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Its time have our head examined about Afghanistan
OPINION | Fletcher Farrar
After nine years, America’s war in Afghanistan just keeps dragging on. The war’s aimlessness and futility seemed apparent when late last year our sister alternative newsweekly, Fort Worth Weekly, sent a writer and photographer for a firsthand look at the war from the perspective of U. S. troops. Their special report, “The longest war,” shows that in the absence of clear military goals, the soldiers have adopted an admirable purpose – to get each other out alive.
It was heartening to hear Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say publicly last week what others have been saying for a long time. “It seems to be very clear that we are going to have to more narrowly define our mission in Afghanistan,” he told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC on March 4, “and be much more clear to the American people about our current costs, as well as our projected costs in the future.” He said the U. S. needs to “make some judgments about a withdrawal that is not precipitous, but is steady, so that we have much less strain on our armed forces that I believe are badly stretched in the world right now.”
Current Obama administration policy is to begin withdrawing some of the current 100,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July of this year, but full withdrawal wouldn’t come until 2014. U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin told Joe Scarborough of MSNBC in December that he would hold the administration to its promise of some withdrawals this year. “The President gave his word, and I believe he should stand by it.” But so far he has not joined those urging an acceleration of the exit strategy.
Even July seems too long to wait when the strategy seems only to postpone the inevitable. The war costs an estimated $2 billion a week, while the American death toll is climbing rapidly. Americans have lost their taste for protracted and unwinnable wars. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates joined the chorus last month when he told West Point cadets, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia ort into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
Read “The longest war” and see if you don’t agree that it’s time to accelerate the exit strategy. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan. –Fletcher Farrar, editor
