Afghan shift: The U.S. is right to curtail combat earlier
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Americans who believe the United States has put enough lives and money into Afghanistan should be pleased by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's statement Wednesday that the U.S. role will be shifted from combat to training sooner than planned, to mid-2013.
The situation on the ground, as well as U.S. interests at home, show this is the right move for several reasons.
The first is the United States is no longer fighting al-Qaida, the original target after the 9/11 attacks. Instead, it has become involved in what is an intra-Afghan war involving the Hamid Karzai government, the Taliban and other domestic elements. Second, the U.S. focus on the intra-Afghan conflict has damaged its relations with Pakistan, another key South Asian player. Pakistan matters to the United States not only in a strategic sense but also because of its nuclear capacity and its faceoff with regional power India.
The United States needs good relations with Pakistan, yet they will only grow worse as the difficulties in Afghanistan are prolonged.
Afghans also need to resolve their difficulties among themselves. As long as the Karzai government continues to rely on U.S. forces for its security -- for its very existence -- it is much less likely to arrive at the political compromises required to achieve a new working arrangement with the Taliban. Distasteful as the Taliban are, it is clear that Afghanistan's future stability will depend in part on an arrangement between them, Mr. Karzai and other political-military elements.
The U.S. decision to shift roles sooner is already being blamed in part on a comparable decision by the French to depart earlier. In fact, the position of French President Nicolas Sarkozy reflects, as does the American decision, current political and financial circumstances in the home country.
Whether it is good politics or bad -- the move was condemned by Republican front-runner Mitt Romney -- the earlier shift in the role of U.S. troops is correct and in tune with circumstances both in South Asia and in the United States.
First Published February 3, 2012 12:00 am
