The War in Afghanistan

To “win” in Afghanistan, we must win over the people.

To understand this conflict and why the Taliban is having success in Afghanistan we must walk in the shoes (or sandals) of an average Afghani. Before the Taliban, Afghanistan was run by multiple clans, which operated like gangs. They set up checkpoints and took what they wanted—whether money, your daughter or your life—from Afghani citizens by force. There was no law and no justice. As you can imagine, for your average Afghani, anything was better than this.

So then the Taliban rolled in town and cleaned thing up. They set up a justice system, and even if sharia is tough and often sick by our standards, it was at least consistent and relatively free of corruption. People had recourse against assailants, there was some semblance of order. Gone were checkpoints and many citizens of Afghanistan were finally free of the violent gangs. The Taliban opened schools, and although girls couldn’t go and the curriculum was very strict Islamic teachings, at least it was better than no schools at all.

So again, to understand, walk in their shoes. They don’t “follow” the Taliban because they hate America. The average poor Afghani doesn’t give a fart about America. They care about their herd of goats, their garden, and feeding and schooling their children. Taliban provided these things when no one else would.

We cannot win Afghanistan without providing these things for the Afghani people. Dissolving the Taliban is one goal, but the second goal has to be to create a working government in Afghanistan that can provide security and other basic needs for the people. If we don’t some other radical group will.

The people will define success our in Afghanistan. If America shows them we can help provide for their basic needs, they might just help us take their country back from the Taliban. This is not an easy task, as Afghanis have always distained outsiders. However, if we bomb them and do the Dick Cheney “just kill them” thing, they will side with the Taliban in droves. With only a relatively small number of troops in Afghanistan the last few years, we didn’t have the troops we needed to invade villages, kill the bad guys but spare the innocent women and children. Instead we bombed them, and although we surely had some success, the collateral damage was hurting our cause. When Americans are killing more civilians than the Taliban, it’s no wonder why the people were still siding with the bad guys.

Many experts that know Afghanistan much better than me or anyone else on this forum think we’re best off pulling out of the country altogether. While I don’t agree, I see their point that an armed outside presence in Afghanistan has a real danger of pushing more people over to the Taliban. I think our approach to Afghanistan now is a pretty decent balance of kicking bad guy butt while trying to win over the people. But the worst possible thing we could do now is to take the gloves off. They will remember and they will NEVER be on our side. Now, instead of being a bit cold to America, they’ll make it their mission to kill us for generations and generations.

It's never as simple as just killing bad guys, and we have to think through this enough to ensure long term success and the best outcome for America's interests.