Forgotten People: The Nameless, Ignored Victims of War

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm purse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. --Mark Twain

As I watch the nightly news, I am struck by the lack of moral inquiry and heartfelt concern over the consequences of America’s state of permanent war. Too often we are content to divide the world into good and evil, black and white. It is less taxing that way, for complexity and nuance require thought and judgment. Perhaps we have too much on our minds, a weak economy, the Republican primary circus, the next set of contestants on Dancing with the Stars, to expect us to think deeply and sincerely about the human consequences of America’s involvements in foreign wars, past and present.

For all of our news and noise, talking heads and 24/7 updates, we rarely examine the humanity of those we kill. We call them insurgents or terrorists, enemy combatants or collateral damage. To us, they are always the "Other," for which we display a frightening lack of concern. We keep precise track of U.S. forces killed and wounded in action, but spend very little time counting, much less contemplating, who and in what numbers we kill. Perhaps it must be this way, for if we really considered the actual consequences of our killing, we might become soft and compassionate, or worse, begin to question the necessity and legitimacy of war. For when “war is looked upon as wicked,” noted Oscar Wilde, “it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”

How many innocent civilians did we kill during the War in Iraq? How many children have American bombs, guns, and drone missiles killed or maimed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen? To merely ask such questions in the wrong company may render one rude and impertinent, even disloyal and unpatriotic, as if the sacrifices of American soldiers are devalued by a search for truth and transparency. As free and open a society as we pride ourselves of having, on some topics, genuine intellectual inquiry is subversive. At the very least, it makes those in privileged and powerful positions deeply uncomfortable.

We have become immune to killing, it seems, having delegated it to a professional military class, unmanned drones, and aerial bombing campaigns which allow us to inflict maximum damage at minimal loss, as if we are putting together a financial statement for a public corporation. The power of modern weaponry allows us to keep our hands clean as military technicians “target” our enemies with a high degree of precision. We consider ourselves ethical, because we intentionally try to minimize “collateral damage” and avoid, whenever possible, unnecessary deaths, errant bombs, and the killing of innocents. But we are told by those in power that war is a dirty business that is by nature imprecise. We must balance the dangers to our country and our troops against the risks of killing some people we have no quarrel with – innocent children, women, the elderly, and the fathers, brothers, and sons who have not taken up arms against us. We must accept that innocent people will get killed, or so we are told, in part because the enemy is adept at hiding and commingling among the civilians, who themselves are often unwitting accomplices. Collateral damage is thus unavoidable.

There are some things we rarely talk about as a nation. Our media outlets either do not care to discuss them, or are afraid to make waves. Corporate dollars are at stake, after all, and the media plays a large role in sustaining the military industrial complex and in exploiting the entertainment value of war. During the early days of the Iraq War, live television reports gave us a glimpse of the thrill of war and provided us with a sense of national purpose. But in these and other telecasts, we are protected from the bullets and shrapnel, the bombs and after-effects, the tank and artillery rounds. We are not shown the blood and ripped apart body fragments, exploding skulls, or the stench of death. As noted by journalist and former Harvard seminarian Chris Hedges in Death of the Liberal Class (Nation Books, 2010), “The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear.”

The myth makers in Hollywood and the media have become war’s accomplices, romanticizing the true effects of war. “If we really saw war,” writes Hedges, “what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences.”

The disparity between what we are told about war and what truly occurs on the battlefields is vast. It seems to me that most Americans do not pay attention. Many of our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, grateful to be home with friends and family, are quickly taken aback at the gulf that exists between their military and civilian lives. The rate of suicide for returning vets is at an all-time high, with an epidemic of diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. We train our soldiers to be efficient killers, to defend one nation by annihilating the "Other." But is it possible that, when we teach our soldiers to dehumanize the enemy, we corrupt their souls and destroy all that is beautiful and sacred about life? Is this not another tragic, yet ignored, consequence of war?

We care about our returning veterans, or at least I hope we do, but we have remained remarkably acquiescent and apathetic as a nation about the reasons, the causes, the consequences, and the effects of our military excursions. The churches are particularly disappointing. A Gallup poll in 2006 found that the more frequently an American attends church, the more likely he or she was to have supported the Iraq War. It reflects a remarkable failure of the institutional church to provide true moral guidance to its flock. As we enter the eleventh year of the War in Afghanistan, the institutional church remains strangely quiet. After all, Jesus was a pacifist and the core Christian principles of love and forgiveness are radically opposed to war and violence. Walk into most churches on Sunday morning, though, and you would hardly know it.

