President Obama Redefines Our Strategy In Afghanistan
President Obama has essentially redefined our strategy for conducting our operation in Afghanistan
. Those of you who follow my blog may remember that I have been saying for a while that this is what should be done. I thought the war was a noble cause when we began it but when I look back I dont really see a valid reason for conducting a full scale invasion of Afghanistan.
If we want to believe that we can destroy the Taliban we are deluding ourselves. I dont think that our objectives were that clear cut when we started this thing. Yes terrorists attacked the United States, and yes they should be punished. I remember that this thing started as a worldwide war to seemingly wipe out terrorists. What we are finding out now is that you cant wipe out the Taliban. It never should have been an aim of the war.
I have blogged that we should redefine our goals as preventative in nature. Yes, we should have bombed every known terrorist training camp into the dust, but there is not much else that can be done after that.
President Obama has conceded that the government of Afghanistan will never be a model of democracy, but neither is our government a model of democracy. Corruption has been the way of life in Afghanistan for so long that I will venture to say that we are sadly mistaken if we think that we can change that. Our only option is to do what we need to do and get out quickly.
The President has stated our goals as not allowing terrorists to operate from the region. I think that he means that we should not allow the free operation of terrorists in the region because it is not possible to shut them down completely. He also wants to destroy all large terror training camps and prevent them from planning attacks with impunity. Now he has been careful to give some thought to what he would put out as being our goals in the region and if to tell the truth we have done those things already.
The only thing left to do is to set up the government of Afghanistan so that they will be able to function when we leave. The Taliban will certainly seek to topple the new Afghan government if at all possible which would be devastating to the region and the world. President Obama has essentially set himself and this nation up for success by creating definite, focused, realistic objectives.
In my opinion the best course of action for us to take in the region is to pull out most of our forces except for a quick reaction force which would consist of special operators whose job would be to assist the Afghan army in certain situations. We should certainly leave a large contingent of our drones there and we should continue to allow them to operate to take out Taliban and al-Qaeda targets of opportunity. They need to be active and aggressively pursue the enemy wherever he can be found and kill him.
We need to maintain a Rapid Reaction Force here in the United States which would be able to respond to any Middle Eastern emergency within days. Our best bet for fighting terrorism is to pull back and tighten the defenses around our own borders. Military Ring Express