Why Are We in Afghanistan?

David Wood
Politics Daily

Posted:09/22/09

Even before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's war assessment landed in Washington, the capital was in a frenzy over what to do about Afghanistan. But publication of the 66-page (redacted) document this week by the Washington Post has whipped the frenzy into near-hysteria, with a stampede of politicians and talking heads shouting in effect that "Something must be done!'' and predicting dire consequences if something isn't.

Perhaps that's understandable, given the commander's grim assessment of how the war inside Afghanistan is going: The enemy is gaining, the current strategy is failing, the United States could lose the war without more resources. Not just that, but the U.S. and its allies must change their entire war-fighting culture "profoundly.''

Oddly, though, the McChrystal memo doesn't raise or answer this question: Why are we doing this? It's the nagging question that has pestered the United States during the almost eight years since U.S. forces demolished al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and chased the Taliban off to Pakistan in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. It is the reason, after that first satisfying retaliatory strike, no one has had much enthusiasm for prosecuting a long, difficult and costly war in Afghanistan, except that it seemed somehow more moral than the mess in Iraq.

Having just returned from six weeks in Afghanistan documenting the earnest and hard (and dangerous) work that Americans are doing there, I had hoped that someone, among all the smart people in the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department and even Congress, would straighten this mess out and state clearly and plainly, why, exactly, we are in Afghanistan.

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