Meanwhile, the victims of our bombs and guns remain faceless and nameless. The destruction and violence committed in the name of American liberty remains unseen.

Take for example our growing use of drone missiles in places like Pakistan and Yemen, countries with which we are not officially at war. Shrouded in secrecy and lacking accountability, decisions of who to target are made by CIA officials in Langley, Virginia, often with direct input from the Pakistani military, a price we pay for Pakistan’s consent to allow us to kill within its borders. Despite Executive Orders barring the CIA from engaging in assassinations dating back to the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, and despite several key principles of international law, there has been almost no debate in this country over the use of drones in non-combat regions. The use of drone technology, of course, is very tempting, for it eliminates immediate risk to American forces while enhancing the precision to which they strike their intended targets. But does not their use in certain circumstances raise many troubling ethical concerns? When real life killing becomes strikingly similar to a video game -- the controls operated remotely in places like Nevada and California -- and when killing is perceived as “costless,” war becomes seductive. Should it not be at least a matter of moral deliberation and debate in a democracy?

In 2009, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker interviewed a former CIA officer who had witnessed live drone strikes while serving in Afghanistan. He described what it was like to watch from a small monitor in the field: “You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff.” It had become such a common sight to see human beings running for cover that a slang term was developed for the ant-like humans on the video screen: “squirters.”

If we killed only the bad guys, and we could be certain they were the right bad guys, and even more certain that the effects would not, in the long-run, be counter-productive, perhaps there would less need for moral angst over our actions abroad. But according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the United Kingdom, our first 309 drone strikes (257 of which have occurred under President Obama) have killed 175 children and up to 780 civilians. For family members of the innocent victims, it is small consolation that America means well. After all, we only wish to kill terrorists, those who would harm us. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,” asked Gandhi, “whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” What we fail to consider is that, for every drone missile we fire into a distant landscape in Pakistan, every bomb we drop on a mountain village in Afghanistan, we create another “ground zero” for the people who live there.

According to the Iraq Body Count (IBC), which provides the most verifiable (and conservative) documentary record of civilian deaths resulting from the War in Iraq, over 114,000 innocent civilians died in Iraq during the eight years we engaged in that war. This figure is only of innocent civilians, and does not include the deaths of insurgents, armed combatants, the former forces of Saddam Hussein, or any other non-civilian Iraqi. U.S. led coalition forces were directly responsible for 14,704 of these civilian deaths, according to the IBC, nearly 30% of which were children. The actual figures are almost certainly higher, as additional deaths not counted in the IBC have been established in data released to WikiLeaks. We know as well that thousands of Afghan children have died during the war in Afghanistan, more than half of their deaths caused by U.S. and NATO forces. But whatever the total numbers, “before you support war,” says Chris Hedges, “especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, look into the hollow eyes of the men, women, and children who know it.”

Are we killing terrorists or creating them? I am not sure anyone really knows the answer to that question. But the moral and human consequences of our actions as a nation are too important to stand idly by without asking questions and demanding answers. For in the words of John F. Kennedy, “War will exist, until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”

A Presidential Moment, A Foreign Policy Dilemma

Democracy is a disorderly form of government, often inefficient, always frustrating. Maintaining liberty and security, governing in such a manner as to achieve desirable political outcomes and at the same time military effectiveness, is among the most difficult dilemmas of human governance. – Professor Richard H. Kohn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (An Essay on Civilian Control of the Military, 1997).

President Obama was right to dismiss General Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It is a fundamental principle of all free and democratic societies that military authority be subordinate to civilian rule and a government elected by the people. The General’s disdain for his civilian counterparts and the lack of respect on display by McChrystal’s staff in the Rolling Stone profile were alone cause for dismissal; worse was McChrystal’s poor judgment in allowing the reporter such unguarded access. It is no surprise that certain uniformed personnel – military officials, police officers, and those on the front lines of dangerous missions – out of frustration or fatigue sometimes speak contemptuously of civilian leaders. But such conversations are expected to occur in private, away from journalists and microphones.

