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The Good War?

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09.15.2008 at 11:15pm

The Good War?

By TX Hammes

In the last month, both presidential candidates have stated they wish to send more troops to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, neither candidate has stated what he sees as the United States’ strategic interests in Afghanistan. Even more dangerous, neither candidate has expressed a strategic framework for the region. Despite increased violence in Pakistan, Musharraf’s recent resignation and the collapse of the coalition government, neither candidate has even commented on how our actions may be feeding Pakistan’s instability. Their determination to send more troops seems to be based on the idea that Afghanistan is the “good war” than on any thoughtful evaluation of the situation.

This sudden willingness to increase our support for Afghanistan is particularly peculiar since it has largely been our forgotten war. Despite almost seven years of fighting, the administration has still not clearly articulated a strategy and has starved the effort of resources.

In October of 2001, with 9/11 burned into the nation’s consciousness, the Bush Administration committed the United States to rooting Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. The nation clearly supported that goal and focused intensely on Afghanistan during the fall and early winter of 2001. However, our attention quickly waned as the active fighting seemed to end. Without ever expressing a change in our strategic goals, the effort in Afghanistan slipped from destroying Al Qaeda to establishing a unified Afghan state. The administration asked the United Nations to help establish a government. Yet, even as that government was being established, the Bush Administration shifted its focus to Iraq. Afghanistan became an under funded, forgotten backwater. Given our much larger investment in Iraq, it is natural the nation’s attention remained focused on Iraq from 2003 until today. Despite a near collapse of our position in Afghanistan during late 2003, and its subsequent rebuilding by the team of Ambassador Khalizaid and Lieutenant General Barno, Americans paid little or no attention to events in Afghanistan. In fact, after their departure, most Americans didn’t notice a slow but steady degradation of the security situation in Afghanistan.

In 2006, in an effort to further reduce U.S. commitments to Afghanistan, the administration convinced NATO to assume responsibility for Afghan security. Yet it still kept significant U.S. forces out of the NATO security organization so they would be free to focus on “hunting terrorists.” In short, the U.S. passed responsibility for Afghanistan to NATO without any unified NATO strategic concept or command arrangement.

Now that things are going well in Iraq, it has suddenly come to our attention that things are not going well in Afghanistan. As a result, both candidates are calling for more troops. However, given the fact neither the United States nor NATO has a clearly stated strategy for Afghanistan, the first question the candidates should explore is exactly what that strategy should be. Neither has expressed a clear national strategy for Afghanistan nor how he will convince NATO, the Afghan government and its neighbors to support his strategy and, of particular importance, how his strategy fits into a greater regional strategy. Despite this clear lack of a strategy, both candidates jumped to the assumption that more troops can solve the problems of Afghanistan.

Even worse, to date, the candidates are discussing only Afghanistan without mentioning Pakistan or India. Yet both these Southwest Asian nations are much more critical to the United States future than Afghanistan. Neither candidate has questioned the wisdom of bombing, and likely destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of almost 170 million people, in order to help our security efforts in Afghanistan. Nor has there been a discussion whether dedicating more resources to Afghanistan is more effective than dedicating different but equivalent resources to support Pakistan. This is despite the fact that 80% of the supplies for the forces we have in Afghanistan come by road directly through one of the least stable parts of Pakistan. In short, if Pakistan destabilizes we probably lose in Afghanistan — the converse is not true.

Yet, our position in Afghanistan appears to be largely shaping our policy toward Pakistan. And our actions in Pakistan inevitably have a major impact on our relationship with India — a rising nation destined to be the most important of the three.

We entered Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda’s operating forces and eliminate its training bases. We successfully eliminated the bases and hurt Al Qaeda badly. One reason often given for our presence in Afghanistan is that we must stabilize it as a nation so that Al Qaeda can never use it as a terrorist base again. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda has moved its forces and its bases into Pakistan. The subsequent conflict inside Pakistan is contributing to increasing instability in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and has greatly increased the strain on the Pakistani government.

Before we rush more troops into Afghanistan, we must answer basic questions about our strategy for the region and how our efforts in Afghanistan support that strategy. Good tactics and more troops are not a substitute for a strategy — and in fact can significantly raise the cost of a bad strategy. Both candidates need to explain the strategy that justifies such a commitment.

T. X. Hammes retired after 30 years in the Marine Corps and now works as a consultant on national security.

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