This House would abandon the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan

The timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan means withdrawing by the end of 2012, regardless of the security situation, and handing over the conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaida (which will almost certainly still be going on) to a largely Afghan force which is ill-prepared to handle the war on its own. This means that proponents of the timetable withdrawal must support pulling NATO forces out of Afghanistan even if the war is going badly at the end of 2012 and it is clear that the withdrawal will benefit the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the battlefield. "Afghan forces simply do not currently have the capacity to do the protecting themselves at this point and, given the challenges of building up new institutions in Afghanistan after decades of war, will not necessarily have the ability until by the end of 2012.” US and NATO forces are needed to mentor and partner with Afghans as they build up an army and police force largely from scratch. Withdrawing before this task is completed adds up to a prescription for a drying up of intelligence and a Taliban victory.[1]

If the Taliban were thus to come to power in Afghanistan after the timetabled withdrawal, al-Qaeda would not be far behind. The USA's top nemesis would be able to salvage a victory in the very place from which it launched the 9/11 attacks eight years ago. Al-Qaeda would have its favourite bases and sanctuaries back, as well as a major propaganda win.[2]

This defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it open to more attacks.[3]

The West has a security interest in preventing the region from slipping into a maelstrom of conflict. Pakistan, with 170m people and nuclear weapons, is vulnerable to the Taliban’s potent mixture of ethnic-Pushtun nationalism and extremist Islam, as its state power is tenuous. Anarchy in Afghanistan, or a Taliban restoration, would leave it prey to permanent cross-border instability.[4]

Therefore success in Afghanistan is key to the security in Pakistan. The US has even more reasons to care about the security of Pakistan when the India-Pakistan conflict is considered, especially as both sides of this have nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan have come within a hair’s breadth from nuclear conflict twice over Kashmir. If Pakistan were to fall apart, it would potentially leave nuclear weapons and a large military in the hands of extremist Muslim groups, which could lead to a regional war with India. It is a compelling and vital American interest to prevent nuclear conflict in South Asia—which makes “fixing” Afghanistan in some way also a vital American interest, even if this means keeping the troops there past the timetabled withdrawal.[5]

The War on Terror cannot be won if the US and NATO pull out of Afghanistan and rely more simply on offshore military resources. During the 1990s, when the US tried to go after Osama bin Laden without access to nearby bases by using ships based in the Indian Ocean, the two- to four-hour flight times of drones and cruise missiles operating off such ships made prompt action to real-time intelligence impractical.[6]

Since 1979, the US has been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. It has fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and it is uncertain now how this conflict will evolve. However the US should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it is in the US and NATO'S long-term interests to push back — and that eventually, if they do so, extremism will wither.[7]

The timetabled withdrawal from Afghanistan could mean withdrawing before this struggle has been won, and handing a base for exporting terrorism to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Security  comes before other state interests, largely because the rights of all citizens depend on their security first, and so the security dimension here is key. Therefore, in order to protect the security of the US and other NATO countries, the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan should be abandoned, and the troops should remain there until the job is done.

[1] Bruce Riedel, Bruce and O'Hanlon, Michael. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009 http://cpass.georgetown.edu/center/news/AfghanPakistanSection/ 

[2] ibid

[3] The Economist. "Obama's War". 15 October 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14644385?story_id=14644385   

[4] ibid

[5] Foust, Joshua. "The Case for Afghanistan: Strategic Considerations". Registan. 27 August 2009. http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/08/27/the-case-for-afghanistan-strategic-considerations/   

[6] Bruce Riedel, Bruce and O'Hanlon, Michael. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009 http://cpass.georgetown.edu/center/news/AfghanPakistanSection/   

[7] Brooks, David. "The Afghan Imperative". New York Times. 24 September 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper   

Afghanistan is only of limited value to American and other NATO countries' security, especially in the context of other areas where the resources could be used. Amdrew Bacevich argued in 2009: "What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. [...] For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbour—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude."[1]

