Your Lefts and Rights: Afghanistan War

This week, we are going to go back in time a bit to a decision that President Obama made on the first of December in 2009. On that day about three months ago, the President committed 30,000 more troops to the fight in Afghanistan. This decision has found its way back into the media over the past week because of a large offensive unleashed by NATO on enemy strong holds in southern Afghanistan. As a result of taking the fight to the enemy, more troops have lost their lives and Americans have started to care again.
When Obama articulated his conclusion to the nation, it was somewhat of a surprise given his liberal background and his extreme delay in making a decision at all. For months the commanding general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, as well as a plethora of conservative leaders had been calling for a similar, if not larger, troop increase. Liberals took that same time to sway the president away from escalating the war and instead put forth a plan to end it.

The conservative's view on Afghanistan is that of an unfinished job, partial justice if Osama were not to be caught, and a potential democracy and ally. They also worry that abandoning Afghanistan without leaving it with the means to protect itself would result in it becoming a terrorist haven once again. Willing to prevent the latter and fulfill the former at all costs means that they advised a troop surge similar to the one seen in Iraq. Helping the conservative cause was the fact that the troop surge in Iraq actually worked and did quell the violence.

Liberals not only wanted no troop increase, they wanted the troops to come home. They'd had enough of witnessing what they would call the second Vietnam and they certainly did not want to see the U.S. spend its time and money nation building. The through-the-roof cost of war could and should be allocated to domestic needs in their eyes. Liberals did not see it as an obligation to continually supervise the rise of a stable Afghan nation.

The problem with the conservative idea is that they did not consult history. We have all heard the phrase "history repeats itself," but for some reason we never seem to apply it. You don't even have to go that far back into the history books to see how miserably we and others have failed in Afghanistan in the past. The Soviets spent a little more than nine years in Afghanistan and accomplished nothing but increasing the demand for coffins and body bags. They tried to implement a government of their own and it collapsed three years after the Soviets withdrew. If this happened to the government they tried to establish, why in the world would we think our government would withstand?

During that same Soviet-Afghan war, we funded and trained a group of fighters to ward off the Soviet occupation. This group was collectively known as the Mujahideen and they are now fighting against us. You read it right: the same groups of people we trained and gave weapons to are now using those skills and hardware against us. What makes us think that this time when we train and equip Afghanis it won't come back to haunt us?

And this is just modern history. The United Kingdom failed on three separate occasions in Afghanistan, but who reads history books anyway?

Democracy may not fit in every corner of the world. Just because we love it, doesn't mean they'll love it. It's time we wrap our heads around it and get our noses out of everyone's business. We cannot force people to live the way we do. When we had our Revolutionary War, it was an awakening in ourselves that sparked the desire for a new form of government. We didn't have advanced weapons or a million man army. If we dictated how we wanted to live on our own, I'm pretty sure Afghanistan can too.

According to costofwar.com, the cost of war in Afghanistan is well in excess of 255 billion dollars. Think of how many kids we could give a higher level of education to or how many homeless people we could feed if that money were available to be allocated in either of those areas. Pouring that money into another nation is preposterous when our nation certainly isn't free of social issues. Lowering our debt is also out of the question if we continue to fight wars.  

When we eventually get out of Afghanistan and the government that we installed topples (because it will) and the training and supplies we gave away are again used against us (and they will), what will you tell the families of the 1,500 or more troops that have lost their lives? End the war.

Tyler Goodwin is a sophomore Business Administration and Justice Studies major at UNH. With this column he hopes to show that it is possible to solve major issues without being divisive or following the doctrine of specific political groups.