OTHER OPINIONS : Get it right
Posted: October 6, 2009 at 4:37 a.m.
PHILADELPHIA — : Why would the administration appear to be backing away from policies it seemed so sure of in March, when Obama said the Taliban and al-Qaida must be defeated so that Afghanistan never again becomes a base for terrorists who attacked our country?
Well, for one thing, Afghanistan's recent presidential election has been discredited by rampant allegations of fraud.
President Hamid Karzai's government was already known for corruption. Now, Karzai has made it even more difficult for the United States to hail him as an emblem of democracy.
Karzai aside, a number of experts are reassessing not just the strategy but the U.S.
goal in Afghanistan. Some of the debate has been in the Council on Foreign Relations periodical "Foreign Affairs." In one article, Ohio State University political scientist JohnMueller points out that al-Qaida doesn't need a secure base for its terrorist operations. He also notes that the operational base for 9/11 was Hamburg, Germany. :
Steven Simon, a CFR senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies, wondered whether the moment has been missed to successfully finish the large-scale mission that President George W. Bush began.
He posits that achieving the goal in Afghanistan might be better accomplished with the current program to kill al-Qaida's leadership through drone attacks. Of course, that puts more civilians at risk.
: It seems that the president just wants to get it right, especially as tensions with Iran grow. With the lives of so many U.S. soldiers at stake, he must not be wedded to a strategy if it won't make America safer or Afghanistan stronger.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer
Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/06/2009
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