[BRIEF NOTE] On staying in Afghanistan

[rfmcdonald]

The news of Harper's postponement of the next session of the Canadian Parliament was bumped from the lead position on the CBC's The National nightly broadcast by the news that five Canadians--one journalist, four soldiers--have been killed in Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device.

I've complained here about the many problems with Canada's role in Afghanistan, , most relating to the lack of any clear reason why Canada's there or why Canada has to deal with such a lazily corrupt regime as Karzai's. Reluctantly, though, I have to agree with the sentiments of this Matthew Yglesias post that Noel sent me a while back.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon has done a lot of reporting on Afghan women over the years and writes for The Daily Beast that there’s little support for the departure of American troops among the organizations doing work with Afghan women and girls:

Even while some political activists and pundits in Washington and London sound the call for a full troop withdrawal, women here argue that a complete pullback would only exacerbate the battery of formidable problems plaguing their struggling nation. Though nearly all say the international community could have done a far better job in securing a teetering Afghanistan, where practically every citizen can now rattle off a personal tale of corruption, few women say they believe foreign forces should go. In a series of conversations with a dozen women leaders spanning a range of sectors, from health care to business to politics, some of whom rarely speak to journalists, the consensus was that existing troops must stay for now—if only because things would be far worse were they to leave. Insecurity would rise, the Taliban would gain power, and women and girls would immediately lose ground.

I think the best thing to say is that American troops aren’t in Afghanistan in order to help Afghan women, and there are a lot of things America could do in the world that would be more effective ways of advancing women’s rights if that were our primary goal, but Afghan women are nonetheless beneficiaries of the mission.

That said, when it comes to military operations you can’t just bracket the question of feasibility. If the administration’s plan is fatally flawed and simply leads to several more years of fighting followed by inevitable withdrawal and Taliban takeover, then we’re not actually helping anyone. This is why things like Richard Just’s insistence on trying to understand everything through a lens of “realism” versus “idealism” are so annoying. If the administration has a workable plan to bring stability to Afghanistan, then implementing that plan will have humanitarian benefits. But if the plan’s not workable, then it’s not workable, and it doesn’t matter how idealistic or ambitious you try to make it.

I guess we'll have to find out if the new plan will work out and Afghanistan will stumble towards something better and safer. I can hardly wait.