Author: Dean DeChiaro
Last May, when President Obama replaced the top commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, he effectively took ownership of the war in Afghanistan.
Two months prior to that, he presented his new strategy for the region. The plan outlined a new campaign, one aimed at defeating the Taliban once and for all through direct counterinsurgency. However, what it did not specify was whether or not the effort would require an influx of troops in the country to complete the mission’s objectives. This is the question that now faces the president, and he needs to make a decision quickly, because the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating more and more by the day.
Gen. McChrystal’s first order of business upon assuming command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was to complete a 60-day tour of the country, meeting with international and Afghan military leaders, assessing how best to attack the challenges presented by the Taliban and al Qaeda, and deciding if more troops would be needed, and if so, how many.
His classified assessment was released last week and, as many experts predicted, it did contain a recommendation that more troops be sent to Afghanistan or else the military effort, as McChrystal put it, “would likely end in failure.” Now Obama faces yet another critical moment in his presidency. To surge or not to surge?
There are two main factors that will play into his final decision. The first is the political situation at home. How will Congress, where Democrats are becoming more skeptical about the effort in Afghanistan, react to a request from the President for more troops? Last week during a hearing, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed serious skepticism towards the opinion of Admiral Mike Mullen, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that more troops would most likely be necessary. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she does not “think there’s a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or the Congress.”
Secondly, President Obama needs to weigh the strategic pros and cons of sending more troops. While the 2007 troop surge in Iraq was paramount in stabilizing that situation there, the picture in Afghanistan is completely different. In Afghanistan, there is a weaker government, a weaker national military, a weaker police force, and a more coordinated enemy. Up until about a month ago, the Taliban all but controlled the entirety of southern Afghanistan. Even now, they still wield major power throughout the country mainly because they provide better employment than the army and continue to rule the opium trade. McChrystal’s argument for more troops isn’t without reason.
So would a troop surge be worth it? The only way to answer this question is to decide what exactly we hope to achieve. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been consistent in their assertions that the objective is to defeat the Taliban and stop al Qaeda from planning terrorist activities inside Afghanistan. However, throughout the last eight years, both military and civilian operations have increasingly resembled the nation building activities that we pursued in Iraq. Accomplishing both these goals would require more troops.
Obama does have options. He needs to put more pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s newly re-elected government to strengthen its influence outside of Kabul. He also needs to convince the international community that Afghanistan is the good war, not Iraq, and failure in this conflict will be devastating to international security. And lastly, he needs to work with Generals McChrystal and David Petraeus to remobilize the 68,000 troops already in Afghanistan so that they can wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda.
When these tasks are completed, if more troops are needed, then President Obama will have to send them, or face his foreign policy Waterloo. Afghanistan is deteriorating quickly, and while a troop surge may be inevitable, the situation is far too complicated to assume that it would be a cure-all in a country that has faced perpetual conflict since the beginning of history.
Dean DeChiaro is a sophomore History major. He can be reached at dechiaro@oxy.edu.
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