"These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course. That is why we will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province. As their ranks dwindle, an enemy that has nothing to offer the Afghan people but terror and repression must be further isolated. That is the future that al Qaeda is offering to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan - a future without opportunity or hope; a future without justice or peace," he said.
Indeed, our closest allies, whose nations have sacrificed a disproportionate and increasing number of their countryfolk's lives and livelihoods in Afghanistan, have amplified the expressed limits of military force in achieving their nation-building goals, while reserving the view that the military force and activity is still an integral part of their strategy.
At a meeting of the German Marshall Fund of the United States on March 6, Canada's Defense Minister Peter Mackay asserted that, “To succeed in Afghanistan will take more than military means. But I would say the corollary to that is it won’t happen without the military.” Canada has yet to reverse their decision to withdraw all of their troops from Afghanistan by 2011.
Britain has also registered their view that military force will not be sufficient to their goals, while, at the same time, resolving to send up to 2,000 more troops to Afghanistan in the coming months to bring their troop presence to over 10,000. "There is no purely military solution to the insurgency," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband wrote in February. "Unless it is aligned with a clear political and economic strategy, military might will only force the Taliban further underground, or encourage them to play a waiting game," he said.
"Afghanistan is a test of the resolve of NATO and the broader international alliance," Miliband said. "More troops will never be enough to enforce stability across the country. But by pressuring those who refuse to cooperate with the Afghan state, and protecting those who do, military force can directly support a political solution."
President Obama complimented that view with his own assertion that his administration is "committed to strengthening international organizations and collective action" and that will be his message next week at the NATO summit in Europe.
"As America does more, we will ask others to join us in doing their part. From our partners and NATO allies, we seek not simply troops, but rather clearly defined capabilities: supporting the Afghan elections, training Afghan Security Forces, and a greater civilian commitment to the Afghan people."
It is an obvious and well-supported retort to this administration's Afghan Plan to point to the seven-year, self-perpetuating failure of our military mission in Afghanistan to achieve much more than the installation and feathering defense of the government in Kabul as a representation of the 'democracy' the last U.S. administration assumed occurred behind the elections held under NATO's military wing. There isn't much more of a clear prospect for an improved representational demonstration of that democratic effort in the next round of elections than there was the last time the vote split between the 'protected' provinces and the regions of Afghanistan under NATO's military siege.
This time around, the president has signaled another self-perpetuating surge of force to defend that election process against attacks and disruptions, while using the bulk of the 21,000 additional U.S. troops to "take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border." That military effort threatens to generate support for, and resistance from, the same militarized opposition they intend to draw closer to their nation-building cause.
It will remain to be seen whether their humanitarian aid, economic development assistance, and Afghan government reforms will out pace the counter-productive effects and consequences of their grudging military aggression against America's al-Qaeda nemesis; even as they posture to defend their opportunistic Afghan regime against the fundamentalist influence and control of the al-Qaeda-friendly wing of the Taliban. Outside of the very valid and important concerns about the Taliban's disregard and abuses of human rights in the regions they control, there really is no pressing national security threat to the U.S. from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
There are certainly dangerous elements of that resistance who are enjoying 'safe haven' in Pakistan or along the Af/Pak border. In a remarkable statement of truth, Pres. Obama noted that, "Al-Qaeda and its allies have since killed thousands of people in many countries. Most of the blood on their hands is the blood of Muslims, who al-Qaeda has killed and maimed in far greater numbers than any other people," he said.
However, al-Qaeda's main enterprise is to draw America and NATO even further into flailing around with our self-perpetuating militarism; in order to draw even more of the population of Afghanistan and Pakistan into support and participation in violent acts against the U.S., our interests, and our allies. Our military occupation and its planned escalation will undoubtedly continue to contribute to all of that in a tragic way.
What I hoped for from the Obama administration was a definition of the mission there which separates our own need for justice in apprehending or eliminating the original 9-11 terrorists from the task of quelling the violent resistance to our presence and toward the regimes we're so intent on protecting. We will likely not be successful in eliminating every individual who says they're aligned with one of the terrorist rival groups, like al-Qaeda or elements of the Taliban, but we could foster an environment where these objectionable groups' main enterprise of recruiting the resisting and displaced population to their violent cause is stifled and replaced with our own lure of ungrudging mutual assistance and development. That looks to be the thrust of the president's diplomatic initiatives.
Yet, there's a demonstrated counterproductive effect in the region of the presence and operation of U.S. forces against the population. It is a documented fact that the primary effect of our 7-year plus military interference in Afghanistan has been a swelling of the ranks of those who have resigned themselves to violent resistance against our military advance on their homeland. The result of our interference has been an aligning of once disparate groups there with our nemesis, al-Qaeda, in support of that resistance.
Where, in that military mission that the president outlined, will we be able to acknowledge that, as Obama's own Pentagon leaders and advisers have said (ultimately), that our grudging military is no longer the solution, but the problem in Afghanistan? Where will President Obama draw that line? I believe this plan for Afghanistan has importantly and significantly advanced the initiative of diplomacy and humanitarian efforts as central to the mission there, but I believe his military mission as he defined it still threatens to obscure and overshadow those nation-building 'goals' that he says are integral to any long term stability in the region.
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