The purpose of the military is to defend society, not to define it. Civilian control allows a nation’s popular will to define its values and to set policy, even if contrary to the desires of its military leaders, whose institutional values are, by necessity, anti-democratic. The United States Constitution makes explicit this premise. The President is the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” (Art. II, Sec. 2). Congress alone is granted the power to “declare War”, “[t]o raise and support Armies,” and “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy” (Art. I, Sec. 8). “The greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies,” declared James Madison during the constitutional convention in 1787. The Founding Fathers countered the threat of an unfettered military by embedding in the Constitution the principle that military authority remains subservient to the two branches of government elected by the people.

Essential to civilian control is the military’s embrace of its Constitutional limits. We are endowed in the United States with a highly trained and professional military establishment; one committed to political neutrality, with unhesitating loyalty to the Constitution and the democratic system of government its job it is to defend. Of course, military leaders in democracies often possess great public credibility; this has been true throughout most of America’s history. And given the complexity of modern day warfare, military technology, and geo-political strategy, the military’s expertise is called upon, and often relied upon, by the president and Congress in setting strategy and deploying resources to counter threats to American security. A good president must know when to defer to military advice and when to push back. But in the final analysis, it is always the president’s call. Military leaders can and should forcefully advocate their positions and reasoning to the President and his advisers, but they must willingly accept and faithfully execute the President’s decisions. Once the line is crossed and a general’s disagreements become publicly aired, he or she risks and usually deserves reprimand or dismissal.

American history is replete with examples of presidents displaying the upper hand in public spats with their generals. During the Civil War, President Lincoln fired Union General George McClellan after McClellan repeatedly refused Lincoln’s orders to more aggressively fight Confederate forces (it did not help matters that McClellan often referred to the president in letters as an “idiot” and a “gorilla”). In 1951, President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur after MacArthur publicly assailed Truman’s refusal to invade and attack China directly during the Korean War. Similar incidents of lesser fame include President Lyndon Johnson’s dismissal of General Curtis LeMay in 1965 after LeMay publicly criticized the White House for not carpet-bombing North Vietnamese cities. And just two years ago, President George W. Bush forced the resignation of General William J. Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, after Esquire magazine profiled Fallon as the Administration’s sole voice opposing an attack on Iran (a matter that, even if true, was not for public consumption and potentially undermined Bush’s strategic planning).

Although some commentators have compared Obama’s firing of McChrystal with the Truman-MacArthur feud, I do not believe this analogy apt. Truman was concerned that broadening the Korean conflict would provoke the Soviet Union and raise the specter of nuclear war, a very real concern in 1951. MacArthur wanted to take the war to China and, possessed of an inflated ego exacerbated by his popularity following World War II, believed he was essentially immune from presidential authority. After publicly criticizing the president’s conduct of the war on several occasions, MacArthur wrote a blistering attack on the president’s strategy in a letter to the House Minority Leader, declaring that Truman’s refusal to expand the war into China imposed “an enormous handicap, without precedent in military history.” When MacArthur then publicly threatened Beijing with “imminent military collapse,” Truman finally had enough and relieved the general of his military command. “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch – although he was,” Truman later explained. “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president.”

The Obama-McChrystal incident does not rise to the level of the Truman-MacArthur feud. Indeed, the President commended General McChrystal for his past service and emphasized that theirs was not a policy disagreement. But Obama believed that McChrystal’s actions constituted a serious enough breach of respect for the Office of the President and the entire civilian leadership that it warranted his dismissal.

Overlooked in the McChrystal affair, however, is not the general’s contemptuous and public disrespect of civilian command; it is, instead, the questionable strategy being employed in Afghanistan – counterinsurgency – a policy endorsed by the President and McChrystal’s successor, General David Petraeus. Counterinsurgency calls for sending large numbers of ground troops to both sniff out and destroy the enemy, while also living among the civilian population and slowly rebuilding the nation’s government. Even its staunchest advocates admit that this is a process that will require years, if not decades, to achieve. It demands of the U.S. military not that it defend a nation, but that it build one. It requires our armed forces to handle not only the military and security side of warfare, of which they are very good, but also the diplomatic and political side of governance, of which they are neither equipped nor particularly skilled.

Vice President Biden has contended, correctly I believe, that a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan will plunge the United States into a military quagmire without weakening the international terrorist network, which is presently more extensive in places like Yemen. The question becomes, therefore, not who is in charge, but what is America’s endgame in Afghanistan? And how do we measure progress?

