President Obama's Afghanistan surge

A fellow priest, Robert Cromey, wrote in an email this week:

The president’s speech was superb, his reasoning clear, his grammar excellent and his conclusion mistaken. Thirty thousand more American soldiers going into Afghanistan means more killing of civilians, soldiers, and so-called terrorists.

Afghanistan is not a country; it is a band of terribly independent tribes, living in desert and mountainous regions with little sense on unity as a nation as we know it. Taliban and al Qaeda are small deadly groups bent on destruction. They hide in caves and villages using civilians for shields. There are roughly 20,000 Taliban and 100 al Qaeda. Rooting them out with 98,000 troops can only result in the massive destruction of thousands upon thousands of civilians.

Persistent infiltration by trained experts like the CIA is doing in Pakistan is worth more money and effort than the massive use of force planned by the president.

Our security is not at stake. Attacks like 9/11 are impossible to happen again. The massive security in this country and around the world can keep us secure without the massive killings that will occur with a surge in the military presence in Afghanistan.

Cromey’s email echoes ideas previously expressed in this blog, e.g., More pressure for an Afghan surge and Perceptions. Thomas Friedman, somewhat more elegantly staked out a similar position in his column, “This I Believe” (New York Times, December 1, 2009).

The political positions staked out by Obama and McCain make no sense. Sending thirty (or even fifty or seventy) thousand additional troops will not significantly alter the outcome of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. The country is too large, too mountainous, too tribal, and too independent for that number of troops to change the Afghan culture in favor of a secular democracy with an effective central government.

McCain’s comment that identifying an end date by which troop withdrawals will begin signals the Taliban that the U.S. has only a limited commitment to Afghanistan is correct. However, the Taliban would have to be exceedingly ignorant of U.S. politics and history not to have already reached that conclusion on their own. The plain truth is that the U.S. did not defeat the Taliban. The U.S. pushed the Taliban aside; the Taliban retreated into mountain enclaves resolved to wage war against the foreign infidels into those infidels withdrew from Afghanistan. In a land in which people point to victories against the Mongols as evidence of their ability to outlast invaders, whether the U.S. commitment is for two years or ten years is unimportant, an assessment that a failed eight year occupation (2001-2009) reinforces.

The time to stop the killing is now. Afghans must make their own way. Pouring additional billions of U.S. dollars into that tragic region will enrich American contractors and the corrupt Afghan elite but achieve precious little to improve the quality of life for most Afghans.