The sort of fear-mongering about Pakistan, nuclear war and a new 9/11 is the same sort of scare tactics which were used to justify and perpetuate the war in Vietnam. As Peter Navarro argued, "During my senior year in high school, in 1966-67, our local congressman came to speak to us soon-to-be-draftees about the necessity of the Vietnam War. His basic pitch was a frothy combination of Red menace, yellow peril, and domino theory. [...] the speech rang as hollow as a beer keg after a frat party. [...] Today, I get the same kind of hollowness in my gut every time I hear President Barack Obama and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican hawks offer eerily similar arguments for the Afghanistan war. Terrorism is the new Red menace. Yellow peril has morphed into radical Islam. Dominoes, perhaps surprisingly, are still dominoes. In fact, sober analysis of the two major arguments in support of the war leads me to the same conclusion as my gut – let's get the hell out."[2]

Moreover the terrorist threat from Afghanistan is low, Zaid Hamid, head of Brass Tacks, a think-tank based in Pakistan, argues: "Their presence and capacity is greatly exaggerated. It is not possible that the so-called exaggerated threat perception by the West about another 9/11 attack being waged from Pakistan’s FATA or Afghanistan takes place."[3]

[1] Bacevich, Andrew J. "The War We Can't Win". Commonweal. 14 August 2009. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/how-not-to-lose-afghanistan/

[2] Navarro, Peter. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now". OC Register. 25 September 2009. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/afghanistan-212408-war-pakistan.html#   

[3] Leghari, Faryal. "Troop Surge in Afghanistan is a Military Fallacy". Khaleej Times. Spearhead Research. 20 February 2009. http://spearheadresearch.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1343   

The US overthrew the Taliban in the winter of 2001. It has a moral obligation to ensure that when it does leave Afghanistan it does so secure in the knowledge that the country will never again be a launching pad for the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, and that the country is on the way to a measure of stability and prosperity.[1]

Withdrawal before this has been achieved would amount to a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, some of whose troubles are the result of Western intervention. Millions of refugees have returned and millions of children have the chance to go to school. But the West has failed to protect civilian lives, to bring the development it promised, to wean the economy off its poppy-addiction and to ensure fair elections—and failed even to agree about what it is trying to do in the country. Locally, NATO forces have done fine and heroic work. But too often the best initiatives are dropped when the best commanders end their tours. The Afghan conflict, it is often said, has been not an eight-year war, but eight one-year wars. NATO comes off worse each time.[2]

US and NATO forces should persist in Afghanistan because they can do much better in terms of helping Afghanistan, and because they have a moral obligation to do so. It should be remembered that, for the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people - especially women and girls. The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.[3] The US and NATO have a moral obligation to prevent this, and to not withdraw until the future of Afghanistan is secured.

[1] Bergen, Peter. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0907.bergen.html   

[2] The Economist. "Obama's war. Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will.". 15 October 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14644385

[3] Obama, Barack. "A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan". RealClearPolitics. 27 March 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_new_strategy_for_afghanistan.html   

The idea that the US and NATO have a moral obligation falls flat when considering that this would put the US and NATO in a position of having a moral obligation to many other third world countries that are struggling and in conflict. Yet, such a broader obligation obviously does not exist, so why should it exist in Afghanistan? The US/NATO cannot solve Afghanistan's problems, and may actually be doing more harm than good. In so far as a state cannot have a moral obligation to do something impossible, the US and NATO should not have a moral obligation to fulfil the impossible task of stabilizing Afghanistan.

