Afghanistan: Failing Because of Iraq

The United States invaded Afghanistan over 6 years ago.  That was the right decision because Bin Laden's operations and training camps were there and were supported by the Taliban.  After the tragic events of 9-11, the people of the U.S. supported that operation as did most world leaders.  Our military leaders were convinced that we had Bin Laden trapped on several occasions, but we failed to capture him.

 

As of this writing Bin Laden is still at large.  The U.S. has approximately 26,000 troops in Afghanistan and NATO has about 28,000.  The U.S. has about 160,000 troops in Iraq.  Does that make sense when we knew Iraq was no threat to the U.S.?  Everyone knows who struck the U.S. on 9-11.  Our resources were and still are committed to the wrong war.

 

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Gates is blasting NATO for not doing enough in Afghanistan and that Gates wants to overhaul the alliance strategy in Afghanistan.  Violence is on the rise and the U.S. strategic goals for Afghanistan in 2007 have not been met.   In fact, senior administration officials have gone as far as saying that the country is backsliding.  

 

The bottom line is that we have not been fighting the war on terrorism.  We have turned that over to NATO and our rhetoric is hollow.  Our resources have been wasted in Iraq.  The President's self serving statement, "the War on Terror is centered in Iraq," is purely false.  The War on Terror can not be won when you have a faulty foreign policy.  The next President has to have the wisdom to recognize the real threat that terrorism poses, and have a foreign policy that deals with that threat.  Iraq is not a threat; Afghanistan and bin Laden are.