Afghanistan War Is Failing

The U.S. went to war in Afghanistan when the 9/11 attack was traced back to Osama bin Laden, who happened to make his base in the mountainous areas there. The war overturned a Taliban government with practices that included complete disenfranchisement and persecution of women. No one that I've heard of opposes our battle to bring that country into the modern world and to uphold the government elected there by a people that had had a medieval regime inflicted on them by the Taliban.

Yet it is only now that the U.S. in leading that effort has begun to commit a level of troops to the war that can actually accomplish our goals. And the word 'victory' really hasn't reached a level of importance enough with the administration to become one of its state goals.

The relative good news is that the administration is making a significant effort to correct a situation that, though deteriorating, remains far better than that in Iraq. In addition to the extra forces, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced last week that the White House would seek $10.6 billion in new funding for Afghanistan in the upcoming supplemental budget -- a huge addition to the $14 billion in aid that has been spent since 2001. Most of the new money would go toward a big expansion of the Afghan army and police, which would gain 150,000 new personnel, but $2 billion would be used for aid projects in a country where millions of people have yet to see any benefit from the government that replaced the Taliban.

The effort deserves support from Congress. But it's likely to fall short unless other NATO countries are willing to similarly increase their commitments. Though Britain, Canada and the Netherlands carried the burden of the war in southern Afghanistan last year, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are among the countries that have kept their soldiers away from the war zone and tied them down with restrictions. The European Union has pledged just $780 million in aid for Afghanistan over the next four years. Ms. Rice now leads a U.S. campaign to round up more allied commitments over the next several weeks. She can only hope the belated but essential American escalation will give her some leverage.

The commitment to war in Afghanistan has also suffered from inadequate equipping of our forces there.

A lack of armoured vehicles, weapons and other equipment is hampering missions of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s watchdog agency said in a survey released on Tuesday.

Equipment shortages have been a near-constant issue since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, with some soldiers using improvised armour to protect vehicles from rocket-propelled grenades and high-velocity rounds.

“Service members were not always equipped to effectively complete their missions,” said a summary of the survey, based on interviews last year with some 1,100 troops by the Department of Defence’s inspector-general.

If the U.S. had showed good sense up front, and if it showed some rational behavior at the helm now, the chances to enlist further assistance might be on safer ground. It is highly unlikely that the nations asked to commit the lives of their troops are going to be confident of the outcome of a war the U.S. has kept from real commitment on its own part.

It can't be very reassuring to the government now trying to hold onto its position in Afghanistan that it is relying on an administration here that seems to have lost its grip on reality. It certainly isn't at all reassuring to the public here to have that prospect in place for the next two years.

If the 110th Congress wants to put this country on firm ground, it needs to grasp the controls out of those hands that have wielded power so poorly. We need a functioning government for the sake of world peace as well as for our wellbeing here at home.