Afghanistan

President Obama plans to withdraw 33,000 soldiers from Afghanistan. Cynics will point out that political motives due to the coming election play a role in this, and they are right. Nevertheless, there is an understanding that one cannot change a country against its will, even after years of occupation.

U.S. troops entered Afghanistan in late 2001 as a reaction to the September 11 attacks. The goal was to overthrow the Taliban and clean out the al-Qaida bases. It was an invasion that was morally legitimate — something that could not be said of the first Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq, where the entire world was systematically lied to about weapons of mass destruction. The Afghanistan invasion has not been entirely unsuccessful: The Taliban was forced into a role of armed opposition and Osama bin Laden has been eliminated.

Still, the naïve belief that 100,000 American soldiers would be enough to change the country into a Western democracy has seriously been damaged. It was predictable, though; democracy is rarely, if ever, forced onto a country through military occupation. It needs to be built up by civil society at the local level. Otherwise, one will eventually end up in a desperate Vietnam scenario.

Now that bin Laden has been liquidated, Obama is in a position to command the retreat of his troops without the risk of being portrayed as a “softie,” and he has enough intelligence to do it gradually in order to prevent the country from ending up in a new civil war. Even the coalition partners were positive; both the United Kingdom and France jumped to the occasion to announce their retreats.

This is where Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem hid behind an argument about “current affairs” in order to avoid making a statement. It will be the responsibility of the next elected Belgian government to decide on the fate of the 600 Belgian soldiers in Afghanistan. De Crem knows that this debate is of less interest to the public eye than the text messages from Yves Leterme, the outgoing Belgian prime minister. Fortunately unlike the Netherlands (where a government collapsed over this issue), the Belgian military airport, Melsbroek, still has not received any body bags with Belgian soldiers.