|
A new year. A new President. A new chance for greater peace instead of more war.
My expertise is not in foreign policy or war. Most of us on this planet don't have experience in either of those, and that's quite fortunate.
But from what I can see, too many of those who do consider themselves experts in foreign policy or war quite often make the wrong decisions. They look at their job as a matter of playing chess, always looking for the checkmate -- and their brand of the game too often calls for weapons. Problem is, human beings -- our greed, our hates, our fears, our lust, our motivating beliefs whether religious, political, or personal -- aren't stagnant plastic or wooden figures on a chessboard.
We should get out of Afghanistan, soon. I'm still one of the believers that "the surge" has little to do with the settling down of hostilities, for now, in Iraq. Iraqis themselves without additional American troops were giving in to divergent political viewpoints, compromising their jealousies, and turning their backs on violence -- which still hasn't stopped by a long shot, but is less now than several months ago. Such often happens in a "war" where there are several separated factions who don't come together as an army. Our additional troops served little purpose, and we've lost hundreds more lives since that surge began.
In the recent Presidential election, many Democrats said they opposed the Iraq War, but said they supported the Afghanistan action because that's where the Taliban is centered, and where supposedly Osama bin Laden is hiding out. President-Elect Barack Obama (oh that title sounds so nice!) has already pledged to engage more American combat troops in Afghanistan, possibly doubling the current size of our 33,000 boots on the ground. The idea, advocated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the outgoing (another nice sound) Bush Administration, is that the United States can then "negotiate" with the Taliban and other tribal chieftains and leaders of insurgent fighters from a "position of strength."
I've heard that before. Haven't we learned anything from Vietnam? President Lyndon Johnson built up our troop levels for years after being "promised" by our military leaders that more troops on the ground would give negotiations a chance. President Richard Nixon went into a policy of widening bombing because he was persuaded that was a way to get to the peace table. Well, it did -- but at what price, and with what result? Remember, half of the lives of American soldiers, and countless others, were lost while Nixon was President.
Every week we're in Iraq and more Iraqis are killed by our actions, we make more generational enemies. More sons and daughters and brothers and sisters of those killed who will forever hate America. And every day we're engaging and killing those who we perceive are "the enemy" in Afghanistan, we're making the next generation of terrorists who will take their hate out on Americans yet to be born.
The Soviet Union was engaged in that country for almost a decade, and it became their own Vietnam. When I visited Russia in the mid-1990s, the wounds were still deep and people who I spoke with considered their country's involvement there a mistake from the first day. I think history proved that. And while some Americans still argue that our involvement in Vietnam was "a noble cause," most of us think about the more than 50,000 Americans who died there and the deaths of hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of others who lived there as being too high a price -- and for what?
We need to get out of Afghanistan soon. Barack Obama should not let this become his war. I trust that he will get out as soon as he can, but the indications I've been reading during the past few weeks is that his policy advisors are becoming convinced that surging with more American troops will bring peace. Obama himself said as much during the last few months of the recent election.
I don't see it. I'm still wondering why we got so heavily involved with our military in Afghanistan, but that we did makes that question not as relevant as this one: what do we gain by staying there much longer?
|
