The Deep Insight

Since 9/11 our policy makers have been telling us that Afghanistan is the right war and the central front on the war on terror, but is this accurate?  I was thinking about this idea the other day and wanted to flesh this idea out a little more.  Is Afghanistan worth the time, effort and money anymore?  We have been in Afghanistan for eight years with no clear definition of what victory looks like, or any clear signs of progress to speak of.  Sure Afghans just had a recent election but that is probably the only notable event to take place in sometime.  Hamid Karzai’s government is rife with corruption and ineffective beyond Kabul city limits. The Taliban is growing bolder everyday and there are not enough troops to pacify the country. What do we do know? Do we stay the course? Increase troop levels? Leave?  It is obvious that this is a tough choice but I think that it might be time to leave Afghanistan. 

My problem with our current strategy is that we are taking our eye off the ball.  According to President Obama our national security objective is to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and dismantle his Al-Qaeda organization, not nation building.  Instead of focusing all of our efforts on this task, we are instead trying to build a democracy in Afghanistan in the hopes that it won’t become a terrorist breeding ground again.  How do we know this strategy is even going to work? Who is to say that if Afghanistan becomes a stable democracy that it still won’t harbor terrorist?  Just because a country  has a democracy doesn’t mean that it will be immune from the blight of terrorism.  We had home grown terrorism with the Oklahoma city bombing, the UK had the IRA, and Spain has the Basque seperatist, all democraies that suffered from terrorism.  Helping Afghanistan become a stable democracy is a laudable goal but I think this should be secondary to our main reason why we are over there.  When is the last time the media or our government has mentioned anything about killing or capturing Al-Qaeda militants?  Its been awhile right? We hear about the Taliban all of the time but in my opinion is not our main enemy. 

How does our government even know that Al-Qaeda is still in Afghanistan in the first place?  Media reports on numerous occasions stated that they are in Pakistan. So why stay in Afghanistan?  Fighting a Taliban insurgency will take years to defeat if at all.  Only 25% of counter-insurgency campaigns end up in success and given the vasts amount of money the Taliban get from opium, safe havens and a porous border means the odds are in their favor to out last us. So with this knowledge, why do we continue to waste our time there?  Al-Qaeda is a stateless actor, that can vanish and re-appear anywhere in the world. They can leave Pakistan and establish a base for example in the West Bank, are we going to send our military there?  Defeating the ideology is vastly more important than killing all of the foot soldiers.  Fighting smarter not harder is the only way we are going to win this war.