A wise word from Buchanan
From a column at The American Conservative:
Before either a President Obama or McCain sends 10,000 more troops into Afghanistan, he should conduct a review as to whether this war is winnable, and at what cost in blood, money, and years.
Afghanistan is the longest war in U.S. history. Why have we not yet won? First, because we lack the forces. In World War I, we put 2 million men in France in 18 months. In World War II, 16 million served, with 12 million in uniform at war’s end. Today, we have 31,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Why so few troops? Because, despite what Americans say, few truly believe the survival of the Hamid Karzai regime is vital to our security or that we would be in mortal peril should the Taliban return. Indeed, Petraeus says we should seek “reconciliation,” presumably with the more moderate of the Taliban.
Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pat Buchanan
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 5.48 am and is filed under Pragmatism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 7th, 2008 at 5.20 pm
Of course the war is winnable. Why not? It’s a matter of finding the right strategy and the people to apply it. This can be done and in fact is being done right now.
Let’s be clear about what “winning” means. Let’s not fall into the leftist trap of treating any talk of victory as some outdated warmongering. “Winning” in the age of asymmetrical warfare is obviously different from winning in the past. But that doesn’t mean that winning is not possible. I accept the Petraeus definition of “winning:” a legitimate government and a secure populace that would be some kind of ally or at least not an enemy anymore. This is possible.
Obama’s plan to surge troops and to expand the war on drugs into Afghanistan will not achieve victory. It will achieve mass murder. I can’t imagine anything more likely to turn the Afghanis against us than more troops eradicating their opium crops. How does this add up to winning hearts and minds? It’s simply crazy.
October 7th, 2008 at 8.40 pm
Roque, first off thanks for visiting and even more for commenting. We need more discussion in these parts.
I’m not sure I agree with your definition of winning (ally or, at least, not an enemy), but let’s go with it for a moment: What strategy must we follow in order to assure Afghanistan (or, for that matter, Iraq) is going to be an ally? We must first either a.) install a leader we want to deal with (which is what we essentially did with Karsai, propping him up for an unbeatable “democratic” victory) or b.) just take over the government our own selves, at least in its outward-functioning sense. But how do we ensure that this preferable situation continues? We can’t, unless we stay, but if we stay, we haven’t “won.”
I agree with the last part of what you say, which is that destroying the Afghan economy is not the way to defeat terrorism — it is the way to destroy Afghanistan. And that, of course, should not be a policy goal of the United States. But as I understand it, this has always been the war IN Afghanistan and not the war ON Afghanistan, undertaken to overthrow the Taliban and hopefully terrorism. It’s simply nuts, though, for us to think we can install “legitimate” governments or even distinguish what a “legitimate” government is.
Come to think of it, it is essentially a (not “the”) Bush doctrine: Legitimate government is democracy; We shall spread it around the world. It’s utopian, though — not pragmatic and DEFINITELY not conservative.