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Blackfive: Afghanitan - It Is "Fish Or Cut Bait" Time |
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Monday, 21 September 2009 |
Uncle J touches on it below,but as someone who just said goodbye to his son this weekend as he deploys to Afghanistan, I'm much more interested in that war than I might otherwise be. As it happens, General Stanley McChrystal's assessment has been excerpted by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post. It is a rather blunt assessment - he needs more forces or we risk "mission failure". Let me begin this by saying I don't care if you are for or against our being in Afghanistan - we're there. Staying or leaving are obviously the two options we have at this point. The present political leadership told everyone who would listen as they were campaigning for the job that Afghanistan was the "good war" and the "necessary war" and we needed to prosecute it with an eye on eliminating the threat al Qaeda posed and removing the country as a safe-haven. Given the circumstances and situation there that is a very difficult mission fraught with not only danger but obviously requiring a real commitment in blood and treasure. Faced with a growing and more adept insurgent foe, a corrupt and incompetent host nation government, and a neighboring state under both duress and threat from the same enemy, the situation that confronts both the military and civilian leadership is an extremely difficult one. But, as McChrystal notes, "While the situation is serious, success if still achievable". Note that the word used is "success", not "victory". I'm not one to quibble about those words. Victory is used in a military sense. Victory is success. But we all know that while the military is an integral part of any success we might have there, ultimately it can't "win" the day by itself. Success will be defined as leaving a sovereign nation capable of governing and defending itself when we eventually leave. We may not like that definition, we may not like the fact that we're again engaged in nation building and we may not like the fact that such an endeavor is going to take years, possibly decades to achieve - but that is the situation we now find ourselves in. If we were to abandon Afghanistan now, we'd see it quickly revert to the state it was in 2001 - ruled by Islamic fundamentalists and a safe-haven for our most avowed enemies. We have to decide now whether or not we're going to commit to the "long war" to achieve the success I've outlined or whether we, like many nations before us, will leave Afghanistan to its fate and suffer the consequences such an abandonment may bring in the future. Iread
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