Some 9,800 American troops and 26,000 contractors are in Afghanistan, after having waged war there for 15 years. Given the state of the situation there, it is now up to President Barack Obama — and the two major party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — to explain in specific terms what exactly the U.S. is still doing there, or agree that America should get out.
Some 9,800 American troops and 26,000 contractors are in Afghanistan, after having waged war there for 15 years. Given the state of the situation there, it is now up to President Barack Obama — and the two major party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — to explain in specific terms what exactly the U.S. is still doing there, or agree that America should get out.
First, even though it has been America’s strategy for years to train and equip Afghan troops to defend the country against Taliban forces so U.S. soldiers can come home, it is perfectly clear that U.S. strategy has failed.
The Taliban have surrounded Helmand province and its capital, Lashkar Gah, and have been prevented from taking it only through repeated, frequent U.S. airstrikes.
The Afghan military and police forces, who are supposed to not only protect Afghan government territory but also expand it through military force, instead have faded in the face of the Taliban, abandoning their high-tech weapons and equipment. They also spend a certain amount of time blaming each other for the collective battlefield failure. Their units are ridden with conflicting loyalties to tribes and warlords.
Their leaders’ real priorities are to gain as much of the profits from the opium trade as possible. Helmand province is a center of production of opium, the raw material of heroin. Rivalries among Afghan leaders are usually rooted in seeking access to opium profits.
Afghanistan remains the world leader in the production of opium, in spite of years of American admonitions and incentives to grow something other than the poppies from which it is harvested. Afghanistan is America’s own drug culture protectorate.
The third problem that suggests strongly that it is time for the United States to go home is the utter chaos of governance that characterizes the Kabul regime. In principle — an arrangement stitched together by Secretary of State John Kerry — Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun, a member of Afghanistan’s traditional ruling tribe, is president and Abdullah Abdullah, from Afghanistan’s northern tribes, is, in effect, prime minister.
They are rivals. In principle, they were supposed to work together, to please the Americans as much as for any other reason. But now, they split sharply again because of appointments to lucrative positions in government.
If the argument for being in Afghanistan is to watch neighboring Pakistan, a sometimes unruly nuclear power, then the U.S. should watch Pakistan, not pour resources into Afghanistan.
So, why is America doing this? The cost, an estimated $1 trillion-plus, and the exposure in U.S. troops, suggests that Americans should care, even to the degree that Afghanistan becomes a subject for discussion in the sometimes inane trialogue among Obama, Clinton and Trump that is preceding the Nov. 8 vote.
Fifteen years is a long time to prolong what appears to be an expensive, utterly fruitless policy in a country now of little or no interest to the United States.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette