Is it finally time to "finish the job" in Afghanistan?
In October 2002, Barack Obama -- then a relatively obscure Illinois state senator -- made a speech against the Iraq war. "I don't oppose all wars," he told a Chicago crowd in words that soon became famous. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war. ... You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda."
As Obama moved to the U.S. Senate in 2005, and then on to the presidential campaign trail, the pledge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan became a central part of his foreign policy platform.
As politics, it was effective. But as policy, it no longer looks like such a no-brainer.
That's not because Obama is wrong when he insists that we ignore Afghanistan at our peril. If Afghanistan implodes and becomes a haven for Al Qaeda again, U.S. and global security will be threatened.
And if the violence in Afghanistan continues to spill over into nuclear-armed Pakistan and triggers the collapse of that country's fragile civilian government, the dangers are even greater.
The problem with "finishing the job" in Afghanistan is that it's no longer entirely clear what the "job" is, or what it would mean to "finish" it.
As the Bush administration rushed to war in Iraq, Afghanistan became America's orphaned war. U.S. troops in Afghanistan struggled to get resources, equipment and the attention of policymakers. Planned reconstruction projects languished, and early military gains began to erode. Afghan civilian support slipped. With too few ground troops, the U.S.-led coalition began to rely more and more on close air support (in 2005, there were 7,421 close air support missions; in 2008, there were 19,603). But the increase in aerial bombing dramatically increased unintended civilian deaths (bombs don't discriminate between terrorists and children). Civilian support eroded further.
As NATO redoubled its efforts to drive the Taliban and Al Qaeda from the Afghan mountains, militants operating in Afghanistan took refuge in neighboring Pakistan's ungoverned border regions. From there, they increasingly staged cross-border raids into Afghanistan, disrupted NATO supply lines between Pakistan and Afghanistan and carried out attacks on targets linked to the unpopular Pakistani government.
