Here's an article that decries this:
Jakarta GlobeAshley J. Tellis
April 14, 2009
Despite opposition from many within the Democratic Party and even within the White House against deepening US involvement in Afghanistan, President Obama has courageously decided to fight this war — using, as he put it, “all elements of our national power to defeat Al Qaeda, and to defend America, our allies, and all who seek a better future.” In a White Paper, his administration has affirmed that Washington aims “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually destroy extremists and their safe havens” within the “Af-Pak” region because doing so constituted America’s “vital national security interest.”
All this is good, but by failing to admit, out of political convenience, that the United States will engage in nation-building in Afghanistan — even as he embarks on just that mission — Obama risks undermining his own strategy.=snip=
It is to President Obama’s credit that, despite strong pressures emerging from various quarters, he has rejected all of these alternatives in favor of building an effective democratic state in Afghanistan. That is the good news. If success in Afghanistan — understood as the extirpation of Al Qaeda and the marginalization of the Taliban as an armed opposition — is to be achieved,
Washington and its partners will have no choice but to erect an effective Afghan state that can control its national territory and deliver its citizens security, responsive governance and economic development necessary to ensure internal stability. Nothing less will suffice for attaining even the most minimal strategic aim in Kabul. Obama’s new “Af-Pak” policy suggests that he has understood this clearly and
his administration’s White Paper corroborates his intention to pursue precisely this goal. The bad news, however, is that the administration has spelled this out only indistinctly and by circumlocution.President Obama has asserted that the United States will have a “clear and focused goal,” namely, “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” Toward this end, he has rejected any “return to Taliban rule”; he has upheld the need for “a more capable, accountable and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people”; and he has endorsed the objective of “developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced US assistance.”
Whether explicitly admitted or not, these propositions indicate that the United States will not abdicate state building in Afghanistan, will not recognize the Taliban as an acceptable Islamist group in contrast to, for example, Al-Qaeda, and will not exit Afghanistan either as an end in itself or to better focus on Pakistan, as some analysts have suggested. The administration’s reiteration of the need for “a more capable, accountable and effective government in Afghanistan” also implicitly conveys a rejection of all ambiguous strategies of governance, a refusal to integrate an unrepentant Taliban into any Afghan organs of rule, and a decisive repudiation of authoritarianism as a solution to the political problems in Kabul.
But the failure to transparently declare that the United States is committed to building an effective democratic state in Afghanistan — a circumvention owed probably as much to appeasing fears within the Democratic Party as it is to calming NATO partners about nation-building — has opened the door to unreasonable expectations that his strategy for defeating terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be implemented without what the New York Times calls “the vast attempt at nation-building the Bush administration had sought in Iraq.”
As the civilian surge already underway in Afghanistan suggests, the administration understands that successful counterterrorism needs successful state building. But the failure to own up to this could prove to be the strategy’s undoing — within Congress and among the allies. Accordingly, the president should clarify this ambiguity at the earliest opportunity.=snip=
Full article:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=440708&mesg_id=440708 Here's the white paper:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/27/A-New-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/PS thanks for taking the time to watch that documentary, have you seen the Al Jazeera English and PBS Pakistan ones yet? If not, I can link you up...
PPS
I am usually anti-war, I fought long and hard with invasion of Iraq supporters for about 7 months leading up to March 2003 in AOL chatrooms and went on as many marches as I possibly could, as it was clear to anyone with half a brain-cell that the
excuse to carry it out was being built on lies and disinformation and the aftermath would be unthinkable (I was living in London at the time and, even though it didn't make much difference in the end, the media there was not behind the Iraq invasion, unlike in the US where everyone seemed to be behind this badly thought out illegal act).
However, after watching Beneath the Veil and the 9/11 atrocity, I've been looking at Afghanistan as a place that needs a lot of help. Unfortunately, this help cannot be given from a distance. The reconstruction/sustainable development of Afghanistan's infrastructure can only be carried out in a secure environment. An environment in which civilian aid workers are not kidnapped and beheaded. Common sense dictates that this secure environment can only be achieved by having enough 'on the ground' soldiers. The aerial bombings will lessen a great deal (and only be brought in to support troops during man to man combat) when we finally have enough forces on the ground to hold the ground we have won - something that clearly cannot be done with the amount of troops we have there at the moment...
Some thoughts I shared in a previous thread that I think are worth repeating:
...if we pull out the Taliban death cult will most certainly get back to imposing their reign of terror on Afghanistan in a short amount of time? When that happens, Afghanistan will be shut off from the outside world, again. If you haven't seen it already and want to know what life was like under the Taliban, the documentary below is a must see. I remember watching it on TV when I was in England before 9/11 and I thought to myself, someone needs to stop this psycho-sadist/misogynistic madness. After getting increasingly concerned about the ethnic cleansing that was happening there, for the 1st time in my life I was actually glad to see a country being invaded and had hopes that all the billions promised by various countries for reconstruction ($5billion at the time, if I remember correctly) would come through with haste, the reconstruction/development of the infrastructure would quickly get under way and the Afghan women could finally be treated like human beings. That pledged money never did come through (
http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/62-international-politics/4847-the-tragedy-of-afghan-aid">The Tragedy of Afghan Aid) and for 8 long years we've watched in dismay ever since
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501030721-464487,00.html">attention on Afghanistan waned and was focused on the illegal invasion and subsequent
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=789547337385191959">pilfering and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3168421456806470433&ei=lzl_Sf7UI4PcwgO_vrGjDA&q=Iraq+for+Sale+The+War+Profiteers+&dur=3">cronyism in Iraq.
As I've said before, Afghanistan and Iraq are two different situations. We should never have gone into Iraq (I was totally against the 1st Gulf war, too) and should have finished the job off properly in Afghanistan when we had a chance to do it quickly. However, that's not what happened and we cannot leave Afghanistan and let it return to the failed brutalized state it was.
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