In Afghanistan, on track to nowhere
By Eugene Robinson
WashPost
Friday, December 17, 2010
The good news is that President Obama's strategy in Afghanistan is "on track." The bad news is that the track runs in a circle.
There have been "notable operational gains" in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to a National Security Council-led assessment released Thursday, but this progress is "fragile and reversible." This sounds like a bureaucratic way of admitting that we take two steps forward, followed by two steps back. Indeed, the review acknowledges that after nine years of war, "Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to be the operational base for the group that attacked us on 9/11."
What's not reversible is the human toll of Obama's decision to escalate the war. This has been by far the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 489 killed. It has also been a brutal year for Afghan and Pakistani civilians caught in the middle of what increasingly looks like a classic war of attrition - except with missile-firing robot aircraft circling overhead.
Similarly irreversible is the enormous cost of the war - about $120 billionâ a year - at a time when the federal government is running a trillion-dollar deficit and municipalities are so broke that police officers, firefighters and teachers are being laid off.
(More here.)
WashPost
Friday, December 17, 2010
The good news is that President Obama's strategy in Afghanistan is "on track." The bad news is that the track runs in a circle.
There have been "notable operational gains" in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to a National Security Council-led assessment released Thursday, but this progress is "fragile and reversible." This sounds like a bureaucratic way of admitting that we take two steps forward, followed by two steps back. Indeed, the review acknowledges that after nine years of war, "Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to be the operational base for the group that attacked us on 9/11."
What's not reversible is the human toll of Obama's decision to escalate the war. This has been by far the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 489 killed. It has also been a brutal year for Afghan and Pakistani civilians caught in the middle of what increasingly looks like a classic war of attrition - except with missile-firing robot aircraft circling overhead.
Similarly irreversible is the enormous cost of the war - about $120 billionâ a year - at a time when the federal government is running a trillion-dollar deficit and municipalities are so broke that police officers, firefighters and teachers are being laid off.
(More here.)
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