Due to the impotence of the Afghan state and its fledgling armed forces, withdrawing by the timetabled date would most likely mean abandoning the project of building a successful Afghan state, a project which can be successful if NATO troops continue to play their vital role in it. It is a myth that Afghanistan is unconquerable or ungovernable. The level of violence in Afghanistan is actually far lower than most Americans believe. In 2008 more than 2,000 Afghan civilians died at the hands of the Taliban or coalition forces (almost 7 per ten thousand). This was too many, but it was also less than a quarter of the deaths in 2008 in Iraq, a country that is both more sparsely populated and often assumed to be easier to govern. Not only are Afghan civilians much safer under American occupation than Iraqis, they are also statistically less likely to be killed in the war than anyone living in the United States during the early 1990s, when the U.S. murder rate peaked at more than 24,000 killings a year (about 10 per ten thousand).[1]

An assertion that deserves a similarly hard look is the argument that nation building in Afghanistan is doomed because the country isn’t a nation-state, but rather a jury-rigged patchwork of competing tribal groupings. In fact, Afghanistan is a much older nation-state than, say, Italy or Germany, both of which were only unified in the late nineteenth century. Modern Afghanistan is considered to have emerged with the first Afghan empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, and so has been a nation for decades longer than the United States. Accordingly, Afghans have a strong sense of nationhood, and building a state there is possible so long as NATO forces do not abandon the project before it is completed.[2]

A successful Afghan state is in the interests of all NATO countries, for security reasons, and so a compelling reason to abandon the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan is that building a successful Afghan state is entirely possible if NATO stays the course and only withdraws once the job is done.

[1] Bergen, Peter. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0907.bergen.html   

[2] ibid

As the British learned in two wars with Afghanistan in the 1800s and the Soviets learned in their bloodbath of the 1980s, Afghanistan is no country at all. Rather, it's a diverse collection of primitive tribes occupying a harsh landscape pockmarked with tens of thousands of hiding places ideal for guerrilla warfare. The war there is a quagmire and makes Vietnam look like an easy place to conquer.[1] These tribes may consider themselves Afghani but this does not reflect any form of nationalism and does not show any more unity than that someone in Morocco and someone in Saudi Arabia may both consider themselves Arab.

 Why should NATO countries continue to risk their troops in this death trap? Without the timetable for withdrawal, there is no end in sight to this war.  In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, (retired) Lieutenant General David Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan, said the counter-insurgency campaign that he and other experts are advocating could last until at least 2025.[2]

[1] Navarro, Peter. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now". OC Register. 25 September 2009. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/afghanistan-212408-war-pakistan.html#   

[2] Fenton, Anthony. "Afghanistan: A Surge Toward Disaster". Asia Times Online. 18 March 2009. http://mostlywater.org/afghanistan_surge_toward_disaster_0   

The timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan means withdrawing by the end of 2012, regardless of the security situation, and handing over the conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaida (which will almost certainly still be going on) to a largely Afghan force which is ill-prepared to handle the war on its own. This means that proponents of the timetable withdrawal must support pulling NATO forces out of Afghanistan even if the war is going badly at the end of 2012 and it is clear that the withdrawal will benefit the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the battlefield. "Afghan forces simply do not currently have the capacity to do the protecting themselves at this point and, given the challenges of building up new institutions in Afghanistan after decades of war, will not necessarily have the ability until by the end of 2012.” US and NATO forces are needed to mentor and partner with Afghans as they build up an army and police force largely from scratch. Withdrawing before this task is completed adds up to a prescription for a drying up of intelligence and a Taliban victory.[1]

If the Taliban were thus to come to power in Afghanistan after the timetabled withdrawal, al-Qaeda would not be far behind. The USA's top nemesis would be able to salvage a victory in the very place from which it launched the 9/11 attacks eight years ago. Al-Qaeda would have its favourite bases and sanctuaries back, as well as a major propaganda win.[2]

This defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it open to more attacks.[3]

The West has a security interest in preventing the region from slipping into a maelstrom of conflict. Pakistan, with 170m people and nuclear weapons, is vulnerable to the Taliban’s potent mixture of ethnic-Pushtun nationalism and extremist Islam, as its state power is tenuous. Anarchy in Afghanistan, or a Taliban restoration, would leave it prey to permanent cross-border instability.[4]

