It is clear to most Americans that even before Barack Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009 that we were fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan on that fateful day when we took down the picture of our old Commander in Chief and replaced it with a picture of Barack Obama. There weren’t any obvious differences in policy or practices when the Change of Command took place, in fact initially, everything in Afghanistan continued like business as usual.
Shortly after President Obama took office however, Military Commanders asked for more troops to support the war effort. The need for reinforcements was obvious. There were parts of the country where only a dozen or more soldiers held their ground on small isolated Combat Outposts (COPs). They would fight off the almost daily barrage of attacks from much larger groups of insurgents. In a couple of instances our soldiers lost their battles and had to retreat to larger FOBs (Forward Operating Bases) and surrender their hard fought real estate to the enemy.
After months of deliberation, President Obama relented to political pressure and announced a surge of 30,000 troops, with a prescheduled drawdown in the summer of 2011. In a true political manner, he tried to appease both sides. He committed only three quarters of the troops requested by General David McCrystal, and even worse, announced a withdrawal, further undermining the war effort. In the military we call an approach like this half-assed, and a half-assed approach rarely gets the job done.
As was expected, fatalities among American troops more than doubled during the summer of 2009, and continued to rise by much more in 2010. Not only were there more soldiers on the ground, conducting more operations, our enemies were emboldened and started conducting more complex attacks, emplacing more improvised explosive devices (IED’s), and setting up more ambushes. Their tactics and procedures started improving and evolving faster than we could keep up with.
Of course, the media turned a blind eye to the war in Afghanistan. Even though combat deaths increased five-fold between 2007 and 2010, there was little more than a peep from the media. We heard about deaths everyday on the network news stations when Bush was president. Most Americans would be surprised to learn how many troops are dying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom today, only because the media chooses not to report it.
Because of the increases in troops, FOB’s and COP’s started popping up everywhere. We littered the Afghan country side with American presence in every square kilometer of civilization. The larger bases increased in size considerably in order to provide more support for the outlying FOB’s. Since I have returned to the country in early 2011 I have been amazed at how much the American presence has grown.
As always, our military has made do with limited resources and has been successful. Despite combat deaths continuing to rise, the surge has actually been working, at least in the areas we control (there are still large areas of the country under Taliban and warlord control.) Taliban fighters have been denied freedom of maneuver, Afghan civilians have closer access to American forces, they are less easily intimidated, and insurgents have been rooted out of their traditional strong holds. There is still much more work to be done here, and a few thousand more troops would greatly help our success.
Recently President Obama announced that we will begin withdrawing American forces starting in September and all surge troops will be gone by the end of 2012, a move that General Petreaus and several other military leaders say was more aggressive their recommendations. The most important question now is why? Why would our president again commit fewer troops than military commanders require in waging the war? Why are we withdrawing troops when we have been successfully policing the Afghan countryside for the first time in ten years? Why did we gain all this real estate just to give it up again? Why did all those soldiers have to die if we aren’t going to hold onto their hard fought territory? Why did we do a surge in the first place if all our success is going to be reversed?
There is a false notion in Washington that the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police will be able to take over security in the country by the time we leave. Whoever buys into this nonsense is a fool. The Afghan army and police are very poorly trained, not loyal to their country, and are easily corrupted. As soon as we move out, the Taliban will move back in. They may be weaker now, but they will return stronger than ever.
Why are we giving the Taliban their strongholds back after we lost so much blood and treasure rooting them out? Is it so President Obama can win his next election? He is playing politics with the lives of American Soldiers, and it is an outrage. Why didn’t he just pull out of Afghanistan at the beginning of 2009? Why didn’t he commit all the troops the military commanders requested in order to be successful? It is because he lacks character, it is because he is unwilling to make the unpopular decisions, and instead he has pandered to both sides of the isle. In the end he may come out as the winner, but the American soldiers who have needlessly lost their lives are the unfortunate losers. At what expense will our President go to in order to be popular among the American people? Now we know.
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