Since early September, the Taliban have swept through Afghanistan’s north, seizing numerous districts and even, briefly, the provincial capital Kunduz. The United Nations has determined that the Taliban threat to approximately half of the country’s 398 districts is either “high” or “extreme.” Indeed, by our count, more than 30 districts are already under Taliban control. And the insurgents are currently threatening provincial capitals in both northern and southern Afghanistan.
Confronted with this grim reality, President Obama has decided to keep 9,800 American troops in the country through much of 2016 and 5,500 thereafter. The president was right to change course, but it is difficult to see how much of a difference this small force can make. The United States troops currently in Afghanistan have not been able to thwart the Taliban’s advance. They were able to help push them out of Kunduz, but only after the Taliban’s two-week reign of terror. This suggests that additional troops are needed, not fewer.
When justifying his decision last week, the president explained that American troops would “remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions — training Afghan forces, and supporting counterterrorism operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.” He added, “We’ve always known that we had to maintain a counterterrorism operation in that region in order to tamp down any re-emergence of active Al Qaeda networks.”
But the president has not explained the full scope of what is at stake. Al Qaeda has already re-emerged. Just two days before the president’s statement, the military announced that it led raids against two Qaeda training camps in the south, one of which was an astonishing 30 square miles in size. The operation lasted several days, and involved 63 airstrikes and more than 200 ground troops, including both Americans and Afghan commandos.
From the hawk view. What's really at play here is Obama's unwillingness to be in office when the Taliban (unavoidably) take over Afghanistan as the U.S. departs. So he is kicking the can down the road to the next President. The right questions to ask are: [i] whether the U.S. can win the war in Afghanistan; and [ii] if so, at what cost? That war is unwinnable, as every invader of Afghanistan has learned from Alexander the Great to the present date. The U.S. has no track record of winnng anywhere against insurgent forces during my lifetime. "Winning" in Afghanistan was and still is Mission Impossible for the U.S. military. Obama's poltiical cowardice means that untold thousands of more people will be maimed and killed. Just to placate our chicken hawk politicans and think tankers.