Afghanistan

With all of the problem areas, national and international in nature, that are facing Americans in general and the Obama Administration specifically as we enter into the year of 2010, none is worst than Afghanistan. Is it possible to declare even one aspect of the American effort in that exotic and backward nation a success? Other than the daily demonstration of the heroic nature of the members of the American military stationed in that foreign nation, the answer is no.

The Afghanistan government is still and apparently again under the political control of Hamid Karzai and although his normal public attire is most unique and attractive, his efforts to bring stability to that part of the world has been a failure. There was nothing reassuring about his contested reelection particularly the "voluntarily" withdrawal of his last opponent from a runoff. Since that time, Karzai has attempted to establish an executive government structure by sending to the Afghan parliament a series of cabinet nominations only to have 17 of his 24 choices rejected. Several important positions were filled but generally the assertiveness of the parliament has placed a paralysis on the Afghan national government. The outcome of this impasse has been in favor of the radicals who daily attack with deadly impact the representatives of the military, government and establishment of Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, these deadly attacks far too often take American lives.

Most recently, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center For Strategic & International Studies expressed in a lengthy article on the status of Afghanistan at the close of 2009, that the "US and its allies won largely meaningless tactical clashes while steadily losing the country and the people". He further expressed that there was a "virtual power vacuum in much of Afghanistan".

No American ever wants our military to abandon a fight once our opening effort has been rightfully initiated, but in Afghanistan there has not yet even been established a realistic goal. There is only a continuous drain of American assets and, more sadly, American lives. Obama's most recent, and long delayed, decision to expand the number of US forces in Afghanistan even carried a caveat that the military would come home not on achieving certain goals but rather by a pre-set time table. An absolutely wrong, losing approach.

Obama will be President until January of 2013 but his Afghanistan efforts can be stopped or even corrected as early as January of 2011 with a new Republican/anti-Obama controlled Congress. One of our political goals for 2010 is to secure from Obama's control at least the House of Representatives and via that power base correct the failing efforts in Afghanistan.