"We have put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat, and we will not relent until the job is done." --President Barack Obama, June 22, 2011
For the past several years, I had often wondered -- as I imagine many others have -- what we might consider "winning" the War in Afghanistan. The answer has changed depending on whom was asked and when the question was raised.
Was it to defeat Al Qaeda, as the President seems to suggest in the quotation above? That goal may have been part of the original motivation to invade Afghanistan in the first place, but considering that U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Al Qaeda's presence there was extremely limited even before the escalation of troops in December 2009, it seems far-fetched to believe that Al Qaeda serves as anything except a pretext for our continued use of combat forces, currently slated to withdraw completely by the end of 2014. Was it to thwart the Taliban's ability to retake control of the central government? That was one of President Obama's stated objectives in his speech earlier tonight. But the Taliban has re-established itself in rural areas of the country and, only two years ago, was believed to control up to 80 percent of Afghanistan.
Was it to secure a stable Afghanistan government that could ensure security and democracy for its citizens? President Hamid Karzai's government has been steeped in corruption, whether by fixing elections or running interference for financial criminals. Was it to eliminate the threat of terrorism and ensure the safety of Americans? More than 1,600 U.S. soldiers have died since the war began; thousands more suffered life-altering injuries; and while the United States government is still funding billions of dollars to fight the War on Drugs both at home and in Afghanistan, thousands upon thousands of Americans continue to be locked up in prison and see their rights stripped away for drug crimes.
The answer that is offered to the question of victory in Afghanistan usually involves some or all of those elements listed above. Such is the nature of an incredibly complex foreign policy problem that has been boiling for a long time. I've come to the conclusion that "winning" in Afghanistan is not a nebulous concept with many different answers, but a question without an answer. I no longer ask what is the definition of victory in Afghanistan because it has no definition.