Therefore success in Afghanistan is key to the security in Pakistan. The US has even more reasons to care about the security of Pakistan when the India-Pakistan conflict is considered, especially as both sides of this have nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan have come within a hair’s breadth from nuclear conflict twice over Kashmir. If Pakistan were to fall apart, it would potentially leave nuclear weapons and a large military in the hands of extremist Muslim groups, which could lead to a regional war with India. It is a compelling and vital American interest to prevent nuclear conflict in South Asia—which makes “fixing” Afghanistan in some way also a vital American interest, even if this means keeping the troops there past the timetabled withdrawal.[5]

The War on Terror cannot be won if the US and NATO pull out of Afghanistan and rely more simply on offshore military resources. During the 1990s, when the US tried to go after Osama bin Laden without access to nearby bases by using ships based in the Indian Ocean, the two- to four-hour flight times of drones and cruise missiles operating off such ships made prompt action to real-time intelligence impractical.[6]

Since 1979, the US has been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. It has fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and it is uncertain now how this conflict will evolve. However the US should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it is in the US and NATO'S long-term interests to push back — and that eventually, if they do so, extremism will wither.[7]

The timetabled withdrawal from Afghanistan could mean withdrawing before this struggle has been won, and handing a base for exporting terrorism to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Security  comes before other state interests, largely because the rights of all citizens depend on their security first, and so the security dimension here is key. Therefore, in order to protect the security of the US and other NATO countries, the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan should be abandoned, and the troops should remain there until the job is done.

[1] Bruce Riedel, Bruce and O'Hanlon, Michael. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009 http://cpass.georgetown.edu/center/news/AfghanPakistanSection/ 

[2] ibid

[3] The Economist. "Obama's War". 15 October 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14644385?story_id=14644385   

[4] ibid

[5] Foust, Joshua. "The Case for Afghanistan: Strategic Considerations". Registan. 27 August 2009. http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/08/27/the-case-for-afghanistan-strategic-considerations/   

[6] Bruce Riedel, Bruce and O'Hanlon, Michael. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009 http://cpass.georgetown.edu/center/news/AfghanPakistanSection/   

[7] Brooks, David. "The Afghan Imperative". New York Times. 24 September 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper   

Afghanistan is only of limited value to American and other NATO countries' security, especially in the context of other areas where the resources could be used. Amdrew Bacevich argued in 2009: "What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. [...] For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbour—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude."[1]

The sort of fear-mongering about Pakistan, nuclear war and a new 9/11 is the same sort of scare tactics which were used to justify and perpetuate the war in Vietnam. As Peter Navarro argued, "During my senior year in high school, in 1966-67, our local congressman came to speak to us soon-to-be-draftees about the necessity of the Vietnam War. His basic pitch was a frothy combination of Red menace, yellow peril, and domino theory. [...] the speech rang as hollow as a beer keg after a frat party. [...] Today, I get the same kind of hollowness in my gut every time I hear President Barack Obama and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican hawks offer eerily similar arguments for the Afghanistan war. Terrorism is the new Red menace. Yellow peril has morphed into radical Islam. Dominoes, perhaps surprisingly, are still dominoes. In fact, sober analysis of the two major arguments in support of the war leads me to the same conclusion as my gut – let's get the hell out."[2]

Moreover the terrorist threat from Afghanistan is low, Zaid Hamid, head of Brass Tacks, a think-tank based in Pakistan, argues: "Their presence and capacity is greatly exaggerated. It is not possible that the so-called exaggerated threat perception by the West about another 9/11 attack being waged from Pakistan’s FATA or Afghanistan takes place."[3]

[1] Bacevich, Andrew J. "The War We Can't Win". Commonweal. 14 August 2009. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/how-not-to-lose-afghanistan/

