By Brigitte L. Nacos
In the 2011 fiscal year, the war in Afghanistan will cost American taxpayers $119 billion—and then some that is not readily found in a multitude of budget areas. As the bi-partisan Afghanistan Study Group noted in its recent report, “$100 billion per year is more than the entire annual cost of the Obama administration’s new health care plan and is money that could be used to better counter global terrorist threats, reduce the $1.4 trillion annual deficit, repair and modernize a large portion of U.S. infrastructure, radically enhance American educational investment, launch a massive Manhattan Project-like effort on energy alternatives research, or be used for other critical purposes.”
Most importantly, spending huge sums of money and increasing the troop strength significantly has not resulted in improving the situation on the ground in significant ways. General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy that worked in the Iraqi setting has not succeeded in the completely different Afghan civil war with its multiple factions.
After nearly 10 years of this war the time has come to wind down the U.S. military commitment –as ever more NATO allies wind down their own involvement.
It is time to remember and concentrate on the reasons for going to war in the first place:
One, destroy the original Al Qaeda organization (Al Qaeda Central) and its capacity to carry out terrorist attacks, and
Two, prevent the Taliban from offering remnants of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists safe havens inside Afghanistan.
As for Al Qaeda Central, its leaders are believed to hide out in the mountains of Pakistan as do Afghan Taliban leaders that once welcomed bin Laden to establish Al Qaeda’s headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and their clique are no longer a major factor. One cannot help but wonder about the reasons for Al Qaeda leaders’ silence during the current Egyptian uprising. After all, al-Zawahiri, who was tortured in Egyptian prisons, must itch to share his sentiments. Did he and his comrades lose the ability to communicate whenever they decide to?
Today, there are very few Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan (Yemen and Somalia are among the countries with far more Jihadis poised to launch terrorist attacks against Americans and American interests).
To be sure, those terrorists on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border should not be ignored. But to hunt and fight them does not require 100,000 U.S. troops and an equal or larger number of contractors.
The Al Qaeda types as well as Afghan leaders and groups that provide safe havens for Al Qaeda or like-minded individuals and groups can be fought most effectively by teams of Special Forces that should remain in the country and region.
Ultimately, military force and nation building efforts that depend on outsiders will not end the civil war in Afghanistan.
President Obama should stick to his July 2011 deadline and, in fact, hasten the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
But if there was any question whether General David Petraeus and his military and civilian supporters would accept that deadline, Michael Hasting’s article in Rolling Stone (“King David’s War”) provided an unsurprising answer: The general continues his opposition to and lobbying efforts against White House promises to begin troop withdrawal this year and end it by 2014.
The question is whether the president or the general wins this battle of will and, even more so, of strategic communication.
Petraeus understands politics and the art of lobbying military and political leaders. Most importantly, he knows that reality (in this case on the ground in Afghanistan) is less important than the perception of reality that can be manipulated. Reporter Hastings cites from the general’s dissertation in which he wrote, “What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters—more than what actually occurred.”
It seems that the American public is no longer fooled. A majority of Americans has turned against the war and even a majority of conservatives supports troop reduction.
That should help the president to stick to his deadlines.
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