Get Out of Afghanistan
 
By Peter Orvetti
Published 09/07/09 

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=206

Friday will mark eight years since 2,974 people were killed in terrorist 
attacks on the United States. The best way for President Obama to mark the 
solemn anniversary would be for him to declare his intention to withdraw all 
U.S. forces from Afghanistan. 

Obama, addressing the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference last month, 
said of Afghanistan, "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of 
necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. 
If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe 
haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." Continuing to 
channel his predecessor, Obama said, "This is not only a war worth fighting. 
This is fundamental to the defense of our people." 

But September 2009 is not September 2001, and Afghanistan can no longer be 
called a war of necessity. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations 
argues that so-called wars of necessity involve a threat to "vital national 
interests" as well as a "lack of viable alternatives to the use of military 
force to protect those interests." Eight years ago, that may have been the 
case in Afghanistan. Today it clearly is not. 

The U.S. government’s vague definition of "success" in Afghanistan entails 
the establishment of a strong democratic government friendly to the West and 
in control of most or all of the country’s territory. As the farcical Afghan 
presidential elections prove, this is far from a reality. But even such 
"success" could be achieved, so what? The only true U.S. interest in 
Afghanistan is the reduction of future terrorist threats. No matter how 
stable the government in Kabul becomes, radicals will still find safe havens 
in the border regions, slipping in and out of Pakistan where their 
grassroots support is strong. 

Last week, conservative columnist George Will penned an important column 
calling for U.S. withdrawal. "The war already is nearly 50 percent longer 
than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance 
is reluctant and often risible," Will wrote. He says Taliban forces "can 
evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too 
few to hold gains." Counterinsurgency theory, Will warns, "indicates that, 
nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition 
troops, perhaps for a decade or more." As for the U.S. effort to end heroin 
production in a country where a major drug trafficker is about to be elected 
vice president, Will suggests it be dubbed "Operation Sisyphus." 

U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more troops to do his 
job, and if he really intends to do it, then he is absolutely right. 
McChrystal has been charged with creating a Switzerland out of a Somalia, 
taking a lawless failed state and turning it into a stable member of the 
community of nations. It cannot be done with the 21,000 troops Obama is 
adding to the 47,000 Americans already there. Britain’s 9,000 troops may not 
stay much longer -- the war is vastly unpopular in the U.K., and as 
embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s relations with Obama get worse and 
worse, he will probably decide to pull them out in a last-ditch attempt to 
keep his party in power. That means even more American troops will be needed 
just to maintain the same level. 

The war is not working. In his New York Times column Sunday, Nicholas 
Kristof wrote that a "group of former intelligence officials and other 
experts is now reluctantly going public to warn that more troops would be a 
historic mistake." The group, which includes former CIA station chiefs in 
both Afghanistan and Pakistan who helped organize the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen 
insurgency in the 1980s, warns, "The more troops we put in, the greater the 
opposition. We do not mitigate the opposition by increasing troop levels, 
but rather we increase the opposition and prove to the Pashtuns that the 
Taliban are correct. The basic ignorance by our leadership is going to cause 
the deaths of many fine American troops with no positive outcome." 

Barack Obama does not want this "war of necessity." He wants to focus his 
presidency on domestic policy, not on a conflict that will make Iraq look 
like Granada. Continuing this unnecessary war does not keep Americans safe 
from future attack. Rather, it creates a recruitment opportunity for Al 
Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, after all, got his start in that same Mujahedeen 
insurgency the CIA helped create. Obama can keep Americans safe and save 
lives by making the choice to end this war of choice.

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