US Politics Must Not Drive Afghanistan Mission
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last week, 43% of Americans believe that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting despite the costs—a 12-point increase since March. The poll results, the Post reports, indicate that support for President Barack Obama’s war strategy has improved, especially among Democratic and independent voters, even though the bump in the president’s approval rating post-Osama bin Laden’s death has largely faded. The data also reveals that while nearly three-fourths of Americans believe the United States should withdraw “substantial” US forces from Afghanistan this summer—the direction the White House may be leaning—50% think the administration will not do so. The upswing in support for the president’s handling of the war and popular sentiment biased towards a drawdown of US troops are cause for concern: As campaign season gears up, the president may jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan in order to gain favor with the American public.
Domestic politics, however, should not drive strategy. Frederick and Kimberly Kagan argue in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that conditions on the ground necessitate the current troop level in order to effectively keep pressure on terrorist groups and build on the critical gains made in the last year and a half. Premature withdrawal, the Kagans explain, would likely doom the campaign’s success altogether:
The Afghan government will behave more counterproductively the more it believes that the U.S. isn’t serious about succeeding. The Pakistani military is much more likely to double down on its support for insurgent proxies in Afghanistan if Mr. Obama reinforces its decades-long conviction that America will inevitably abandon the region. And Pakistani failures to address terrorist bases on their own territory will be compounded by the re-emergence of such sanctuaries in Afghanistan… If Mr. Obama announces the withdrawal of all surge forces from Afghanistan in 2012, the war will likely be lost. Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other global terrorist groups will almost certainly re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan. The Afghan state would likely collapse and the country would descend into ethnic civil war.
The terrorist threat to the United States is alive and well, as I stated last week. The current strategy in place has allowed coalition forces to drive out the Taliban from the south and significantly weaken the presence of al Qaeda and other militant groups keen on attacking the United States. Withdrawing US troops prematurely would have catastrophic consequences for US national security and waste the sacrifices made in Afghanistan. Popular attitudes and domestic politics, though powerful forces in Washington, should not dictate war strategy or policy.
Katherine Faley is a research analyst at AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
