As of 2010, America is in its 10th year of this conflict. The former Soviet Union also fought a conflict with this small country for more than eight years and even after committing more than 200,000 troops to the war, they eventually had to retreat. What does the Obama administration know that history and the greatest Asian nation of the time did not?
The answer is difficult to access. Recently, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, on a visit to the country, said that more NATO and U.S. forces will die in Afghanistan as violence continues to escalate over the summer. These comments were made following the news of two U.S. sailors who were caught in a fire fight with Taliban forces, ended with the death of one and the capture of another after they drove into a hostile province south of Kabul.
Violence in Afghanistan is reported to be at its highest level since the war started and the President began increasing the number of troops there in an effort to drive out the Taliban. Last month, June, was the deadliest for NATO forces since 2001, with more than 100 killed, and a rise in the number of civilian deaths.
Obama needs to answer the query, why are we in Afghanistan and what will define a U.S. victory? To this date he has failed to articulate either the definition of success or what he anticipates accomplishing by staying in the incessant conflict with the Taliban. The reality is that there will always be a Taliban in Afghanistan because they represent the Pasthun people who occupy 50 percent of the country. If the president’s goal is to defeat the Taliban and really drive them out of Afghanistan, then he like his predecessor George W. Bush, is lost, misguided and ill-informed regarding what is a reasonable military objective in Afghanistan and what’s not. –torrance stephens, ph.d.
