Afghanistan - Going Where in Afghanistan?
Jules Witcover

Ongoing war in Afghanistan
(c) M. Ryder

Two new public-opinion polls say most Americans surveyed believe the United States is not winning the war in Afghanistan, and in one of them a clear majority say no more American troops should be sent there.

Does this sound familiar?

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll has found 57 percent are naysayers, as are 54 percent in a McClatchy/IPSOS survey, and 56 percent in the latter say the 62,000 troops now in that country are enough. The figures may be driven by sheer weariness, or the fact that last month 51 Americans were killed there, already making 2009 the deadliest year in that eight-year war.

This pessimism comes as President Obama is weighing a major reassessment by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander there, with the expectation that he will seek as many as 14,000 more troops. The general has said "the situation is serious but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of purpose."

All this sounds very much akin to what was said and done in former President George W. Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq, which while improving security conditions there has not brought the "victory" he vowed he would achieve. But that was in a war of choice, and Obama has labeled the one in Afghanistan a war of necessity, presumably in terms of its origins in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The fact that the perpetrators of that obscenity were given haven there by the then-ruling Taliban regime was, as Obama has acknowledged, a completely valid justification for the American military response that ousted -- temporarily, it turned out -- that regime. But Bush's pivot into Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his phantom weapons of mass destruction arguably short-circuited the legitimate effort in Afghanistan before the job was completed.

Now it is the Iraq war that is facing a staged American withdrawal, with some of the departing forces slated to be diverted to Afghanistan to get on, very tardily, with that unfinished task. And meanwhile the original purpose of the U.S. engagement there -- to kill or capture chief 9/11 perpetrator Osama bin Laden and liquidate his al Qaeda gang -- conspicuously goes undone.

So what is the mission for which another American escalation of troops, another "surge," Obama is being asked to approve? Presumably the search for bin Laden goes on, necessarily in secret, and understandably the ability of the Taliban to afford him safe haven must be dealt with.

But, meanwhile, the United States finds itself propping up another Middle Eastern regime widely suspected of being inept and corrupt, and its leader awash in allegations of voter fraud in his bid for reelection. Does that sound familiar as well?

On top of that, the Washington Post has just reported that an independent watchdog group called the Project on Government Oversight has written Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that "lewd and deviant behavior" by private security contractors" at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul "has resulted in a complete distrust of leadership of the chain of command, compromising security" there. Shades of Abu Ghraib?

In light of all this, Congress and the American people have a right to know in a way better enunciated by the Obama administration what exactly is the mission being undertaken in Afghanistan eight years into the war, and at what cost in national treasure, human and financial.

From all that is being reported and speculated upon, it smacks of the same sort of "nation-building" that 2000 presidential candidate George W. Bush disavowed in his foreign-policy debate with then Vice President Al Gore, and then pursued.

It is, of course, in America's interest that supporters of Bin Laden be dealt with in the continuing effort to put him out of business. But before the already beleaguered Obama administration finds itself, and the country, in another Iraq of ill-defined and over-reaching objectives, this is the time for clear thinking and clear talking about where we're going in the broad land where Osama bin Laden presumably still dwells.

 

 

 

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Afghanistan - Going Where in Afghanistan?

 

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