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We need an exit strategy for leaving Afghanistan

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 12, 2009

Any illusions of glorious battlefields conjured in the brains of non-combatants are just that - illusions from someone's imagination. No battlefields are glorious, and the people who know find nothing appealing about war.

Our military has been fighting in two of the most terrible places in the world. Afghanistan and Iraq are nasty places filled with too many people who hate us. A majority of inhabitants there both despise us and want us to stay. Our soldiers struggle knowing who to trust.

Afghanistan seems like a lost cause. The people there appear so accustomed to war and violence that they side with whomever is the most powerful, not who is right. We don't judge them for this. If roles were reversed, it's hard to say that we would act differently. But that situation is almost hopeless.

Reports are coming out that the Taliban is gaining strength. In fact, they are growing stronger than Al Qaeda. That wasn't the case before. If we think back a few years ago, when we first went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban weren't much of a fighting force. Their soldiers would surrender the minute it appeared they couldn't win. Then they would switch sides with the Northern Alliance, who was doing ground operations for us.

Now, though, Taliban fighters are much different, according to military experts. They've regrouped, learned some military strategy, have better weapons and are pushing hard to re-enter Afghanistan. The United States has had to pull back from remote bases because we can't defend them with current troop levels.

There's no doubt that if we put the resources into Afghanistan that we can push them out without too much effort, although we'd lose a lot of our nation's finest warriors due to roadside bombs and ambushes. But the question is, is it worth it? That's a tough one.

Leaving Afghanistan to once again become a training ground for terrorists is unacceptable. Then again, continuing a bloody war in a terrible place with little possibility of making progress isn't acceptable either.

There doesn't seem to be a good answer to this problem. What we do know is that the thought of our fellow Americans dying in that ungrateful pile of rubble called Afghanistan makes our blood run cold. Let's pray our involvement ends soon.

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