http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/us/politics/19military.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=afghanistan%20security&st=cse
President Obama and his advisers decided to significantly expand Afghanistan's security forces in the hope that a much larger professional army and national police force could help fill a void left by the cental government, and do more to promote stability in the country, according to senior administration and Pentagon officials. The plan is for 400,000 troops and national police officers to be trained to expand security. This plan is simply waiting on approval by Barrack Obama, who has already said he would do it. This would more than double the current force, however it would cost $10-$20 billion over the next 6 or 7 years to pull off. This cost would only include training and hiring the personnel, additional costs would be needed over time to maintain the forces. This plan will be executed in hopes of stabilizing the nation, and turn power from local warlords to trained local security. The question is; will the cost of all this be worth what we are giving Afghanistan?
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This is a hard question to bring up during these times. Everyone is trying to stretch money, and our pockets aren't exactly deep right now. But we have to consider the fact that we are part of the reason why this country is unstable in the first place. If we were to pull out our efforts now it would not only make America's image worse then it already is, it would also give these middle eastern countries another reason to resent us. I would resent someone if they tried to change my way of life, and then didn't follow through to a point where I could function again. 10-20 billion is a lot of money, but not in respect to what it would achieve. Not to mention what the monetary cost will be if we continue to drag this out and have to continue to support Afghanistan while it is struggling. As we saw in the video in Cyndi's class, other countries think our foreign aid is just a tease, this is an opportunity to show that America can follow through.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with Afghanistan is that they are "unbeatable". They are not necessarily really unbeatable, but several very powerful nations (russians, british empire, and earlier) have tried to take them over. The people who fight in Afghanistan, have been trained their whole life by their parrents, who have been trained by their parrents back thousands of years. They know every little secret about their land, they can travel in their mountains where we can't, and it is almost impossible to really fight them. I think it is a good idea for us to try to help Afghanistan stabalize their government, but no matter what we do warlords, and torrorists will most likely alwasy be there.
ReplyDeleteI think that though $10-20 billion seems like a huge amount of money, comparatively, this could be a very doable mission, and one that we should look into.
ReplyDeleteLike Travis said, we are fighting in their land. How do you think they feel about that, an unwanted enemy in their homeland. I understand that having someone you don't know come and take over your territory like they own it. We went through the same thing back in the Revolutionary War, and one of the reasons why we won that is because we knew the land and used tactics that had never been seen before, guerrilla warfare. But I'm not saying that we shouldn't be there, we should HAVE been focused on Afghanistan the entire time instead of going into Iraq. This is where we first went to defeat terrorism and capture Osama, if we draw our resources and help train the Afghani troops and police, we may be able to help the country get back on its feet and defend itself and prevent future terrorists from causing damage to the rest of the world.
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