between Karzai and his biggest political rival, Abdullah Abdullah. While Karzai seems destined to lose, Abdullah’s actual political views are very similar to Karzai’s, and it seems unlikely that his stance toward U.S.-Afghan relations will be drastically different.
To put things bluntly, Afghanistan is in the midst of a civil war. The Taliban—and, by extension, al Qaeda—are attempting to gain control of the country. The majority of Afghani citizens don’t want the Taliban to have that power. Neither does the rest of the world. Nearly every major terrorist attack in the last decade and a half can be traced back to Afghanistan; specifically, to the training grounds controlled by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Our interest in the area was in eliminating al Qaeda. What we found was that al Qaeda was running the country. We’ve successfully chased them out of power—now, all that’s left is to wipe them off the map.
It’s not an easy thing to do, something Gen. McChrystal is learning the hard way. His Aug. 30 memo to Gates expressed concern over the Taliban’s fighing capabilities, and outlined three different directions our strategy could take. His first option asked for 20,000 troops, and was described as putting the U.S. at high risk for mission failure in Afghanistan–which is to say, our government loses, and the Taliban controls Afghanistan. There’s no way this would be allowed to happen.
McChrystal’s medium-risk option asked for 40,000 troops. This is the option that McChrystal favors, and the one being presented as the favorite in most major media markets. It’s plausible that it could go into effect almost overnight; between the Army and the Marines, the military is capable of sending 40,000 troops to Afghanistan within six months of an order.
McChrystal’s low-risk option calls for somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 troops, depending on which sources one listens to. Regardless, the U.S. simply doesn’t have the troop numbers to do that without extending tours of duty, and even then the military would need to vastly increase its resources—and its recruitment numbers—to support those troop levels long-term.
We appear boxed into sending 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. Anything less than that, after the McChrystal memo, would be outright disrespect to the military. It would also be a baffling political move from an Obama administration that, to this point, has played things from a fairly logical perspective.
The problem is—according to McChrystal—we still run a medium risk of failure. That means that our military presence, combined with the Afghan army we are building to support the government, is roughly the equal to the Talibani presence, and this conflict could continue for several years simply because we are evenly matched foes. What McChrystal didn’t state in his memo might be plainly obvious: our current strategy is failing in Afghanistan.
This is a war that we need to win. In order to accomplish our greater goal, the elimination of global terrorism, we must flush the extremists out of Afghanistan. It seems highly unlikely that 40,000 additional troops will finish the job; what’s more likely is that the 40,000 troops will do little but preserve the status quo. It would be in all of our best interest if the President listened to his general and sent 80,000 troops to Afghanistan. Yes, this means the potential for more U.S. lives to be lost. It also shows that the U.S. is fully committed to the success of its military, and, more importantly, the success of the war on terrorism.
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