Obama Administration Goals in Afghanistan
One important question that’s been kicking around in Washington is how will the administration define its goals in Afghanistan. Now fresh in my inbox from the State Department is the answer:
Achieving our core goal is vital to U.S. national security. It requires, first of all, realistic and achievable objectives. These include:
- Disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.
- Promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people and can eventually function, especially regarding internal security, with limited international support.
- Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance.
- Assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan and a vibrant economy that provides opportunity for the people of Pakistan.
- Involving the international community to actively assist in addressing these objectives for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an important leadership role for the UN.
I think this falls somewhere between what those pushing for a paring-back of goals have had in mind and what the neocons pushing back against that talk have been saying. Of course, the neocon adoption of maximalist objectives in Afghanistan is a bit of an after-the-fact phenomenon since back in the winter of 2001-2002 this was the crew that pushed, successfully, for us to ignore Afghanistan in favor of a senseless war in Iraq. So for the past seven years we’ve been adrift in Afghanistan without real policy objectives of any kind.
22 Responses to “Obama Administration Goals in Afghanistan”
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March 27th, 2009 at 10:28 am
In a previous post Matt wrote:
“Having failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan, Bush and the Iraq hawks handed the Obama administration a war that promises to be as difficult and costly as Iraq has been -– if not more.”
This would only be true if Obama decided to go on fighting in Afghanistan, as now seems so. Again, WHY ARE WE THERE AT ALL?
March 27th, 2009 at 10:32 am
This sounds more in line with the plan that he actually laid out in his speech. I got the sense, though, that in the speech itself he narrowly stated eliminating Al Qaeda as the goal, and could have done a much better job subsequently linking it to the broad effort he’s asking America to make.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Pakistan: Our Peidmont or our Cambodia?
March 27th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Hey, just one quick question: Everybody keeps talking about “the Taliban.” Can somebody define this for me? Does it mean “anybody who shoots at us”? “Afghan nationalists”? Or do they have tattoos? Uniforms? Gang signs? Is there a genetic marker?
Sorry for asking this sort of turd-in-the-punch-bowl question, but I just thought it might be helpful to have some idea of who the enemy is here.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Matt’s headline is slightly misleading. This is a set of strategic goals for Pakistan at least as much as Afghanistan. Pakistan is mentioned in three bullets. Afghanistan in four.
And the most important goal on the list is probably #4 — stable constitutional gov’t in Pakistan. Because Afghanistan doesn’t have the bomb.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:03 am
This is good news insofar as it doesn’t include(1)the word “democracy” and (2)the war on drugs. You’re never going to have a democracy in Afghanistan. I hope goal number two doesn’t imply the need to create a strong, centralized government in Afghanistan because that will never happen either.
Trying to stop opium production was always a ridiculous goal. What country would willingly allow foreigners to come in and destroy an industry that represents the majority of the country’s GDP. We can’t win the drug war here. We certainly can’t win the drug war in Mexico or Colombia. And there’s no way in hell we could win it in Afghanistan.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:07 am
For what it’s worth, political analysts on TV here in Pakistan are saying they don’t think there’s much new, strategically, about the plan as far as the Pakistan portion of it is concerned. They are mentioning the increased financial commitment to non-military development but seem to think there’s no real breakthrough in terms of overall strategy. The drone attacks are a real sore point, and not addressing those is being seen as a glaring omission in terms of building a productive joint effort.
Of course they themselves aren’t offering any new / intelligent solutions either.
@Ted: yes, a stable constitutional govt here is important, but equally important will be making sure the annual 1.5 billion ends up getting used productively.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Having the right objectives is not enough, we won;t be able to accomplish them. The soviets had no supply problems and no success–lesson should have been learned. LBJ had easy Vietnam objectives, they just weren’t attainable. Why are governments so dumb?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Here’s the shorter, more honest version:
Keep murdering strangers (men, women and children) in Afghanistan and Pakistan to justify the continued robbery of the American people for the benefit of death merchants and military careerists.
Change we can believe in.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:19 am
This still seems kind of vague to me… is there any marker here that will let us know when we’ve achieved our goals (I hesitate to use the word “won”)?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Cue the Christmas bombing of Arawali. Luckily for Obama and the U.S. military anything resembling My Lai perpetrated on the Pakistani people won’t be prosecuted anywhere and will mostly be greeted with a collective yawn. Atrocities-R-Us. Wedding parties on either side of the border would be well advised to move festivities to a well hidden bunker.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Sign me up for Dither’s club. This makes me sick. Have Obama and the the Democrats in general learned nothing in all these years from the tragedy of Lyndon Johnson?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Could you please post something letting us lay people know how it is possible to get e-mail from the state department. Did you just e-mail them yourself and get a response? Are you on some sort of mailing list? Do you know if this is how you get information from most if not all departments? Please, a little help.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am
“That list seems fine….” DTM, that list equals wasted blood and treasure.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
@7: Thanks, Madiha, for telling us how this is being reported in Pakistani media. That’s interesting.
Apologies if this creates an international incident, but isn’t it pretty widely understood that the drone attacks take place with the complicity of Pakistan’s govt? Weren’t there even some photos suggesting that the drones were based at an airfield *in* Pakistan?
My understanding is that this is an issue where the US and Pakistan agree to pretend to argue in public, so the people of Pakistan don’t realize that they are colluding in private. But I’ve been amazed that this ruse continues to work when it is so widely recognized as a ruse.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Can we go home now?
March 27th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
And this list of “objectives” is different from those in Iraq HOW?
And the PLAN to actually ACHIEVE those objectives is WHAT?
More money, more troops.
Oh, yeah, worked great in Iraq, no problem.
Right.
This is such a circle jerk. Obama HAS NO MORE PLAN THAN BUSH DID. Less, since Bush was in Iraq to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down (i.e., oil), while presumably Obama can’t find anything to steal in Afghanistan (unless it’s drugs – maybe Obama wants a STABLE drug-pushing government in Kabul?)
March 28th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
If by any chance, some ten or twenty years hence, these goals can be met, would not the evil-doers long have vacated the area formerly know as Ag-Pak and moved to another more welcoming area?
AKA Whack-a-Mole?
April 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
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