This article was originally published on Thenextgreatgeneration.com on November 15, 2010.
In October, nine years ago, American troops arrived in Afghanistan to conduct a modern day blitzkrieg against the Taliban regime. Having hosted and supported al-Qaeda while they planned the 9/11 attacks against the United States, they were decidedly with the terrorists.
Almost a decade later and al-Qaeda is nowhere to be found in Afghanistan. The remaining few members in the region have fled to Waziristan near the Pakistani border. The Taliban has made a successful comeback and America is financially broke, leading to the faltering support among Americans for this war. NATO forces and the American commandment can only hope that negotiations with the “moderate” Taliban will help find a sensible exit to this never-ending war.
How did we get here?
Gen Y grew up with the Afghanistan and the Iraq wars. We experienced the 9/11 attacks as teenagers and throughout most of our adult lives war has been the status quo of America.
Afghanistan was nicknamed the graveyard of empires for a reason. No one has ever had a clear victory in Afghanistan, and the United States unfortunately no longer seem to be an exception.
But the painful irony is that America could have won. American and allied troops could have succeeded in the Tora Bora battle of December 2001. Bin Laden was there and could have been caught. Since then, no one ever got close to being so lucky again.
The failure of Afghanistan can be blamed on an Iraqi “counterproductive sideshow” in the words of MIT security studies Professor Stephen Van Evera. But the numerous changes in the commanders and strategies on the ground are the real mistakes. How can you conduct a war when you keep changing strategies? Or in the case of President Obama, when you divulge a withdrawal deadline. Talk about announcing defeat.
Since the target date of June 2011 was announced, the surge has been the bloodiest of the decade. The Taliban now know that they only need to wait for the departure of Western troops, who no longer have the financial, material or public support to sustainably outweigh the Taliban in the regions they have lost.
Gen Y was born during the final years of the Cold War and has only known the United States as the sole superpower of the world. We grew up basking in the stories of American exceptionalism, learning that this is the greatest country in modern history. Since the September 11 attacks, both America’s prestige and credibility have steadily slipped away. A mismanaged war, another illegitimate one, countless human rights violations, breaches of American citizens’ privacy and an intelligence infrastructure that has gotten out of control are all the result of ten years of living in the shadow of al-Qaida and the continued failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. Add America's bankruptcy and the financial crisis and we have a problem.
Can America sustain its way of life?
The war in Afghanistan was conducted to restore America's honor and hunt-down the perpetrators of the most devastating attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. It is therefore sadly ironic that Afghanistan could be the deathbed of the United States as we know it. Unless the debt crisis is solved, the United States will face extreme vulnerability by depending on foreign lenders like China for any of their activities. And the pursuit of American interests internationally will be much harder without credible leverage of any nature.
We are at a turning point in Afghanistan. A sign of leadership from President Obama is strongly needed, and although the word on the street is that President Obama would rather distance himself from the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars he is the Commander-in-Chief and needs to talk to the American people.
President Obama should tell Americans the war in Afghanistan has indeed become obsolete. Al-Qaida will not be defeated on Afghan soil. It will be crushed in Yemen, in Somalia, in Pakistan and in the Maghreb with intelligence, security technologies and precision bombing – options cheaper and safer than conventional wars and supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. In fact, President Obama successfully employed these strategies as early as December 2009.
What matters though is that America’s Gen Y has inherited this conflict and they are the biggest American victims. According to ABC journalist Mike Corcoran, “two thirds of the soldiers (…) were still in school when George W. Bush declared War on Terror.” A lot of them thought they were going to fight a “just war”.
Millennials fighting in Afghanistan for their 3rd or 4th tour need to come home. Sadly, it is very unlikely that the United States will soon be able to withdraw from Afghanistan. The strategy on the ground isn’t successful and negotiations with the Taliban are a slow start to a long process.
0 comments:
Post a Comment