The military conflict in Afghanistan has been officially declared the longest war in American history. While this is true only if one measures the Vietnam War from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, our involvement in Afghanistan extends longer than World War II and the Korean War combined. Afghanistan is not the deadliest of American conflicts, but the costs have nonetheless been substantial, costing the lives of over 1,000 American servicemen and women, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, and hundreds of billions of dollars from the public treasury. Yet we risk having in the end achieved very little from when we first invaded Afghanistan. According to recent reports in the British press, prior to his dismissal, General McChrystal acknowledged that progress over the next six months is unlikely and that serious concerns continue to exist over the levels of security, violence, and corruption of the Afghan administration.

The problem with the McChrystal incident, then, is not so much about a disrespectful general as it is a failed policy with little chance of success. The president’s critics are likely correct that setting a firm deadline for withdrawal is counter-productive to our stated mission. But I do not believe for a minute that we will be ending our occupation of Afghanistan any time soon, even if some troops start to come home in July 2011. Nine years into the conflict, it remains difficult to detect much improvement to American security. For every innocent civilian we kill through collateral damage, mistake, or an errant missile (even as precise and careful as our military professionals try to be), the seeds of further terrorism are planted.

If victory has not been achieved after nine years, I fail to see how we can ever accomplish it under current strategy. Terrorist cells continue to exist around the world; al-Qaeda leaders continue to hide in the mountainous terrains of northwestern Pakistan, a country that we do not fully trust and that is, at best, lukewarm to our efforts in the region. We have diverted badly needed funds to a failed military effort that could otherwise help educate our children, create jobs, rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, promote a green economy, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As I have said before on these pages, we could do so much more to enhance the security of the United States if we instead focused our efforts on building schools for Afghan children. The long-term solution to terrorism and militant fundamentalism in general, and Afghanistan in particular, is education and economic opportunity. A policy that relies upon long-term military power to bolster a corrupt government is destined to fail.

Obama's War: Bombs vs. Books

As I listened to President Obama’s speech at West Point the other night, I wanted to believe that his announced policy is correct, that the commitment of 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a necessary antidote to the growing influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda sponsored terrorism. The president reminded us that Americans “did not ask for this fight.” The men who attacked us on September 11, 2001, were members of al-Qaeda, an Islam-defiling terrorist group operating from Afghanistan under the protective eye of the Taliban. When we invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks – with nearly unanimous Congressional approval – our objective was to capture bin-Laden and to overthrow the Taliban regime. Although we defeated the Taliban in less than three months, and a U.S.-supported administration, headed by President Hamid Karzai, was installed in Kabul, eight years later the United States is still fighting the Taliban. Because of our disproportional focus on the War in Iraq over the last eight years – we had 160,000 American troops stationed there at the war’s peak, compared to less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2003 and 32,000 when Obama took office – “the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated.” Al-Qaeda has established a safe haven across the border in Pakistan, while the Taliban has gradually increased control over wide swaths of territory in Afghanistan.

I believe that Obama was sincere when he stated that he does not “lightly” make the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. Although he advocated greater troop strength and more U.S. forces in Afghanistan during the presidential campaign, he opposed the War in Iraq because, as he told the cadets at West Point, “[W]e must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions.” I believe that he sincerely understands the incredible burdens and sacrifices that our military personnel and their families endure, and that he feels their pain when a loved one is lost or becomes permanently disabled. So when the President says as he did the other night, “If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow,” I believe him.

To justify his decision, the President emphasized, as he must, that he is “convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. . . . This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders that were sent here from the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards and al-Qaeda can operate with impunity. We must keep pressure on al-Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.” It is for this reason that the President is escalating the war in Afghanistan, committing more than ten times the number of troops that were there eight years ago, when we supposedly defeated the Taliban.

Afghanistan is now officially Obama’s war. His legacy and historical success or failure as President will be largely based on how things work out in Afghanistan and, as importantly, in Pakistan. Although I have expressed growing doubts concerning the wisdom of expanding our war effort, I hope and pray that the President is right and that we achieve all of our objectives in the eighteen months or less that he and General Stanley McChrystal have indicated will be sufficient to accomplish our goals. The task ahead seems incredibly difficult in that time frame, but if our efforts allow for the beginnings of a successful transition to a stable, secure Afghan society, it will arguably have been worth the effort.

