I just watched President Obama’s talk on Afghanistan and thought I’d share my first thoughts. At this point it might be useful to review the President’s goals and objectives for Afghanistan as outlined in his December 2009 speech at West Point.
“ Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.
To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.
We will meet these objectives in three ways. First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity over the next 18 months…Second, we will work with our partners, the United Nations, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security…Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.
We’re in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That’s why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.”
My first thoughts as I listened were this situation reminded me of friends that are parts of organizations that have down sized because of the economy but kept requirements the same. The result was the remaining people had the same jobs responsibilities and tasks to carry out but less people and assets to accomplish the job. Everything I’ve seen indicates that Taliban momentum has been stopped but they are still a force to be reckoned with. Here are the President’s own words taken from his talk at West Point: “there are those who acknowledge that we can’t leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we already have. But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there. It would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan security forces and give them the space to take over”.
According to media reports, military leaders have advocated a slower withdrawal. This is just speculation on my part but if the reports are true, and I believe they are, the concerns probably revolve around maintaining enough military force to keep the Taliban on the run and to complete the training of the Afghanistan security forces. It would seem to me that the views of the on scene military commander should prevail but apparently this is not the case. If the administration feels that the goals of reversing the Taliban’s momentum and increasing the security capacity of the Afghans is too costly and will take too long why not just bring all of our troops home? To keep our men and woman over there without the support their military commanders say they need doesn’t make much sense to me. To quote Yoda: “Do or Do not. There is no try.”
As always my thoughts are my own. As promised, I’ll finish my update on Iraqi Operation New Dawn shortly.
