Are We At War in Afghanistan: Yes or No?

Both former President Bush and now President Obama have committed to the United States to escalating the war in Afghanistan in an attempt to defeat the Taliban and bring some sense of stability to that country. Afghanistan is but one piece of a larger puzzle that includes Pakistan and the fate of radical insurgents globally. The stakes are incredibly high. But now comes word from President Karzai of Afghanistan that the United States should consider reducing our military operations in the country. “The time has come to reduce military operations,” he said in an interview. And why does he think this should happen? Because he has had contact with high level officials in the Taliban and Karzai believes a peace agreement may be a real possibility.

Fortunately, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have rebutted Karzai. Graham rightfully said he was “stunned” by his comments.

I hate how often the Vietnam analogy is used when it comes to any of America’s military operations, but Karzai represents the sort of naive mentality that served us so poorly during the Vietnam war. Force was used first by LBJ and then Nixon, not to defeat or destroy the enemy, but has a therapeutic tool to persuade the enemy to sign an agreement. The trouble is, an enemy in will use this sort of tactic to buy time, demoralize their enemies, or wear us down. Even worse, they may use the tactic to come to some peace agreement, but then serve as a tape worm to eat away at the government. If local commanders want to defect and join the winning side, fine. Let them defect. But the Taliban leadership? Never.

There has been plenty of claims about how Karzai is corrupt. We can now confirm that he is also a fool.