Afghanistan: G-8 announces 5-year commitent, the right course?

by Clifford F. Thies

Sometimes you have to put 1 and 1 together to get 2. One day, the President names General Petraeus, hero of the surge in Iraq, to be commander of allied forces in Afghanistan. A few days later, the G-8 releases a joint statement that includes a commitment to five more years of international military assistance to that country.

When he announced his surge in Afghanistan, President Obama also announced a timetable for withdrawal. Beginning in 2011, U.S. troops were to begin withdrawing from the country. The pre-commitment to a timetable for withdrawal aligned with candidate Obama’s criticism of President Bush for making withdrawal from Iraq based on "conditions on the ground,” a standard that appeared to commit the U.S. to have a military presence in Iraq indefinitely.

The timetable for withdrawal may have made sense to President Obama at the time it was drawn up, based on various assumptions of what could be accomplished with the resources available; but, right off the bat, problems developed. First, there were problems assembling the resources assumed in the plan. Our own troop level was only increased gradually due to a variety of problems, and none of our allies committed to additional troops or agreed to relax restrictions on the deployment of their troops already in the country, and a number of our allies announced withdrawals of their troops.

Second, the Taliban didn’t cooperate with the plan. They zigged when the plan assumed they were going to zag, increasingly operating across the borders of Afghanistan with Iran and Pakistan, and being augmented by international jihadists. Instead of encountering only scattered resistance, our forces find themselves engaged with a fierce and resourceful enemy. This has not been the “walk in the park” that the Obama Administration had assumed.

Thus, as things failed to go according to plan, President Karzai of Afghanistan said the allied forces will not defeat the Taliban, meaning not according to President Obama’s timetable. Local Afghanis started to accommodate themselves to their soon-to-be evil masters. The now dumped commander of the allied forces, General McChrystal, agitated for more troops and became increasingly frustrated with the civilian leadership.

Following his appointment of General Petraeus President Obama seemed to fudge his policy of a timetable for withdrawal with a policy of conditioning withdrawal on conditions on the ground. He said that his timetable was not “race for the exits,” but a “conditions-based,” open-ended transition.” My, my, why didn’t President Bush think of saying that? And now comes a five-year commitment by way of a G-8 announcement.

Independent of the tacit admission that Bush was right about basing withdrawal on conditions on the ground, there is the geopolitical question as to what is the mission in Afghanistan and is it worth the cost of another five years of war? The original mission in that country was merely to overthrow the Taliban and to secure Kabul for the so-called central government of the country. For some reason, this changed into securing the entire country for that so-called government. Neither President Bush nor President Obama has bothered to tell us, the American people, why this is in our national interest.