Is the strategy in Afghanistan working? As we marked the 11th anniversary of the war Sunday, the answer is no. The surge that began in 2011 is over. Troops are on their way home, and the force size is what it was when the Obama administration recommitted the nation to the conflict.
Gains made in the field are being reversed, and talk of finding reasonable elements of the Taliban to negotiate a peace seem more of a pipe dream than ever. There has been a disturbing rise in attacks on American soldiers launched by enemies embedded in what are supposed to be allied Afghan army and police forces.
Eleven years of war have put tremendous burdens on members of the military and their families, who have been forced to cope with multiple deployments. Suicide among members of the military is at epidemic proportions, and 2,000 Americans have lost their lives in combat.
If you are looking to fix blame, there are plenty of targets, but when President Obama decided to launch a surge while announcing a date for withdrawal, that gave his administration ownership of the war policy.
This would be a good subject for him to address in his re-election campaign, but he is understandably reluctant to bring it up and Republican Mitt Romney is not pressing the case. He did not mention Afghanistan or the U.S. troops in his nomination speech and has made few references to it since then. There is nothing on the record to explain how a Romney Afghanistan policy would be different from the current one.
If the point of the war was to create a stable government that would prevent the restoration of the country as a home base for international terrorism, it has failed. If the American goal is to maintain a presence on the ground that could strike enemies before they launched attacks, it could be done with less exposure to our troops.
The strikes on al-Qaida targets in Pakistan show that with new technology, the United States does not need a large military force on hand to conduct an anti-terrorism mission.
During this election season, we should demand a new Afghan strategy before there is another anniversary.
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