Although it is hard to contend from the safe confines of my living room that the threats outlined by the President do not justify risking American lives and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, I continue to have my doubts as to whether the present escalation will be a successful strategy. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times recently noted, “many people working in Afghanistan at the grass roots are watching the Obama escalation with a sinking feeling.” Even General McChrystal has acknowledged the key to success in Afghanistan is winning hearts and minds. As McChrystal stated in his report to the President, “Our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent troops; our objective must be the population.”

For his column on December 3, 2009, Kristof spoke with Greg Mortenson, an Army veteran who wrote of his extraordinary work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan in Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books Not Bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mortenson expressed concern about the apparent lack of consultation with Afghan elders over the decision to escalate the military conflict there. In Mortenson’s view, the elders believe “we don’t need firepower, we need brainpower. They want schools, health facilities, but not necessarily more physical troops.”

Moreover, as Obama acknowledged, the current Afghan government is “hampered by corruption, the drug trade, an under-developed economy, and insufficient security forces.” Without a reliable partner in President Karzai and the Afghan government, even unlimited American firepower cannot create long-term stability in that country. Our success in turning around Afghanistan – and stabilizing Pakistan – does not turn on how many troops we send or deadlines we set. It depends in the end on our Afghan partners. Despite our initial military success in Afghanistan in 2001, that country has gone into a tailspin largely because Karzai’s government became dysfunctional and massively corrupt, focused more on private gain and personal enrichment than on governing. It is why many Afghans who cheered Karzai’s arrival in 2001 now welcome Taliban security and justice. Unless and until Afghans take ownership of their government, until they believe that it is at least minimally decent and focused on the people’s best interests, they will not fight for it. We can win military victories and secure much of the Taliban controlled regions for now, but without Afghan ownership of their own government, our achievements will simply collapse when we leave.

With our mission defined and more U.S. troops involved, I have no doubt that we will temporarily succeed in reducing Taliban control and influence over Helmand Province and other Taliban dominant regions of Afghanistan. Our military is extremely good and professional – there has never been any doubt of that. But like it or not, and whether Obama or Secretary Gates admit it or not (they have not), we are indeed engaged in nation-building in Afghanistan. And that is something we have never been good at. Without a sense of ownership in their own government, police and security forces, the Afghan people will do what they need to survive. If that means accommodating to the Taliban when we leave – we cannot kill them all – that is what they will do.

Obama made it a point to remind us that 9/11 is why we are in Afghanistan, that we were attacked from Afghanistan and al-Qaeda continues to operate from there under Taliban protection. But by most accounts, there are very few al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan – most have crossed the border into safe havens in Pakistan. The terror networks we need to be most concerned about are there, as well as in Somalia and Yemen, yet we are planning no military incursions into those countries. And if the enemy in Afghanistan, whether al-Qaeda or the Taliban, pose the same existential threat to our security as they did on 9/11, why are we settling for half-measures? Is it because we are unwilling to make the national sacrifices necessary for an all-out war effort (i.e., increased taxes and the re-institution of the draft)? Is it because the American public is not fully behind this war, eight years later, and is unwilling to support it with its money and people?

For all of Obama’s serious deliberations over this decision – and I believe he is doing what he believes he must to protect American interests – did he give the same consideration to other less violent, less costly approaches? Did he consider the real-life work of Mortenson, who as of 2008 had built 74 schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, many in Taliban controlled regions? Did he consider that, as Kristof noted in his December 3rd column, that for “the cost of deploying one soldier for one year, it is possible to build about 20 schools”? Did he consider what has been done with the National Solidarity Program, “widely regarded as one of the most successful and least corrupt initiatives in Afghanistan” that helps villages build schools, clinics, irrigation projects, bridges, or whatever they choose based on the particular needs of the village? Did he consider that, over time, the single greatest force in stabilizing societies, in reducing birth rates, raising living standards, and preventing civil conflict and terrorism, is education? As Kristof stated, “My hunch is that if Mr. Obama wants success in Afghanistan, he would be far better off with 30,000 more schools than 30,000 more troops.”

In past columns, including one on Mortenson’s school-building efforts on July 13, 2008, Kristof has acknowledged that it would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools could turn the tide in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, because the Taliban recruit mostly from the ranks of the poor and illiterate, women who are educated are more likely to successfully restrain and positively influence their sons. For example, five of the teachers at Mortenson’s schools are former Taliban, and for each of these teachers, “it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban.”

