6/22/2011
"The goal that we seek is achievable, and can be expressed simply: no safe-haven from which al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland, or our allies. We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place. We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government, which must step up its ability to protect its people; and move from an economy shaped by war to one that can sustain a lasting peace. What we can do, and will do, is build a partnership with the Afghan people that endures – one that ensures that we will be able to continue targeting terrorists and supporting a sovereign Afghan government."
- President Barack Obama, 6/22/2011 (on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan)
This snippet of President Barack Obama's speech announcing an Afghanistan troop withdrawal properly declared ALL that the United States should do in Afghanistan after a decade of fighting.
No one is going to create a multicultural Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan. Afghanistan barely meets the definition of a country. Sure, there's a government in Kabul, but it doesn't command much loyalty from the people. There's an army and a police force, but many members of both agencies can be rented if not bought outright.It has borders, but we've seen that it's hard to tell where Afghanistan begins and Pakistan ends.
The United States should have learned from Vietnam that a country cannot fight in perpetuity to give a people something that it does not want. The United States cannot rebuild a country that was never actually built up in the first place.
Our nation went to war in Afghanistan to prevent another September 11th. The most recent estimates of Al-Qaeda strength in Afghanistan put their number at no more than 500. The U.S. force is hundreds of times that size. CBS News has reported that simply returning the surge troops home will save the U.S. $30 billion. The idea of spending over $100 billion annually to combat at most 500 terrorists is an idea Americans should not and will not tolerate indefinitely. Many may say "it only took 20 terrorists to kill 3,000 Americans on 9-11". To that I'd say "it only took 3 to kill 168 and wound 450 on 4-19 (Oklahoma City)". At some point a cost-benefit analysis has to be done. President Obama has done that. He has made the right call.
At the Democratic National Convention that launched Barack Obama's national political career, President Bill Clinton said "we live in an interdependent world in which we cannot possibly kill, jail, or occupy all our potential adversaries. So we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists."
An open-ended war of the kind Senator John McCain seems to want is not practical. The U.S. military has done what it can realistically be expected to accomplish. It is time for the Afghan government to stand up and fight for the people it claims to represent. The United States ought to be a partner in helping their government protect its people. It should not, however, do the job of protecting the Afghan people forever.
By Ricky Secor, Sanford, North Carolina
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