"One way or another, these problems will be solved — I'm a problem solver
— and, in the end, we will win."
President Trump doesn't want to be the president who quote "lost Afghanistan"
17 years, tens of thousands of deaths and billions of American dollars gone.
The war on terror has changed but Afghanistan is still torn apart by conflict.
To understand the problem, we have to go back to the day that changed the world forever.
The terrorist cell Al-Qaeda had flourished under the Islamic
fundamentalist Taliban ruling Afghanistan.
After they carried out the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. sought to bring the group, and it's
leader, Osama bin Laden, to justice.
"Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there.
It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach
has been found, stopped
and defeated."
Without 9/11, we would never have gone into Afghanistan at all.
I think you need to see Afghanistan as a sort of shifting mosaic of competing alliances
and essentially a civil war.
Most of the ground combat was between the Taliban and it's Afghan opponents but with
international support the Taliban regime quickly unravelled and Kabul fell in November 2001.
They were annihilated, not even weakened, they were destroyed,
as a political entity, they ceased to exist.
"My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages
of military operations to disarm Iraq,
to free its people
and to defend the world from grave danger."
In 2003, the U.S. turned its attention to toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq
after President Bush alleged the country was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
Afghanistan was too easy and therefore it didn't really assuage American outrage at the 9/11 attack.
So there's a sort of pent up rage, if you will,
that needed a target and the administration redirected that rage to Iraq.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared an end to 'major combat' in Afghanistan
and attention turned towards establishing a reconstruction model.
The very specific objectives which was to
end the safe havens, to prevent Afghanistan being a base for international terrorism again,
you could say that they were successful, but in the long term they didn't make the necessary
moves to enable those initial successes to be held.
We used this attitude like "let's just get it done today", "Afghan good enough"
that was the phrase everybody used.
Well the problem is that's expediative, it's like putting band aids on everything
when you needed major reconstruction surgery.
In 2005, the U.S. doubled down on its commitment to the rebuilding of Afghanistan, but the
actions didn't seem to match the declarations.
If you look at the scale of resources committed, in Bosnia in the first few years after the
peace, the average Bosnian got $800 a year in economic assistance from the United States
and the rest of the world.
In Afghanistan, it was $50. if you look at the security side, the disparity is even greater,
so in Bosnia, a country of 3 million people, we deployed 60,000 NATO troops.
In Afghanistan, a country of 30 million people, we deployed 10,000 western troops.
So if you want to know why Afghanistan was more insecure and slower to reconstruct, it
was a simple matter of mathematics.
When Barack Obama came into power,
he re-asserted that Afghanistan is an important U.S. front against terrorist forces.
"As Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest
to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan."
I think Obama tried to replicate what Bush had done Iraq, which was reinforce and surge
resources both civilian and military into Iraq.
But the president himself wasn't really convinced that this was worth a long-term investment.
Obama's surge meant that by August 2010,
there were as many as 100,000 U.S. troops in the country.
The increase of soldiers also meant a surge in operations and airstrikes and this meant
more casualties, on both sides.
A poll by CNN in 2010 said 52% felt the war had turned into another 'Vietnam' and
only 37% of Americans were in support of it.
"Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has
conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda"
It was a significant victory for Obama but not necessarily in the war on terror.
It didn't make any difference operationally.
No matter, how many people you take out, there will never be a shortage of replacements.
Plans to get all combat troops out by 2014 were made by the Obama administration, but
many doubted the capacity of the Afghan government to sustain control.
Afghan forces eventually began to take the lead in security responsibilities in 2013
and military training became the focus, with 9,800 U.S. troops remaining through to 2016.
The troop drawdown approach wasn't necessarily wrong
because no one wanted to have this never-ending
conflict but setting that deadline, potentially, and vocally setting it, was misconceived and
that's something that Trump has obviously tried to avoid, he very clearly said there is
no fixed timetable, which has been really welcomed inside Kabul.
"The American people are weary of war without victory"
In Trump's first year, the Afghanistan problem caused a rift between members of his administration.
Whilst Trump's initial instinct was an immediate withdrawal, his advisors successfully persuaded
him to press ahead with a military commitment.
We pulled out of Iraq in 2011 and we didn't like the results.
In 2014 the Islamic State burst out of Syria, marched all the way to the gates of Baghdad
and was only stopped at the very suburbs of the city, from taking over the city and the
country and we said god that could happen in Afghanistan too and it's also what led
to President Trump against his own instincts to sustain that commitment.
"The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory.
They deserve the tools they need, and the trust they have earned, to fight and to win."
It's physical impossibility to win anything militarily over there.
Now there's no standard, we're not even shooting for anything, there's nothing written
down, there's no strategic objectives that once you have changed these three things then
you'll know you'll win.
I don't really believe that anyone thinks that - well and they admit themselves - it
can't be won, it's managing and trying to capitalize on any opportunities to bring
the Taliban into the peace process.
So if the U.S. can't win, what can President Trump realistically hope to achieve?
He won the election because he's a disruptive figure and he's a non-politician and that's
what people were sick of the status quo and they were looking for that.
He needs to hire somebody like him.
Somebody who's not status quo,
somebody who's willing to look at this with fresh eyes, and he'll then listen to.
The best case scenario would be, and what I think needs to happen is,
we're going to have to shut the mission down.
It will be chaotic, it will be problematic, they'll be winners and they'll be losers.
But the people on the ground, who have to live with the outcome,
have to be the ones that find a solution.
The Taliban's strength comes from the fact that they don't need to win.
Firstly, they just need to continue,
secondly they win through perception, so even if they're not actually
winning, and everyone knows that they can't win this war militarily,
the fact that the Afghan government is losing, is what matters.
Now perhaps at some point, a negotiated peace might be available,
I don't think anybody thinks that's in the near-term,
but until then, if [Trump] adheres to the policy set out in that speech,
it's an open-ended commitment to sustain support for the Afghan government
to provide advice and assistance for as long as is necessary
to prevent the Taliban from overturning the government and taking control of the country.
What Afghanistan needs more than anything is a legitimate state.
This is increasingly an Afghan civil war, it's an internal Afghan conflict,
it's based on this lack of legitimacy, that
we've never been able to really get our heads around,
how to actually build that legitimate state.
We have to recognize that military power can not solve political problems.
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