31 March 2010
Karzai Is Not the Problem
In the March 31, 2010 New York Times, Thomas Friedman bemoans the failure of the Obama Administration to lay it on the line with Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Friedman seems to believe that the Afghan President really controls what is happening there. Obama appears to understand that making representative government work in that country requires transforming its culture.
However, keeping U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan will never accomplish that feat. Essentially, both Friedman and Obama are mistaken. The only justification for Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is that an American election looms in November and one of his opponents’ most convincing arguments will be the failure of Washington’s Democratic majority to “win” the war in Afghanistan. Winning that war has never been adequately defined, but the Republicans will continue to argue that devoting unlimited military resources to it is the only way to succeed.
Perhaps after November, the U.S. will be able to take the only rational step: withdrawal from a mountainous country that has been the death of empires for as long as history has been written.
In the March 31, 2010 New York Times, Thomas Friedman bemoans the failure of the Obama Administration to lay it on the line with Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Friedman seems to believe that the Afghan President really controls what is happening there. Obama appears to understand that making representative government work in that country requires transforming its culture.
However, keeping U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan will never accomplish that feat. Essentially, both Friedman and Obama are mistaken. The only justification for Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is that an American election looms in November and one of his opponents’ most convincing arguments will be the failure of Washington’s Democratic majority to “win” the war in Afghanistan. Winning that war has never been adequately defined, but the Republicans will continue to argue that devoting unlimited military resources to it is the only way to succeed.
Perhaps after November, the U.S. will be able to take the only rational step: withdrawal from a mountainous country that has been the death of empires for as long as history has been written.
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