[2] Navarro, Peter. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now". OC Register. 25 September 2009. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/afghanistan-212408-war-pakistan.html#   

[3] Leghari, Faryal. "Troop Surge in Afghanistan is a Military Fallacy". Khaleej Times. Spearhead Research. 20 February 2009. http://spearheadresearch.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1343   

The US overthrew the Taliban in the winter of 2001. It has a moral obligation to ensure that when it does leave Afghanistan it does so secure in the knowledge that the country will never again be a launching pad for the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, and that the country is on the way to a measure of stability and prosperity.[1]

Withdrawal before this has been achieved would amount to a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, some of whose troubles are the result of Western intervention. Millions of refugees have returned and millions of children have the chance to go to school. But the West has failed to protect civilian lives, to bring the development it promised, to wean the economy off its poppy-addiction and to ensure fair elections—and failed even to agree about what it is trying to do in the country. Locally, NATO forces have done fine and heroic work. But too often the best initiatives are dropped when the best commanders end their tours. The Afghan conflict, it is often said, has been not an eight-year war, but eight one-year wars. NATO comes off worse each time.[2]

US and NATO forces should persist in Afghanistan because they can do much better in terms of helping Afghanistan, and because they have a moral obligation to do so. It should be remembered that, for the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people - especially women and girls. The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.[3] The US and NATO have a moral obligation to prevent this, and to not withdraw until the future of Afghanistan is secured.

[1] Bergen, Peter. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0907.bergen.html   

[2] The Economist. "Obama's war. Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will.". 15 October 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14644385

[3] Obama, Barack. "A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan". RealClearPolitics. 27 March 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_new_strategy_for_afghanistan.html   

The idea that the US and NATO have a moral obligation falls flat when considering that this would put the US and NATO in a position of having a moral obligation to many other third world countries that are struggling and in conflict. Yet, such a broader obligation obviously does not exist, so why should it exist in Afghanistan? The US/NATO cannot solve Afghanistan's problems, and may actually be doing more harm than good. In so far as a state cannot have a moral obligation to do something impossible, the US and NATO should not have a moral obligation to fulfil the impossible task of stabilizing Afghanistan.

Due to the impotence of the Afghan state and its fledgling armed forces, withdrawing by the timetabled date would most likely mean abandoning the project of building a successful Afghan state, a project which can be successful if NATO troops continue to play their vital role in it. It is a myth that Afghanistan is unconquerable or ungovernable. The level of violence in Afghanistan is actually far lower than most Americans believe. In 2008 more than 2,000 Afghan civilians died at the hands of the Taliban or coalition forces (almost 7 per ten thousand). This was too many, but it was also less than a quarter of the deaths in 2008 in Iraq, a country that is both more sparsely populated and often assumed to be easier to govern. Not only are Afghan civilians much safer under American occupation than Iraqis, they are also statistically less likely to be killed in the war than anyone living in the United States during the early 1990s, when the U.S. murder rate peaked at more than 24,000 killings a year (about 10 per ten thousand).[1]

An assertion that deserves a similarly hard look is the argument that nation building in Afghanistan is doomed because the country isn’t a nation-state, but rather a jury-rigged patchwork of competing tribal groupings. In fact, Afghanistan is a much older nation-state than, say, Italy or Germany, both of which were only unified in the late nineteenth century. Modern Afghanistan is considered to have emerged with the first Afghan empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, and so has been a nation for decades longer than the United States. Accordingly, Afghans have a strong sense of nationhood, and building a state there is possible so long as NATO forces do not abandon the project before it is completed.[2]

A successful Afghan state is in the interests of all NATO countries, for security reasons, and so a compelling reason to abandon the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan is that building a successful Afghan state is entirely possible if NATO stays the course and only withdraws once the job is done.

