Thirty Thousand Soldiers for $30 Billion!?!

Expectations over the past weeks were positive as U.S. President Barack Obama responded to the views of military generals who urged him to send more troops to Afghanistan, a move that had been promised since the election campaign. He has fulfilled this promise not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, requested to increase the number of troops by 40,000. This increase wasn’t compatible with Obama’s views or that of the American public, so the result is a reduction to 30,000 troops.

In his declaration of the new Afghanistan strategy, which he delivered to the United States Military Academy at West Point, Obama used the same tone as Bush did to rally support for his decision to send more troops. He told his audience that even as he spoke, al Qaeda was planning attacks against the U.S. and offered the same theory to allies to encourage them to send more troops.

The brunt of the war in Afghanistan waged on behalf of NATO still falls on the Americans’ shoulders, however, as allies lag in responding to the request for additional forces. This time, Nicolas Sarkozy did not hesitate to refuse and neither did Australia, which rarely refuses America’s requests. Germany mulled over plans to withdraw while Silvio Berlusconi agreed to send more troops and Gordon Brown committed to increasing his troops by only 500 soldiers. Other allies hesitated not only in increasing the number of their forces, but also refused to send those available to the front lines. Some of them, Italy and France in particular, got involved by allegedly paying money to buy back the lives of their soldiers from the Taliban. Is anyone still convinced that these world leaders believe they have been fighting a winnable war? Undoubtedly not, but Obama behaves otherwise!

In addition, Obama has endorsed a timeline for withdrawal after only 19 months, which would only encourage the threat of possible terrorist attacks within the U.S. If Americans have been unable to resolve the war in Afghanistan after eight years, they certainly will not be able to put an end to it in a year and a half. The Taliban is not an army but a resistance movement that has support and popularity among the Afghani people. Perhaps, this is why both Hillary Clinton and Gen. McChrystal have failed to elaborate on Obama’s plan for withdrawal.

While it is true that Afghanistan may not be another Vietnam, as Obama has stated in response to certain critics, winning the war seems to be an impossible task, regardless of the tactics used.

While Americans were able to train and subsequently rely on local militias in Iraq, replicating this achievement in Afghanistan by buying off tribal leaders seems highly unlikely. This, of course, is because the ground conditions in both situations are completely different. As everyone is aware, the Karzai regime is much weaker than the government established by Shi’ite militias in Iraq, which contributed to minimizing resistance among the Iraqi people. Coalition forces also contributed to the process under the pretext of confronting Iran and its allies, knowing full well that this experiment has yet to experience any success. The U.S. forces suffer continued violence and instability on one side and the force of Iranian influence on the other.

More importantly, the situation in Afghanistan is made all the more difficult by the ideological resistance movement and the refusal of its leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to open up a line of dialogue with the U.S. to discuss anything other than the withdrawal of troops.

As the situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate and add to the crisis of American foreign policy, the only viable solution for Obama is a quick withdrawal. If he insisted on this no-win solution, however, the results would be failure, defeat and retreat, as well as the unnecessary hemorrhaging of lives and money and the loss of prestige and influence.

Finally, the annual cost of 30,000 soldiers is $30 billion. If this amount were paid out to only a quarter of the Afghani people for logistical ammunition in lieu of sending more troops, the situation would be much different. Paying $100 or even $500 to the victims of indiscriminate U.S. bombing would only increase the Afghanis’ hatred of the American invaders who are waging war under the pretext of fighting terrorism while they are killing innocents.