OPINION:
From Afghanistan on Tuesday evening, President Obama addressed Americans in their homes thousands of miles away on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. The president spoke live to his fellow citizens in reassuring remarks that played into the forthcoming national election in November.
Repeating comments made earlier to U.S. troops who greeted him in the cavernous aircraft hanger on Bagram Air Base, the president told Americans in a phrase reminiscent of the Vietnam War’s “light at the end of the tunnel” that we can “see the light of a new day on the horizon.” His re-election theme of shepherding America’s military withdrawal first from Iraq and now Afghanistan is calculated to seize upon the U.S. electorate’s growing disenchantment with the 11-year insurgency in the mountainous country. But is the president setting up the country for a tragic outcome? Is he heedless of our past?
With the backdrop of not only the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes that frame most campaign rallies but also the unusual props of two huge camouflaged mine resistant vehicles, Mr. Obama sought to convey the image of commander in chief of a nation very much at war. But is he promising too much? Paying tribute to “our men and women in uniform,” the president told his listeners that “by the end of 2014, the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of their nation.” Alas, this pledge will be exceedingly difficult to honor, unless the United States stands aside while the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies re-establish militant havens amid the peaks and valleys of the Central Asian country to orchestrate more terrorist attacks on American soil.
To be sure, the United States and its NATO allies agreed to withdraw their combat forces by the end of 2014. Just before his speech, the president signed a strategic partnership agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his presidential palace. This agreement outlines the commitment by the United States and its NATO partners to Afghanistan after 2014. It includes billions of dollars in aid mostly for the Afghan military and police. But more tellingly, the agreement commits U.S. advisers to train and mentor Afghan security forces. So, Mr. Obama’s utterance that by the “end of 2014 the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of their nation” is not really leveling with the American people.
In fact, let’s hope that solid numbers of U.S. regular troops and special operations forces continue an active role behind the scenes. If the United States simply walks away from Afghanistan the way it did South Vietnam in 1975, it will be a misfortune of the first order. In late April of that fateful year, the communist North Vietnam invaded the South and crushed its forces in a conventional attack with tanks and infantry divisions.
Two years before, the United States military totally pulled out from South Vietnam after nearly a decade of heavy involvement. But before they left, they trained a South Vietnamese army. Once the North struck the South, however, the U.S. Congress, dominated by lopsided Democratic majorities in both chambers, refused to furnish ammunition, spare parts and, most importantly, air attacks on the advancing Northern forces. Without the critical air support that only U.S. air power could deliver, our ally was doomed.
Electioneering is one thing. Good sense and strategy are quite another. Overexuberant campaigning rhetoric must not become frozen into post-November agendas. The Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist networks are not bound by our presidential promises or our finely drawn timetables.
Thomas Heniksen is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His forthcoming book, “America and the Rogue States,” will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in June.
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