Obama's Afghanistan

Long before Barack Obama assumed the presidency, he declared that the central front of the war on terror was Afghanistan. President Obama’s recent appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to both Afghanistan and Pakistan and the commitment to send 21,000 additional troops surely point to the present administration’s dedication to stabilize the region. President Obama is making good on his promise to focus more on Afghanistan. However, there is much work to be done, and little of it looks easy.

Khybered Expectations
Unfortunately, many voices in Washington are making calls for lowering expectations regarding what we can actually do to reform Afghanistan. Particularly troubling is the Defense Department’s recent report that building Afghanistan into a stable and functioning state will be too difficult a feat to accomplish. This has been echoed by recent comments from the Obama administration. The DoD and the administration state that America's goals in Afghanistan should be coupled with reality: that Afghanistan, because of its fractured history, lack of a real economy and its virtually non-existent educational system cannot become a stable and democratic nation any time soon. Dreams of creating a democratic and free Afghanistan following our post 9/11 invasion have now been downgraded to one goal, to “Prevent the re-emergence of Al-Qaeda after we leave.” Unfortunately, this strategy is putting the cart before the horse, as abandoning the goal of democratic stability in Afghanistan will mean the return of Islamic terrorist elements. Hoping that Al-Qaeda brand terror networks stay away from a chaotic and fractured Afghanistan will not be enough to prevent it from occurring. Only a full-fledged drive to establish stability and democracy will keep Al-Qaeda at bay.

Soviet Redux?
There is much historical precedent pointing to the fact that Afghanistan is a difficult place to control. This is why the Defense Department and present administration are downplaying the chances of success. The attitude that Afghanistan is the ‘graveyard of empires’ is a largely a relic of the failed Soviet invasion of the 1980’s. But the Soviets were working against more than just the Afghanis. Without the influx of thousands of foreign fighters, American stinger missiles and Saudi cash, the Soviets would have had a much easier time controlling and pacifying the region. Perhaps most importantly, the Soviet attempt to install a godless communist puppet regime in a land known for its dedicated adherence to Islam had little chance of success in the firstplace. Unlike the Soviets, the United states does not want to curtail Islam in Afghanistan nor install a subservient puppet regime. In fact, the United States has an 85% approval rating from Afghanis to stay in the country, a plethora of allies in the region (half of all security troops in Afghanistan are not American) and a much smaller number of enemy combatants to deal with. Most estimates state that the Afghani Taliban number no more than 30,000 troops. The Soviets contended with a number five times that. America is in not nearly as dire straits.

The Never-Ending (Presidential) Afghan Campaign
Domestic political considerations may mean that if the Afghan Surge fails to accomplish goals similar to that which were accomplished in Iraq in 2007, the Obama administration may begin pulling troops before the upcoming 2012 presidential elections. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll states that 57% percent of Americans expect that sending more troops to the region will end up changing nothing or making things worse. This will be a cornerstone foreign policy issue in the next presidential election. After running as an anti-war candidate in 2008, President Obama cannot appear to be the candidate of extending an already decade-long war in 2012.

Who would have guessed that Iraq would have seen the turnaround that it has after the February 2006 bombings in Samarra, which put the country on the brink of disaster? An American abandonment at the time surely would have left Iraq in the doldrums of a genocidal civil war, instead of the developing democracy that it is slowly becoming. Afghanistan today is in not nearly as perilous a position as Iraq was in 2006. Lowering expectations will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. President Obama needs to insist on a stable and democratic Afghanistan if he wishes to prevent the country from becoming a home to Al-Qaeda again. He has at least three years to make it work.