Some random thoughts on the Afghanistan war

Flash from the news #1; US Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama recently told the German weekly "der Spiegel" that the Europeans have to provide more support in the form of troops in the war in Afghanistan.

Flash from the news #2; The former Norwegian Foreign Minister Torbjørn Jagland expressed his views that NATO needs more troops in Afghanistan, and that Norway should shoulder more of its responsibility and provide more troops than what is currently the case.

There is no doubt that the support for the US-led invasion in Afghanistan among the poulation of the Western World is waning. A few weeks ago the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, addressed this in a speech. The European political leaders have not succeeded in explaining the reasons for the invasion in Afghanistan and the reasons why the war is still going on. And also, he said, the war in Afghanistan is commonly mixed up with the war in Iraq.

The invasion in Iraq was, it could be reasonably argued (and I agree with that), based on false evidence, and it was also a case of the Bush administration taking advantage of a broad support for their War on Terror. Still, the war in Afghanistan is not the war in Iraq. When the US and the UK invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there was huge international support for the invasion. With the close links between Taliban, which were in control of Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda which were also hiding out in Afghanistan, this invasion was legitimate, and the West was right in supporting the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. To oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan was legitimate and backed by virtually the entire Western World. And even though the US messed up with also invading Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is still a legitimate war.

So, to bail out from this now is simply wrong. We agreed to this invasion in the first place, and we have an obligation to stand by until the situation is stabilized, or we are "victorious". The public support for the Afghanistan war might be waning, but politics are not done with plebiscistes for every single decision, and politicians are not supposed to go solely after the public opinion. It might be that our politicians did not educate us enough, but it is anyways their responsibility to stand by and not withdraw the support we gave at the outset. We went in there, and we need to stay in there until have achieved our objectives, which among others were to oust the Taliban regime from power and make sure they stay out of power. To pull out of Afghanistan now will be to leave the country in a state of disarray, where the Taliban can easily come back.

According to common sense, it is necessary to have enough troops to win any conflict. And according to the Powell doctrine, when you enter a conflict, you better make sure you go in with overwhelming force, so that you are certain you will be victorious. If you go in without the necessary level of force, you will be bound to enter a quagmire, much like the US did in Vietnam.

When US President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to go into Vietnam, he did not go in with the necessary firepower to win the conflict in a reasonably short amount of time. And when he and his administration witnessed the conflict prolong, they sent in more troops only little by little, but still not enough to win. Mired in a conflict that could not be resolved within a short time, and without the necessary force to do that, the administration lost their support among the US population.

Similarly, without the necessary international support (both diplomatically and militarily), the US and NATO will have a very hard time winning the war in Afghanistan. And as Torbjørn Jagland said in the beforementioned interview, if NATO does not win this war, its relevance in following scenarios will be diminished. So in addition to a stable Afghanistan, the future of NATO could also be at stake in this conflict. For a country as dependant on NATO for its security as Norway, the choice should be clear.