[1] Bergen, Peter. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0907.bergen.html   

[2] ibid

As the British learned in two wars with Afghanistan in the 1800s and the Soviets learned in their bloodbath of the 1980s, Afghanistan is no country at all. Rather, it's a diverse collection of primitive tribes occupying a harsh landscape pockmarked with tens of thousands of hiding places ideal for guerrilla warfare. The war there is a quagmire and makes Vietnam look like an easy place to conquer.[1] These tribes may consider themselves Afghani but this does not reflect any form of nationalism and does not show any more unity than that someone in Morocco and someone in Saudi Arabia may both consider themselves Arab.

 Why should NATO countries continue to risk their troops in this death trap? Without the timetable for withdrawal, there is no end in sight to this war.  In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, (retired) Lieutenant General David Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan, said the counter-insurgency campaign that he and other experts are advocating could last until at least 2025.[2]

[1] Navarro, Peter. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now". OC Register. 25 September 2009. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/afghanistan-212408-war-pakistan.html#   

[2] Fenton, Anthony. "Afghanistan: A Surge Toward Disaster". Asia Times Online. 18 March 2009. http://mostlywater.org/afghanistan_surge_toward_disaster_0   

The on-going NATO mission means continued combat confrontations and an ever-increasing risk to the civilian population of Afghanistan. These sorts of deaths, injuries and destruction of property have so far been demonstrably destructive to the U.S.-led international effort to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the violent insurgency being waged by the Taliban and other militant groups.[1]

According to a report released last January by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, the 2,118 civilians killed in 2008 was an increase of 40% over 2007.[2]

The continued presence of American troops into ethnic Pashtun areas in the Afghan south only galvanizes local people to back the Taliban in repelling the infidels.[3]

A 2009 study by the Carnegie Endowment concluded that "the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban."[4]

What the timetable for withdrawal acknowledges is that there is no state-building military solution in Afghanistan. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad-Mahdi Akhondzadeh said in April of 2009, "The presence of foreign forces has not improved things in the country".[5]

The long-term security interests of the US and NATO would be better served by a military operation centred around targeted strikes against terrorist training camps from offshore or out-of-country special forces or drones, as this removes the aggravating presence of troops on the ground and would lead to fewer civilian casualties.[6]

Looking beyond to the wider world, the NATO mission in Afghanistan has inflamed global Muslim anger and terrorism since its inception, and will continue to do so until it ends. This makes it more difficult for Western and Middle Eastern countries to work together toward mutual objectives, such as peace between Israel and Palestine, a conflict which drives support for terrorism worldwide and helps Al Qaeda recruit.[7]

Al Qaeda has realized all this and aims to drain US resources in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden made the following statement in 2004: "All we have to do is send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the [U.S.] generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses ... so we are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."[8]

Keeping troops in Afghanistan past the withdrawal date would just play into Al Qaeda's plan to trap the US. Therefore the withdrawal date should be adhered to and NATO troops withdrawn from Afghanistan.

[1] Gharib, Ali. "Inevitable: Obama's Surge in Afghanistan Will Bring a Surge in Civilian Deaths". IPS News. 18 February 2009. http://www.alternet.org/world/127676/inevitable:_obama's_surge_in_afghanistan_will_bring_a_surge_in_civilian_deaths/   

[2] Fenton, Anthony. "Afghanistan: A Surge Toward Disaster". Asia Times Online. 18 March 2009. http://mostlywater.org/afghanistan_surge_toward_disaster_0

[3] Kristof, Nicholas. "The Afghanistan Abyss". The New York Times. 5 September 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/opinion/06kristof.html   

[4] Dorronsoro, Gilles. ‘Focus and Exit: An Alternative Strategy for the Afghan War’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2009. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-strategy.pdf  

[5] Tehran Times. "Iran says Afghan troop surge will be unhelpful". Tehran Times. 4 April 2009. http://old.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=191353   

[6] Los Angeles Times. "U.S. considers sending special ops to Afghanistan". Los Angeles Times.26  October 2008. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/26/world/fg-usafghan26   

