I’ve been hearing, and reading, and I’ve noticed that Afghanistan is barely mentioned practically anywhere. I remember a couple of years ago when I even forgot that American troops were in Afghanistan. But, with the elections coming up, Afghanistan is popping up more often. A catalyst for this would be that, with both nominees, and the President saying that we should try to pull out more troops from Iraq, they are saying we should crack down in Afghanistan, to increase their military size, stop the terrorists, and stop the drug trafficking.
We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for a while now, and I don’t believe we can get out anytime soon without more troops. I’ve heard people say that we should just move all our troops into Afghanistan and just forget Iraq. But, of course, nothing in world affairs is as easy as pie. If we move all our troops at once from Iraq, the newly established government we support heavily we be obliterated with a new wave of civil war that would ravage the country for many years to come.
So, as I just pointed out, our two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are eternally tied. We must first win in one of them before moving to another. Since our troop count in Afghanistan is lower than the troop count in Iraq, I would say we should finish up with Iraq first. With this month, July, having the least amount of deaths in the whole war in Iraq, we should hope for even better. With President Bush lowering the touring time for soldiers to twelve months, it seems as though we’re making a breakthrough.
I would like your opinion on Afghanistan. Were you aware of it since the beginning of the war, or has it become a more pronounced thought now? How do you think we could end the war in Afghanistan? Should we end the war in Iraq first, or second? How would we get more troops into Afghanistan? What is your idea of how to redeploy troops from Iraq into Afghanistan?
August 21, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Good, solid questions. I have been aware and disappointed by the lack of reporting. Can we end the war in Afghanistan – not yet. We need to apply the recent lessons we learned in Iraq.
September 7, 2008 at 1:49 am
What are the lessons we have learned in Iraq? What have those 4,000 some American lives sacrificed for? What have we accomplished at all? How would you even define “winning the war” in Iraq? And if “mission accomplished” was declared months, and years ago, why are our troops still there?
The war in Afghanistan is less about destroying the nation than Iraq. We are currently going after the real culprits in the terrorist organizations (or just oil fields, i’m not sure either way). The war in Afghanistan is the one we should have been fighting, against terrorism, the whole time. It is a shame that the focus has been taken away from the “war on terror” because we are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and our national deficit is growing every second.