Pakistan is the key to the entire conflict, though exactly how it factors in is not as well understood by the American public. Obama only touched upon it briefly in his West Point speech. Yet as far back as 2001, there were fears that the war in Afghanistan would destabilize Pakistan because the Pashtun, an ethnic group that makes up a large part of the Taliban insurgency, straddles the border between the two countries. Everyone agrees that those fears are now reality; the Pakistani Taliban threatens nuclear-armed Pakistan's viability as a state even more than their Taliban cousins across the border jeopardize Afghanistan's. Indeed, it is because the war in Afghanistan threatens to destabilize an entire region that it has become America's biggest foreign policy challenge. Because of the Pakistani obsession with India, while they fight the Taliban inside of Pakistan, they nurture the Taliban in Afghanistan. This must cease for us to be successful in Afghanistan, but no U.S. President has yet succeeded in assuaging Pakistan’s security concerns over India.

Success in Afghanistan will mean nothing if fighters can find sanctuary in Pakistan; the Pakistani military has neither the skills nor the resources to conduct an effective counterinsurgency. It is largely for this reason that stabilizing Afghanistan is considered crucial to our security, if only to prevent the terrifying prospect of an Islamist takeover in Pakistan.

All of which brings me back to the wisdom of bombs versus books. As explained by Greg Mortenson, who has had intimate and extensive dealings with the people living in Pakistan and Afghanistan, “Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country.” Every Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers at least $500,000. As Kristof notes, “That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.” Even an American commander who works on the front lines of Afghanistan has told Kristof that “the long-term solution to terrorism in general, and Afghanistan specifically, is education. The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books. . . . The thirst for education here is palpable.”

As Obama articulated at West Point, it may very well be that military force in Afghanistan is an essential component to combating the Taliban. I just hope that neither he nor McChrystal have lost sight of the reality that, over time, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism is education and economic opportunity.

The World on His Shoulders

As the President prepares to inform the nation from West Point of his intentions on Afghanistan, I cannot help but reflect on the incredible burdens that lay on the President’s shoulders. From international crises and risk points in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats of nuclear proliferation in unstable and hostile regions, human rights abuses in China, Pakistani-Indian tensions and the ever present risk of nuclear escalation, the rampant dysfunction in Russian society, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia, the spread of Islamic terrorism in Indonesia, African genocide and ethnic conflict, Mexican drug violence, the futility of Israeli-Palestinian peace and the rising influence of Hamas and Hezbollah extremists; the list goes on and the tensions never cease. From the seemingly safe confines of America, the world’s troubles appear distant. Yet cumulatively these troubles far outweigh in importance the rest of the President’s agenda.

U.S. foreign policy affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. Prices, jobs, the supply of oil, taxes, the life and death of our men and women in uniform, and the safety and security of our ports and means of transportation -- all are impacted by exertions of American power and influence in foreign lands. This is, of course, not new, nor is it unique to President Obama. I have always believed that, despite our emphasis in presidential elections on domestic politics, the economy, abortion and gay marriage, health care reform, and hypothetical Supreme Court nominations, in the end what is most critical to our country’s future is how we as a nation interact with the rest of the world. Issues of war and peace always trump domestic squabbles.

When at its best, the United States can bring hope and light to the world, by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and providing aid and comfort to the neediest people. U.S funded programs like the Peace Corps, the Inter-American Foundation, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, combined with the efforts of non-governmental organizations like Oxfam, Lutheran World Relief, and Doctors Without Borders have launched ripples of justice in some of the darkest regions of the planet. At its worst, American foreign policy can inflict pain and suffering, cause destruction and wreak havoc, such as when we bomb villages and kill innocents and call it collateral damage. Sometimes the use of military power is essential to our security and the security of our friends and allies; some wars are necessary. But they should always, always, be the last resort.

Our actions have consequences, good and bad. When Peace Corps volunteers teach children in Serbia to read, or help a Cameroon farmer apply better agricultural techniques, Americans plant the seeds of peace. When we fire drone missiles into the valleys of northwest Pakistan, we inevitably sow disharmony and create future terrorists. Fair or not, much of the world's population views America through their own narrow lenses. When American values are proudly promoted by U.S. corporations and institutions abroad, we damage our credibility when our actions fail to live up to our proclamations. People and nations who should be naturally aligned with us instead turn away in disillusionment and disappointment.

