I have no problem with the president taking his time to figure this out. He and we are going to have to live with this decision for a long time. For my money, though, I wish there was less talk today about how many more troops to send and more focus on what kind of Afghan government we have as our partner.What bothers me as a Canadian is that the public has long said "get out of Afghanistan" but our governments, under pressure from the US, have kept troops there. We are now coming up to the end of the original commitment, and as far as I can tell the government will roll over and appease the Americans by extending -- and heaven forbid, increasing! -- the commitment. In my mind, quit now and save lives. Only intervene if there is a clear and present danger from Afghanistan.
Because when you are mounting a counterinsurgency campaign, the local government is the critical bridge between your troops and your goals. If that government is rotten, your whole enterprise is doomed.
Independent election monitors suggest that as many as one-third of votes cast in the Aug. 20 election are tainted and that President Hamid Karzai apparently engaged in massive fraud to come out on top. Yet, he is supposed to be the bridge between our troop surge and our goal of a stable Afghanistan. No way.
I understand the huge stakes in stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our top commander there who is asking for thousands more troops, is not wrong when he says a lot of bad things would flow from losing Afghanistan to the Taliban. But I keep asking myself: How do we succeed with such a tainted government as our partner?
It makes no sense to try to do "nation building" in a place where the people are so hostile to Western values. You can't save a drowning person who doesn't want to be saved. Instead, you admit the limits of your abilities and you comment on how tragic it is, but you walk away. There is no point in throwing blood and treasure into a cesspit.
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