President Barack Obama is under pressure.
Over 50% of Americans polled recently want disengagement from Afganistan.
Trillions have been sunk into the bottomless pits called Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to speak of nearly 6000 dead and many more wounded. No news channel will broadcast the maimed and the dead arriving back home.
Iraq was a blunder by Bush and and his cronies. The cross is on the shoulders of President Obama, and he has to carry it. Abandoning Afghanistan twenty years back was a grave error. Another cross to carry.
While Iraq is showing some marginal improvement, at least on paper, things seem to be going downhill in Afghanistan.Taliban and Al Quaida has recuperated in the last four years, and is operating freely from their R&R zones in Pakistan.
President Obama’s commitments to the nation at the time of polls that war in Afghanistan was ‘necessary’, may come up for a re look not because a positive conclusion to the Afghan situation is not in the long-term interests of US, but simply the inability of its armed forces to complete their job of finishing off or at least keeping the Taliban-Al Quaida away, till the Afghan government becomes viable.
In his endeavour to complete the Afghan operation early, President Obama has ‘changed the top leadership of his armed forces there, sanctioned increased manpower and asked Congress for more money’. (GA, TOI).
Obama today is in an unenviable position. American troops are required in greater numbers in Afghanistan, and to stay for longer period of time may be five years more. However the public may not be patient for that long. Within a year the tide of support for intervention in Afghanistan has turned.
Withdrawal by US from this theatre will spell doom for the Government of Afghanistan, which is trying to cobble up some system of administration against all odds.
Taliban and AlQuaida will walk back into Afghanistan which will become a centre for all fanatic and lawless elements of the Muslim world.
A real and permanent threat to Humanity.