There was a time when we could view the world through the bipolar lenses of the Cold War, when the only thing that really mattered in U.S. foreign policy was the Soviet-Chinese chess match and the East-West balance of power. Today, we live in a multi-polar world, one in which power is increasingly dispersed, distributed over many actors -- governments, NGOs, militia groups, major corporations and lending institutions, and world bodies -- rather than concentrated in the hands of a select group of nation states. The issues seem endless and insurmountable: the Iranian nuclear threat; the conflict with North Korea; the Israeli-Palestinian morass; the international debt crisis and the Dubai effect; mounting trade deficits; the effect of climate change on lesser-developed countries; our dependence on foreign oil; the international narcotics trade; uncontrollable immigration; world hunger and the spread of disease; the growth of Islamic extremism and, of course, terrorism.

The President has attempted, like many Presidents before him, to remain focused on his domestic agenda – health care reform and the economy. His domestic plate is certainly full. But how the President exerts American power and prestige around the world – whether he falls victim to an entrenched mindset that sees all problems as requiring a military solution, or whether he has the confidence to trust in American principles and the powerful example to which a compassionate democracy can bear witness – will determine his legacy in decades to come.

It is not always possible to reconcile morality with the hard facts of history. The United States, as the most powerful nation in the world, has never systematically thought out the legitimate uses and the inevitable limitations of power. The answer presumably does not lie either in mere swagger or in mere compassion. For President Obama, as with his predecessors, his decisions on foreign affairs, diplomacy, and the use of U.S. military might are his and his alone. In confronting the myriad of issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa, the consequences of the President's decisions will be with us all for years to come. I trust this President to make thoughtful, rational, and foresighted decisions; I may not agree with his speech tomorrow night on Afghanistan, but I will listen with an open mind, knowing that at least he understands the profound impact of his burden. The world is a heavy one.

Growing Doubts On Afghanistan

During a national nightly news broadcast in February 1968, Walter Cronkite questioned the legitimacy of America’s continued involvement in the Vietnam War. It was a defining moment. Following the broadcast, President Johnson famously told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” He was right. American support for the war substantially declined and, soon thereafter, Johnson announced that he was not running for re-election.

On September 1, 2009, conservative columnist George Will published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post entitled, “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.” Although Will may not rank with Cronkite as “most trusted man in America,” his dissension from the ranks of pro-war sentiment is nevertheless significant and potentially influential. Will is a model of civil discourse, a thoughtful, intelligent, and well-respected commentator who appeals to reason at a time when the news media is filled with shouting pundits and a lack of critical thinking.

Will correctly notes that the United States has been entangled in Afghanistan for eight years – longer than its combined involvements in the two world wars of the Twentieth Century. He contends that our stated policy of “clear, hold, and build” – that is, clear various regions of Taliban control, hold U.S./Afghan control of those areas, and build effective local, district and provincial governments – is doomed to failure; “nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try.” According to the Brookings Institution, only Somalia ranks lower than Afghanistan as a weaker nation state. Will contends that Afghanistan has never had an effective, central government and, citing recent commentary in The Economist, states that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is “so ‘inept, corrupt and predatory’ that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, ‘who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai’s lot.’” We presently have 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan (bringing the coalition total to 110,000), and President Obama is considering adding thousands more; yet most experts believe that the counterinsurgency effort needed to protect the population would require “hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.”

Although most Republicans, including the editorialists of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, continue to support increased military jingoism, Will is not alone on the right in espousing a more cautious approach. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, for one, also advocates withdrawal of U.S. troops: “Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.” Hagel contends that the United States must recognize that every great threat to our country also threatens our global partners, including former adversaries China, Russia, India, and Turkey. “We need a clearly defined strategy that accounts for the interconnectedness and the shared interests of all nations.” Hagel suggests that we should not “view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only ‘winning’ or ‘losing.’ . . . There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control.”

Like many Democrats, I have until recently believed that Afghanistan was the “good war” in our fight against global terrorism. Afghanistan is where the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were planned and executed. The Taliban forces who supported Osama Bin-laden and provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda were legitimate targets of U.S. military might. I continue to believe that we were right to invade Afghanistan in October 2001, and that we were wrong to invade Iraq, a war which was entered under false pretenses and which diverted our military and security resources in a country that had not attacked us and that posed no direct threat to us. I agreed with President Obama when he asserted during the campaign that U.S. resources should be increased in Afghanistan and decreased in Iraq.