[7] Friends Committee on National Legislation. "FCNL to Obama: No More Troops to Afghanistan! Invest in Diplomacy & Development". Friends Committee on National Legislation.23 February  2009. http://fcnl.org/   

[8] Ignatius, David. "Road Map for Afghanistan". RealClearPolitics. 19 March 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_roadmap_for_afghanistan.html   

It seems deeply illogical to argue that withdrawing NATO forces, which would essentially allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to win, could somehow lead to these parties being in a weaker position than if NATO forces remained in the country and continued military options against them. As the necessary consequence of withdrawal by the timetable is a Taliban and Al Qaeda victory, arguments that continuing NATO operations 'help' them should be ignored, as a NATO withdrawal would help them even more by removing the one player who could compete with them on the battlefield. 

History suggests the war in Afghanistan cannot be won: Mohammad Omar, leader of the Taliban, has issued a taunting statement reminding Western leaders that for more than a millennium, would-be conquerors have tried and failed to subdue the mountain fastness known as the 'graveyard of empires' (Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., the British in the 1800s, the Soviets from 1979 to 1989): 'The invaders should study the history of Afghanistan. The more the enemy resorts to increasing forces, the more they will face an unequivocal defeat.'[1]

As galling as it is to accept tutelage from one of Osama bin Laden's key enablers, this does seem to be what history teaches. Pouring forces into Afghanistan has always proved counterproductive. The presence of large numbers of foreign troops is the one thing that reliably unites Afghans, if only for long enough to drive the foreigners out. Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War, argued in February of 2009: "The first principle for someone who finds himself in a hole is to stop digging, The US policy 'hole' in Afghanistan is not of the new Administration's making. But it is important for the President to consider if adding new US combat forces in Afghanistan, without a new and comprehensive plan, for US policy there, might be digging an even bigger hole."[2]

This argument similarly applies to keeping NATO forces in Afghanistan past the timetabled withdrawal date: it is just digging a deeper hole. Ann Jones added in 2009 to the argument that the war cannot be won by noting the lack of potential for Afghan forces to ever handle their own security or build a meaningful state: "I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what's getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful... The Afghans were puny by comparison: hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (1.6 meters and thin) - and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flack jacket. [...] American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if, with sufficient training, Afghans can be transformed into scale-model, wind-up American Marines. That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen - and ever faster.”[3]

Both history and NATO's own experiences in Afghanistan lead to the same conclusion: Afghanistan cannot be conquered, and so the timetable for withdrawal should be kept to.

[1] Robinson, Eugene. "In Afghanistan, Downsize." Real Clear Politics. 22 September 22 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/22/in_afghanistan_do wnsize_98403

[2] Heuvel, Katrina vanden, ‘Don’t Bleed Resources in Afghanistan’, The Nation, 17 February 2009, http://www.thenation.com/blog/dont-bleed-resources-afghanistan    

[3] Jones, Ann. "US wins mind, Afghan hearts are lost". Asia Times. 22 September 2009. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KI22Df03.html   

Peter Bergen argues that "Objections to Obama’s ramp-up in Afghanistan begin with the observation that Afghanistan has long been the "graveyard of empires"—as went the disastrous British expedition there in 1842 and the Soviet invasion in 1979, so too the current American occupation is doomed to follow. In fact, any number of empire builders, from Alexander the Great to the Mogul emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to the British in the Second Afghan War three decades after their infamous defeat, have won military victories in Afghanistan. The graveyard of empires metaphor belongs in the graveyard of clichés."[1]

NATO can succeed in nation-building if it persists in empowering and protecting the Afghan state. It should be remembered that Afghanistan has been a successful, stable nation in the past, and could be so again. Afghanistan’s majestic mountains, verdant valleys, and jasmine-scented gardens may once again draw the tourists that once flocked there.[2]

[1] Bergen, Peter. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0907.bergen.html   

[2] ibid