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By David, January 4, 2010 6:45 pm

There are a lot of Democrats who aren’t at all happy about the President’s decision to commit additional forces to Afghanistan.  They are convinced this is an un-winnable war and can’t help but make that all too easy leap to saying that this will be just another Vietnam.   Respectfully, I think they’re wrong on both counts.  President Obama didn’t make this decision casually.

First of all, Afghanistan is not Iraq.  Iraq, a war, which for all its terrible costs, still makes no sense to me, was fought because of a determined, single minded desire on the part of one administration.  It had no real justification and now, the best we can hope for, is an unsteady peace.

Afghanistan is different.  There is a history that many of us don’t recall.  Or, I suspect, choose not too.  But it’s this history which makes a moral case for why we just can’t pack up and go home.

Just go back in time a little.  Say, to 1973.  Afghanistan wasn’t a war zone in those days, it was actually a rather pretty country, and its economy generated a healthy GDP.  Then that government (a monarchy of sorts) was overthrown and replaced with a Communist regime.  This didn’t alarm the west all that much (after all, who cared about Afghanistan?), but when the communists were toppled in the late 70’s, the Soviet Union invaded.

The Russians were well on their way to subduing the country.  Their primary resistance, sort of a confederation of tribes, traditionalists, and fundamentalists, was called the Mujahideen.   They weren’t necessarily a lovable bunch, but they were, at least in the eyes of the west, tweaking the nose of the “Evil Empire.” That was an attractive notion in the 80’s and slowly but surely, the CIA, with help from supporters in Congress (see Charlie Wilson’s War with Tom Hanks – great movie), started funneling resources in their direction.  The Mujahideen organization became a more disciplined fighting force, supplies flowed through Pakistan, and eventually, they turned the tide and made the Afghan War a major drain on the Soviet Military.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there were lots of reasons why, but one of the most notable was Afghanistan.  And, it’s also, at that moment in time, where our involvement in this country came to an abrupt halt.  Afghanistan didn’t really have a government.  Its economy was barely functional, public facilities were almost nonexistent and infrastructure, what there was of it, was badly damaged.  Land mines and explosives, left over by the tens of thousands, were a daily hazard.  But most noteworthy there was now an organized military force, formerly the Mujahideen –  young men, well trained and well armed, with a dangerous cause – and no place to go.  The United States had packed up and gone home and the Soviet Union was history.  We provided no significant aid or nation building.  All that remained were the makings of a very dangerous situation.

The dispossessed warriors of the Mujahideen were ripe targets for international Islamic extremism and the formation of Taliban.  The rest of the story is something we all know pretty well.  But as we debate the future of Afghanistan, we can’t ignore the events that got us to this point.  They didn’t all begin on 9/11.  In a way, through our actions during the Cold War, however justified they seemed at the time, and our inaction following, we played a big part in creating this situation.  Therefore, we can’t, morally, ignore it.

President Bush, to his credit (yes, I said that), had the Taliban on the run, but then, following the invasion of Iraq, turned his attention away from Afghanistan.  However this near criminal neglect of the Afghan Theater allowed the Taliban, and their associated extremists to once again get the upper hand.   It’s hard to tell what the answer may look like in Afghanistan, but the model that General Patraeus has in mind, looks sound.   He wants to stabilize the security of the populated areas and establish some kind of accommodation with the tribal regions.

It would be easy enough to claim that President Obama has taken a wrong course.  That he is going down the road Lyndon Johnson did in 1965.  A lot of progressives have said just that.  And frankly, I understand their anxiety.   Many think we should just leave Afghanistan.  But President Obama knows his history, understands how we got there and most of all feels a moral commitment to the people of this desperate and struggling region.  It’s not war mongering.  There is nothing the U.S. could possibly want in Afghanistan.  Save perhaps to do the right thing.

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By Chris, December 4, 2009 11:45 pm

On U.S. News & World Report’s Thomas Jefferson Street blog, progressive communications and political strategist Julia Piscatelli got some insight on the President’s Afghanistan speech from an old friend of hers, Scott Robinson. A retired Army Colonel, Scott’s running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Virginia’s 1st congressional district in 2010.

Robinson:

“I think what we heard in the president’s speech is some hard cold facts about the world we live in. I know it is easy for people on both sides to live in the moment of this and look at it purely through political lenses, but we need to be more measured than that. I think that the president found a balanced approach with his plan. He addressed the Afghanistan government, the military surge and Pakistan.”