So it is with some reluctance that I express doubts about the President’s strategy and acknowledge the legitimacy of questions raised by George Will, Chuck Hagel, and an increasing number of more liberal commentators. As Bob Herbert wrote in Saturday’s New York Times, “We’re fighting on behalf of an incompetent and hopelessly corrupt government in Afghanistan. If our ultimate goal, as the administration tells us, is a government that can effectively run the country, protect its own population and defeat the Taliban, our troops will be fighting and dying in Afghanistan for many, many years to come.”

Although Vietnam analogies can be tiresome, and while liberals too easily equate all American military incursions with Vietnam, some comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam are indeed apt.

• Like President Johnson during the Vietnam War, President Obama appears eager to demonstrate his toughness by vowing to do what it takes to “win” in Afghanistan – even though what is meant by winning is far from clear. When Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, was asked last month to define “success” in Afghanistan, he replied, “We’ll know it when we see it.”

• As was the case with South Vietnam, Afghanistan is a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government that is considered illegitimate by a large portion of its population.

• As with Vietnam, in Afghanistan the United States is embroiled in a nation for which we have very little understanding of its culture, history, and language.

• Similar to Vietnam, Afghanistan has an inhospitable geography, with mountainous terrain, snowy winters, and numerous caves and escape routes that provide off-limit sanctuaries across 9,000 miles of borders. It is ideal for indigenous resistance to foreign invaders, providing the Taliban in certain areas with a distinct advantage.

• As with Vietnam’s resistance of French colonialism prior to the arrival of U.S. forces, Afghanistan successfully resisted military incursions by the British and the former Soviet Union.

• As with LBJ and Vietnam in the 1960’s, the conflict in Afghanistan threatens to derail President Obama’s efforts to reshape America at home. A military escalation in Afghanistan can only serve to divert much needed resources away from the President’s attempts to reform a troubled health care industry, revive a broken economy, prevent global warming, and restore America’s standing in the world.

None of this should be taken as criticism of the brave and courageous U.S. military forces that are stationed in Afghanistan. The ability and skill of our armed forces is unmatched. But many years after U.S. forces had completely withdrawn from Vietnam, Col. Harry Summers, a military historian, said to a counterpart in the North Vietnamese Army, “You never defeated us in the field.” The NVA officer replied, “That may be true. It is also irrelevant.” The Viet Cong knew that one day U.S. forces would leave and, until that day arrived, they would outlast us. At the peak of the Vietnamese conflict, LBJ confided in Senator Richard Russell that he knew we could not win the war in Vietnam, but he felt compelled to stay the course so as to avoid being the first American president to lose a war. Johnson’s pride and political calculations cost the lives of tens of thousands of some of America’s finest young men. These should be warnings to President Obama. While the number of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan will likely never approach Vietnam War levels, President Obama is risking a commitment to a war that has no end in sight and no apparent upside.

While the goal of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, is to establish a reasonably noncorrupt Afghan state that will partner with America in keeping Afghanistan free of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, it is clear that he is talking about nation building in one of the poorest, most tribalized, countries in the world. As Thomas Friedman contends in today’s New York Times:

It would be one thing if the people we were fighting with and for represented everything the Taliban did not: decency, respect for women’s rights and education, respect for the rule of law and democratic values and rejection of drug-dealing. But they do not. Too many in this Kabul government are just a different kind of bad. This has become a war between light black — Karzai & Co. — and dark black — Taliban Inc. And light black is simply not good enough to ask Americans to pay for with blood or treasure.

Obama has framed Afghanistan as a war of necessity and not of choice. No one disputes that there are people and organizations committed to harming America and that strong measures are needed to protect us from these threats. But how and when we use force is a decision that must not be made in the mere hope that, maybe, it will succeed.

If we still have not learned that it is virtually impossible to defeat an enemy we do not understand in a terrain we cannot control, then President Obama is destined to repeat the failed lessons of history. There is much more to this debate, and the issues are complex and not easily boxed into the Vietnam analogy. But I cannot help but believe that a coordinated policy of containment and deterrence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, coupled with strategic development, military training, and economic aid to the Afghan government, will be more successful in keeping us safe and in preventing a resurgence of Taliban influence in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan, than will a military strategy of "winning" at all costs. As Senator Hagel said, “Relying on the use of force as a centerpiece of our global strategy, as we have in recent years, is economically, strategically and politically unsustainable and will result in unnecessary tragedy – especially for the men and women, and their families, who serve our country.”