The Afghanistan Question
Define Victory
Considering that our presence in Afghanistan is a "war", that seems like it would be a silly question to ask. Victory means the defeat of our enemy. But, considering the asymmetric nature of modern warfare--especially in the Middle East--it is a valid one.
One could easily argue that Bush defined victory in the Fall of 2001 as follows: the September 11th attacks were an unprovoked attack and constituted an act of war. The label 'act of war' required the following line of reasoning: the perpetrators of the attacks, though not agents of a nation-state, were acting in accordance with the wishes of a nation-state. Moreover, the nation they operated out of gave them safe harbor and would not possibly bring them to justice on their own. Thus, in defense of our own interests, the proper action was not merely a military police action (apprehension of international criminals across national boundaries) but all-out regime change lest the cycle simply repeat itself.
Victory was the apprehension of al-Qaeda and the removal of the Taliban regime. A necessary sub-condition would be the establishment of a viable replacement for that regime, because leaving Afghanistan in a power vacuum is unacceptable.
Eight years into the conflict it remains unclear whether even those modest victory conditions have been satisfied. Numerous operatives of Al-Qaeda have been apprehended, but Osama bin-Laden (by all accounts) remains at large. The Taliban is no longer in any real political power but remains a very real military power in a country controlled by disparate factions more than any real central authority out of Kabul.
The lack of ultimate success against bin-Laden combined with the difficulty of achieving a stable Afghanistan was forseeable. Regardless, it leaves many in this country with a bad taste in their mouths, unsure whether they have the stomach to continue.
Obama essentially wants to define victory as establishing an Aghanistan that is "stable enough" that we can begin drawing down troops as Aghani units come online. He is willing to commit a limited number of troops to the mission but has already handicapped them with incredibly restrictive rules of engagement that were demonstrated failures in the early years of the Iraq War.
Many on the conservative side--including a local radio show host I frequently listen to--want to maintain that we are simply there to "kill" the enemy, not nation-build. What point killing the enemy has if a power vacuum remains escapes me. Yes, nation-building is a long and expensive undertaking, but it is a task we implicitly accepted the instant we remove the previous regime. Still another response would be to point out that killing the enemy and then leaving when that job was "done" was precisely what the CIA did after the end of Soviet occupation--conditions which allowed the Taliban to come into power in the first place.
Neither redefinition of victory is acceptable. Yes, we are there to defend our national interests. The primary way to do that is to kill the enemy and destroy their ability to mount terrorist attacks on our homeland or installations abroad.
But the instant we attacked Afghanistan we accepted a commitment to the Afghan people. The Taliban regime was far from stable, but removing it destabilized the country further. If we simply pulled out, the country would inevitably plunge itself into chaos. Not only is that not in our (long-term) national interest, it would be a cruel gesture to a country we already abandoned twenty years ago.
Wholesale regime change and nation-building is a prickly issue--especially when it comes to establishing whether a war is "just" or not. Once war is entered into, however, it is a required element of victory and cannot be abandoned just because we Americans have short attention spans.
