We've spent over eight years in Afghanistan with no prospect of leaving, no clear mission and no consistent strategy. Yet, we are poised to send more soldiers and pour billions more dollars into a place that has been called the "graveyard of empires.
One has to wonder if we know what we're doing.
Our leaders remain in a quandary over the war. For example, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, want to triple the size of the police and military in Afghanistan. General Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of Afghanistan, advocates a counter-insurgency approach and up to 40,000 troops to assist the 68,000 already there. Vice President Joe Biden suggests a counter-terrorism approach that focuses on combating al Qaeda through the use of unmanned drones and special forces instead of additional troops .
"This is the definition of insanity, said Phyllis Bennis, a foreign policy expert who specializes in Middle East and United Nations issues and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. Recently, she spoke during Peace Week at Western Michigan University where she provided a punchy critique on the war that has already cost $225 billion, 904 Americans' lives and God knows how many Afghani lives.
Bennis questioned the original purposes and motivations of the war, which were meant to respond to 9/11. However, the hijackers were Saudis and Egyptians who attended flight schools in the United States and they lived in Hamburg, Germany. So why did we invade Afghanistan?
And as horrific as September 11 was, it was not an act of war that warranted the invasion of that country, said Bennis. President Bush called it a "war of justice when it was really a "war of vengeance.
"Wars of justice are never legal, never just and they don't work, she said.
Bennis called for a strategy that looks at the region as a whole and supports "real diplomacy. That strategy would include those countries that border Afghanistan including China and Iran who have a stake in what goes on there for their own security needs. However, it's unlikely that the United States would consult or work with those countries.
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