Why Are We in Afghanistan?

A few days ago I ran into friend who I hadn’t seen for a while; catching up on our lives and knowing I have a son who just returned from Afghanistan he asked me, “Why are we in Afghanistan?”

That same day I happened to be driving down the main street in Ojai, California, a small town about an hour and a half drive north of Los Angeles. There I saw three people on the sidewalk waving peace and anti war signs.

The next morning (Sunday) the front page of the LA Times ran an article titled, A Battalion’s Mounting Loss, A danger you can feel, a story of the 3^rd Battalion, 5^th Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton. Since being deployed to the Sangin district of Afghanistan in September, they lost 24 Marines. They replaced a British unit who had been there for four years and in that time lost 100 soldiers about one third of all the British losses of the war. And our losses are nearing 6000.

In the Times article Sangin was likened to Vietnam because the Taliban are targeting patrol leaders. It is also like Vietnam because the enemy can blend in with the civilian population and in Sangin the Taliban own the territory. The most compelling part of the article are photos of a Marine who lost both legs and his right arm and a young mother who holds her newborn who was conceived in case her husband didn’t return, he didn’t.

There is no simple answer to the question, “Why are we in Afghanistan?” I am no military or political expert but I do have my opinion. I am blessed and humbled to be able to put my thoughts in writing for others to read. Then I thought putting this on Big Peace would only be “preaching to the choir.” But maybe there are some or even many who are questioning the war in Afghanistan.

I didn’t get through the Times article without tearing up and getting angry with the media. Not for reporting this story but for not covering the war in Afghanistan on a daily basis. Reminding America what is going on over there. It seems that it has been forgotten even by conservative TV and talk radio.

We don’t want to be in Afghanistan, we have never invaded a country for the purpose of occupying it or taking its land or resources. We are there because it was the birthplace of the plot to destroy the World Trade Center and ruin the financial district of America. They attacked our military center at the Pentagon and our Capitol in Washington, D.C. hoping to kill as many Americans as possible including women and children. We have to be in Afghanistan because there are those in this world who want us dead.

Suppose we never went into Afghanistan after 9/11. We can speculate with some degree of certainty that Osama bin Laden would still be there. Al Qaeda would be running the entire country without opposition, and they would be plotting new ways to attack us. And from what we know about Pakistan they could be controlling it by now. Not to mention we would appear weak sending a message like the one after the USS Cole attack when we just pulled up our skirts and ran. Thank you President Clinton.

We are still there because of politics, culture, and absolutely no help from the Muslim and Arab world, and little effort from the member states of the United Nations. Sure some countries have sent token forces but none have really committed their military in a meaningful way.

The most common reason Islamic apologists give us for the presence of al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they have “hijacked” their religion yet they do nothing to prevent it. One would think that Afghanistan being a Muslim country would be helped by its Islamic brothers. One would think that Muslims would want to defeat those who they say, “hijacked Islam”.

The Quran says death to those who create “havoc in the land”, that is what al Qaeda and the Taliban use to justify their fight. But the real reason they fight is because they hate America and the West and they want to destroy us. If we leave Afghanistan it would only be a matter of time before they regrouped for more attacks on our soil.

The really tough problem with Afghanistan is the culture; we have to change hearts and minds, a virtual impossibility when the Taliban are embedded in the population. Like the Gestapo in Nazi Germany the citizens of Afghanistan are afraid to do anything to oppose the Taliban. We certainly cannot blame the people of Afghanistan. But we can blame our Allies who refuse to commit troops and those who commit a token few. We can blame the rest of the Muslim world who just sit back and allow the Taliban (who “peaceful Muslims” keep saying “hijacked Islam”) to infiltrate and create havoc in a Muslim country.

We continue to question why the Muslim world seems to do nothing when some terrorist act is committed in the name of Islam. In an article from The Washington Post last June the question: “Why don’t Islamic religious authorities speak out more forcefully against the terrorists and their wealthy fanciers?” was answered by Saudi Arabia in a fatwa. Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Ulema, made up of their senior religious leaders, defined terrorism as “a crime aiming at destabilizing security” and defines criminal activity as “blowing up of dwellings, schools, hospitals, factories, bridges, airplanes (including hijacking), oil and pipelines.” The fatwa condemns financing terrorists’ acts as “a form of complicity”.

The attack on Saudi Arabia’s head of counterterrorism operations in 2009 seems to have provoked the Saudis into rethinking their hopes of rehabilitating terrorists and getting them to renounce al-Qaeda.

Of course this is a step in the right direction but why don’t the Muslim countries of the world do more. They could commit troops and certainly billions of dollars to help defeat the “hijackers of Islam” and oust al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan. But they seem to ignore the situation, which says to me that the “Religion of Peace” doesn’t give a damn about their own. It seems Saudi Arabia’s fatwa against terrorism was issued more to protect itself than to protect the rest of the world from terrorism.

The non-terrorist states of Islam could create the “Organization of Muslim States” (OMS) whose sole purpose would be to protect Muslim countries from being taken over by radical Muslims like al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Secretary of State along with the United Nations could promote such an organization. Certainly the UN stepping up is nothing more than a pipe dream.

But if they did the UN and the OMS could put enough troops and resources on the ground to oust al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan and once cleared out of Afghanistan move on to Pakistan. This would certainly send a big message to the “hijackers of Islam” and empower law abiding peaceful Muslims to help. Yet another pipe dream.

We are in Afghanistan because we believe that freedom is something worth fighting for and “radical Islam” must be defeated or our freedom will be in jeopardy. We are still in Afghanistan because the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn about the sacrifices of our soldiers and their families. Yet by being in Afghanistan and defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban we are protecting the rest of the free world and Islam itself.