In an op-ed at Time.com Admiral James Stavridis, formerly the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, outlines the objectives for our military commitment to Afghanistan:
Which brings us to another key point: what does success look like? Afghanistan is not going to resemble Singapore anytime soon; but it can have a functioning democratic government, general control over much of its borders, the ability to minimize impact from the insurgency, armed forces with high public approval, and a reduction in both corruption and narcotics — the latter two issues posing a longer term threat to the nation than even the Taliban. Getting to that point of success will require security and thus the additional forces.
Frankly, I’m skeptical of the practicality of all of those objectives but that isn’t my question. Leaving aside the vital questions of whether we should have troops in Afghanistan at all and how many, does that sound like “mission creep” to you? It certainly does to me. Actually, it sounds to me as though Admiral Stavridis were casting around for objectives.
There’s a way of evaluating movie sequels that goes something like this. If the sequel had been made first, would it have justified a sequel? Perhaps we should start thinking about wars something like that. Would we have gone to war with those objectives? In the case of Afghanistan I don’t think so.
Either we should withdraw from Afghanistan or adjust our objectives there to things we would have gone to war to achieve in the first place.
From here, sounds more like a careful blending of both parties positions on Afghanistan. So, as long as the butchers bill remains acceptable, there we’ll be.
Withdraw. As long as we have troops there they are a target. If our troops get harmed, it will always justify renewed troop activity more broadly throughout the country.
Steve
Doesn’t look totally unreasonable. Put it this way, suppose that had been proposed as our program after our initial victories in Afghanistan, rather than invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein. Which choice would look better to you?
Since I thought that invading Afghanistan and Iraq were foolish in 2001 and 2003, respectively, basically for the reasons that the public at large has learned since, I would have done neither.
In response to the obvious retort that we had to do something in response to 9/11, I agree. However, as soon as “something” consisted of putting boots on the ground in Afghanistan and replacing the government there we were committed to installing a viable government there and everything else that happened would have followed.