Afghanistan....Is It Worth The Cost?

Until very recently, I would not have even entertained this question but some sobbering developements have become front page news of late including: that 85% of Afghanistan is now controlled by the Taliban and America's Chief of Operations indicates that an infusion of troops is needed to avoid defeat within the year.

Moreover, the US is going bankrupt and can no longer afford to carry the weight of victory on its shoulders. This while Nato has shown itself to be composed of weekend soldiers with few of its members, other than ourselves and the Brits, having stepped into the breach. Our troops are exhausted and can no longer be expected continuously return to this theatre of war without a decent break.

It makes me reflect upon Vietnam where I too was a hawk and believed that the South deserved freedom in much the same way that South Korea did. But look today and see how Vietnam has prospered under unification. Economically this country is one the success stories of the world. What was gained by those countless deaths over nearly 10 years of war? Nothing.

So we leave.

Or do we?

In fact, Vietnam was different. There the enemy was other Vietnamese who wanted to have one nation and were prepared to pay any price to obtain it. In Afghanistan too, the enemy is other Afghans but these are evil men who want to subjugate their fellow citizens in the name of a religion which has been distorted for their own cruel purposes.

The Taliban wants to keep Afghanistan ignorant, keep it back in the middle ages. Keep its children out of schools and its women subservient to the point of being chattels. The men too live in fear of their vengeance.

But in a very real sense, the struggle in Afghanistan is not about that country. It is just a staging ground. Nor is the enemy the Taliban - it is Al Qaeda or more specifically, it is extreme Islamists wherever they are. They want to destroy our way of life and us in it. And like the North Vietnamese some 45 years earlier, they are prepared to go to any lengths to see it happen.

Accordingly, we are at War; this time a war we cannot afford to lose.

But will likely lose due to America's exhaustion and more importantly, due to the lack of will on the part most of its allies.

Afghanistan will sink from sight: its schools will close, its females will return to slavery and all will live in fear of the Taliban.

For us, we too will live in fear. Fear of being blown up, fear of our food /water being poisoned or our air contaminated or hand-held nuclear devices being used to destroy our cities. We will not escape Afghanistan's fate. Indeed, it will likely be much worse.

I think of Winston Churchill's speech at the time Poland was invaded by the Hun:

"if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory; because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

Churchill's words ring just as true today even though we are not fighting the type of war he envisaged in 1939 - that would be easy for us to win since we (i.e. the Americans have all the latest equipment) and could easily destroy countless hostile armies. Rather we are fighting a war where as few as one or two can inflict mighty destruction upon the many. It is a much harder war to win and one that takes a resolution that I do not see at present.

Even so, count me still at hawk.

"Galgher"