The North County Times September 04, 2009
MILITARY: Marines prep for possible second surge to Afghanistan
By Mark Walker
President Barack Obama is spending this holiday weekend weighing what to do in Afghanistan, the rugged Asian nation where the war against the hard-line Taliban and al-Qaida has raged for nearly a decade.
Taming factions in the landlocked country, which is said to have harbored the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, has proven as difficult for the U.S. and its NATO allies as it did for the Russians, who withdrew in 1989 after their own 10 years of war.
Now, the president must decide whether to stay, a commitment that could require billions more dollars and thousands more troops, including U.S. Marines and sailors stationed at Camp Pendleton and Miramar.
Whatever he decides after evaluating a report prepared by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the overall U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the risk is great.
The Taliban appear stronger than ever, the U.S. body count continues to climb and the government in Kabul has little influence over great swaths of the country.
The voices calling for withdrawal say any emerging terror camps can be wiped out by missiles and bombs delivered from the safety of the skies.
Proponents of staying the course say more troops are necessary to crush the Taliban and weaken al-Qaida so it does not threaten to overrun Pakistan and gain access to that country's nuclear arsenal.
No choice
Two people who closely follow developments in Afghanistan say Obama has little option but to send more troops, as McChrystal is expected to seek.
"If he doesn't, and there's another attack on the U.S. or West by al-Qaida, Obama will be blamed for not having prevented it," said John Pike of the military monitoring firm GlobalSecurity.org. "The argument will be ... if only McChrystal had been given more troops when he asked for them."
Obama spent part of the last week reviewing McChrystal's assessment of Afghanistan. McChrystal apparently did not provide a lot of optimism in the report, which has not been made public.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious," the general said when his report was delivered. McChrystal called for a "revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort."
Pike said part of that revision needs to take into account the harsh realities of Afghanistan, a country of 28 million people that is one of the poorest in the world, with little electricity and few paved roads, and where generational allegiance to clan and tribe supersede loyalty to any government.
"We have to have policies that are aligned with the realities of Afghanistan," Pike said. "The notion that we are going to be able to increase trust in the central government is insane.
"This is a war that will be won only by building a really big Afghan army and killing the enemy."
Many analysts agree that the root of the problems now confronting the military was the Bush administration's complacency toward Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban government was toppled in November 2001. The invasion and resulting insurgent war in Iraq from 2003 on gobbled up vast quantities of U.S. troops, materials and money.
"We're in a worse position today to defeat the Taliban than we were in the beginning," said Jonathan Morgenstein, a Marine Corps reserve captain who served two tours in Iraq and now works as a national security analyst at the Third Way, a progressive think tank in Washington.
"By increasing the number of troops there, it will give us and the Afghans the time they need to develop a larger and stronger army," he said. "Obama needs to make the case that we need the time and resources to make this happen. The consequences of failure are that al-Qaida and the Taliban will control large parts of Afghanistan and will have free rein to conduct attacks against us and our allies."
Morgenstein, who also spent time at the Pentagon working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if that approach had been taken when the war began, he is certain the Taliban would no longer be a threat and al-Qaida would be scattered to the winds.
Election and opposition
Clark Gibson, a political science professor and director of the International Studies Program at UC San Diego, just returned from Afghanistan, where he served as an election monitor during the Aug. 20 presidential election.
As of last week, President Hamid Karzai was leading with slightly more than 47 percent of the vote. He needs more than 50 percent to avoid a runoff election against former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
Gibson's work was conducted in the opium-rich southern province of Helmand, where the vast majority of Marines are stationed, including more than 1,200 from Camp Pendleton's 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.
It was an almost surreal experience, he said.
"We could hear rockets going off and hear and feel the concussions from IEDs," he said in reference to roadside bombs that were detonated near the polling station he was observing in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. "The fact that anyone even came out to vote was amazing to me."
While numerous allegations of fraud are dogging the election, Gibson said neither he nor the monitoring team he was part of saw any major irregularities. There were voters who refused to dip their finger in dark ink to show they had voted ---- out of fear the Taliban would see and cut off the finger, he said.
Regardless of the election's outcome, Gibson said it is in the best interest of the U.S. to stay the course in a war that recent polls show has rapidly declining support at home.
"Obama has to go all in," Gibson said. "Yes, Afghanistan is a tough place because of its history and its ethnic groups and all the issues that don't easily boil down when discussing international politics. But if we're truly worried about the Taliban and al-Qaida and them getting access to nuclear arms in Pakistan, we have to stay."
The academics went out the window, he said, when he attended memorial services for U.S. troops killed during the short time he was there.
"It never becomes more real than when you do that," Gibson said. "This thing is real and it involves real people, and it's extremely important."
Hearts and minds
One of the issues Obama is considering is a proposal to reduce the number of noncombat troops in Afghanistan and replacing them with an equal number of "trigger pullers," thereby not increasing the overall U.S. troop count.
At least one local academic says that could be a mistake, stressing that raising the Afghan economy in places such as Helmand, through civil works similar to what the U.S. did in Iraq, is as important as military might.
"The Afghans I have talked to say that while the U.S. needs to deal with the Taliban, we also have to address human needs," said Ron Bee, a foreign affairs lecturer at San Diego State University. "Building more hospitals might gain more ground in the long run than increasing the number of tanks."
In the run-up to last year's U.S. presidential election, Obama vowed to get the U.S. out of Iraq and put more emphasis on Afghanistan, which he said represented the real threat to American interests.
"The pressure is now on Obama to make the case that remaining in Afghanistan will prevent another 9/11 and keeping the fight there keeps it from here," Bee said. "What is so concerning to many people is this has all the markings of a long, drawn-out campaign with no end in sight."
As Congress reconvenes this week after its long August recess, national health care and Afghanistan are certain to dominate the political discussion.
Among the challenges is the growing wariness about the war in Afghanistan. Daily reports of the deaths and wounding of U.S. troops and an acknowledged lack of progress led conservative commentator George Will last week to call for an immediate withdrawal.
Oceanside resident Bob Kerber, a World War II Navy veteran, agrees.
"I just don't see an overriding national interest there," Kerber said, adding that the deaths of 91 U.S. troops in July and August ---- the highest two-month death toll of the war ---- seems a senseless waste.
"I just don't think it's a winnable war," Kerber said. "I think we can make a deal with the Taliban and stop wasting lives and resources there."
© Copyright 2009, North County Times - Californian
