Should we fight on for Afghanistan?

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the death of a Brant Lake soldier, Jeremiah Monroe, killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Martha Foley also reported on the Canadian perspective, which is increasingly gloomy about the war and the prospects for aiding a culture so fundamentally different from ours.

In the days since, the debate has heightened over where America should go next in this eight-year-old conflict.

Is this Iraq, where a little more time and effort will buy us a kind of muddled, half-victory? Or is it Vietnam, unwinnable on almost any terms?

My thought at this point is, neither.

The United States is caught in the throes of something primal and tribal. We invaded in large part because that bitter conflict boiled over and contributed mightily to 9/11.

We also find ourselves protecting people who desperately need protection. I’m thinking primarily here of the women and girls of Afghanistan.

Their treatment at the hands of the Taliban and Al Quaeda will be brutal. Abandoning them to such a fate is abhorrent to me.

I’ve heard the joke from anti-war activists that if we leave, Afghanistan will slide back from the 11th century into the 7th century.

The punchline, in theory, is that the situation is pretty much as bad as it can get. What are a few centuries, when you’re already in the Dark Ages?

I think that’s wrong. I think any argument for pulling out has to confront the reality that the Taliban are nastier than anything we’ve seen in Sudan or Rwanda.

People who advocated for more intervention in those conflicts should explain why we should abandon the Afghans to this brutal and Medieval set of clerics.

Where do I come down? I think Afghanistan deserves more time and greater effort; and we should at long last give Afghanistan our full attention.

It may be George W. Bush’s most lasting moral blunder that he diverted that attention from Afghanistan — a war of necessity — to Iraq, a war of choice.

A renewed effort needs four elements to have a hope of success:

1. An equal focus on security and nation building.
2. A full scale push by Americas diplomatic corps to improve the Afghani government.
3. An effort by the White House to articulate a full plan to the American people
4. A clear vision of what success will look like

Afghanistan will never look like the West, or even like Turkey or Kuwait. But there is still a chance to prevent it from looking like Somalia or Cambodia.

I think it’s our responsibility to try. Your thoughts? Post below.