We are sending more troops (30,000 more to be precise) to Afghanistan. President Obama made a powerful argument for the necessity of this action...powerful, but not convincing to me. We have spend the past 8 years engaged in nation-building and the strategy of invasion as foreign policy tool. I don't think it works.
Yes, Al Qaeda has attacked us in the past and perhaps continues to be some threat to our security. Yes, the Taliban is a ruthless organization determined to establish a totalitarian and oppressive regime in Afghanistan. Yes, we have started something and should have some responsibility to see it through. I agree with all of these things.
Here are my issues:
1. We have no idea what we are doing. Our nation-building in Iraq was a long and painful process, not to mention enormously costly in terms of lives and money. We do not understand the Arab mindset, ethos or culture at many levels . How long will it take this time as we make mistake after mistake because we, to paraphrase Tom Friedman in his opinion column in the NYT this morning, "try to make Afghanistan into Norway"?
2. We have some "nation-building" to do right here at home and perhaps we should get our own house in order before we go dictating to the rest of the world how it should be done. Lost in the shuffle of all of this talk of security is the real threat to our security...our economy is consumer-driven instead of production-driven, our debt is staggering and growing daily, and our culture is based on borrowing instead of saving. This is an unsustainable system and the biggest security risk we have...far more dangerous than Al Qaeda. (This is not to even mention the fact that we will not blink at raising the deficit or passing on debt to our grandchildren to fight wars, but will scream "socialism" from the highest tower if we dare to think about the same thing providing health care for millions of Americans. As my dad used to say, if you want to know where a person's heart is look at where they spend their money. For a nice take on "paying for war" see this site.)
3. We have Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars and a host of other nations' histories to look at - why do we think that we can accomplish what has never been accomplished with these tactics in a place that no country has ever invaded and successfully built up? And to try to do all of this on a timeline is just political gaming...
I agree with Friedman and others in the belief that a real stance for our security would not involve sending more troops to fight, but would mean the much more difficult and self-effacing move of a retreat from our addiction to fossil fuels and, in doing so, a shift of power, economic support for the totalitarian regimes we resist on one hand and feed on the other.
Our future demands some real courage...some courage beyond even the substantial amount being demonstrated by our armed forces every day. It requires the courage to say that the way we have been doing things isn't working and its time to re-evaluate our priorities and goals. It requires the courage to change. That's what I can believe in.