The Northumberland County native served as a Senior Military Advisor to the Secretary of Defense before retiring this past summer after serving his country for 25 years.

In her blog post, Piscatelli concludes:

Just as I always felt better knowing that people of his caliber were in the Pentagon and other posts around the globe before and after 9-11, I also feel better knowing that as a citizen, he said he will be watching very closely.

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By Marc, December 4, 2009 7:23 pm

In today’s Washington Post, Sen. Webb penned an op-ed that analyzes the administration’s revised Afghanistan strategy and pushes for clarification of the conditions necessary for a successful draw-down of American forces:

A plan in need of clarity

By Senator Jim Webb

December 4, 2009

I have great regard for the careful process the Obama administration employed in its efforts to define a new approach for the long-standing military commitment in Afghanistan and to put an operational framework in place for our responsible withdrawal. I intend, nevertheless, to continue to call on the administration to clarify to the American public and Congress how it defines success and how we reach an end point.

Since early 2009, I have said repeatedly that the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan must proceed based on four considerations: (1) the fragility of the Afghan government; (2) whether building a national army of considerable scale is achievable; (3) whether an increased U.S. military presence will ultimately have a positive effect in the country, or whether we will be seen as an occupying force; and (4) the linkage of events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the coming weeks I intend to examine the administration’s plan to see how it addresses these criteria and how it will affect our troops.

Since the president’s address Tuesday, there has been much discussion of the date that the United States will begin to draw down military forces and transfer security responsibility. Just as important is a focus on creating the conditions to enable this transfer of responsibility. The administration has not defined them with sufficient clarity. Our strategy is sound only if framed with clearly defined and attainable goals, an understandable end point and a regional perspective. We must also avoid the inherent risks of allowing our success in Afghanistan to be defined by events that are largely beyond our control.

When U.S. troops entered Afghanistan in 2001, no true central government had existed in that country since 1979. The agreements reached in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001 led to a new constitution, an interim government and the national election of 2004. The agreements also gave considerable power to a central government in a country that is very disparate and historically far removed from the concept of central governance. The result today is a weak, fragile government in Kabul whose power on paper is far greater than in reality. It is plagued by a lack of capacity and rampant corruption. Many observers say that power needs to be devolved to a more decentralized form of governance consistent with tribal realities to achieve the Afghan government’s long-term viability.

We are ramping up deployment to about 100,000 troops, along with tens of thousands of American contractors and civilians, to implement a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. This greatly enlarged presence runs the risk, well rooted in Afghanistan’s history of resisting foreign influence, that the United States will be perceived as an occupying force instead of a presence seeking to assist Afghans in improving their stability and development.

Another key question that remains to be answered is: How do we define our enemy in Afghanistan? When we talk about the Taliban, we interchange terms that aren’t particularly interchangeable. Three different types of actors are associated with the Taliban. First came those in a vicious government that the United States assisted in removing. Second, there is an ideologically charged group that operates principally in Pakistan, associated with the forces of international terrorism. Third, we have a separate group, presumably growing with the greatest speed, that is viewed by many Afghans as something of a regional militia defending local interests and that doesn’t particularly want to threaten U.S. interests outside Afghanistan.

I have said consistently that countering international terrorism requires highly maneuverable forces able to strike an intrinsically mobile enemy. The departure of al-Qaeda from Iraq and, in large measure, from Afghanistan demonstrates why more maneuverable U.S. forces are to be favored against mobile international terrorist movements. In each instance, al-Qaeda relocated to other areas, including Pakistan and the Horn of Africa. Our military must retain the same maneuverability.

On the personnel front, our active-duty military has been deployed repeatedly for combat operations since 2001. Guard and reserve components also have deployed at levels not envisioned when the all-volunteer force was introduced. We are in uncharted territory in terms of the long-term effects these deployments are having on the well-being of our men and women in uniform, especially the Army and Marine Corps. I introduced dwell-time legislation nearly three years ago to ensure that we achieved a better balance in deployment cycles with a minimum interval before follow-on deployments. The new commitment of some 30,000 U.S. troops will put additional strains on our forces and their families. I plan to press the administration on this point to ensure that we are more vigilant in safeguarding the welfare of our men and women in uniform.

The writer, a Democrat from Virginia who was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he is chairman of the subcommittee on personnel.

Sen. Webb also joined Chris Matthews early this evening and had the following to say on the administration’s Afghanistan strategy: