Roy Gutman: U.S.-Afghan history overlooked in Obama address
[Roy Gutman is Foreign Editor for McClatchy. He was diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek and director of American University's Crimes of War Project. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1993 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he provided the first documented reports of concentration camps.]
President Obama left a major element out of his West Point address Tuesday as he announced the deployment of 30,0000 troops to Afghanistan: the modern history of America's involvement in that faraway, landlocked country.
It was an extraordinary omission for a president who looks for his model to Abraham Lincoln, a president steeped in history. In declaring that the coming military offensive is aimed at defeating al-Qaeda, which has a small presence now in Afghanistan, Obama made it all the harder to claim public support for an extended engagement in a country that has been at the center of so much history in the last half century.
He also made it all the harder to convince Afghans, who after three decades of war are being asked to prepare for still more sacrifices.
It's 30 years since the Dec. 26, 1979, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an action that badly rattled the Carter administration until it made the critical decision to infiltrate military support to a fledging Afghan resistance. The Reagan administration expanded the program, and 20 years ago, the Red Army left. The United States played a critical role in the nine years and 50 days of that war, supplying every form of support it could to Afghans to drive up the cost of occupation and force the Soviets to leave...
... Under Clinton, the United States dropped support for any parties to the internal conflict and stopped close monitoring of internal affairs. The United States cut off all aid and stopped receiving refugees. Clinton looked to the Taliban as a stabilizing force in Afghanistan. He tried in vain through his diplomats to persuade the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, long after the Taliban made clear they would do nothing of the kind. That was the first abandonment...
Read entire article at Merced Sun-Star
President Obama left a major element out of his West Point address Tuesday as he announced the deployment of 30,0000 troops to Afghanistan: the modern history of America's involvement in that faraway, landlocked country.
It was an extraordinary omission for a president who looks for his model to Abraham Lincoln, a president steeped in history. In declaring that the coming military offensive is aimed at defeating al-Qaeda, which has a small presence now in Afghanistan, Obama made it all the harder to claim public support for an extended engagement in a country that has been at the center of so much history in the last half century.
He also made it all the harder to convince Afghans, who after three decades of war are being asked to prepare for still more sacrifices.
It's 30 years since the Dec. 26, 1979, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an action that badly rattled the Carter administration until it made the critical decision to infiltrate military support to a fledging Afghan resistance. The Reagan administration expanded the program, and 20 years ago, the Red Army left. The United States played a critical role in the nine years and 50 days of that war, supplying every form of support it could to Afghans to drive up the cost of occupation and force the Soviets to leave...
... Under Clinton, the United States dropped support for any parties to the internal conflict and stopped close monitoring of internal affairs. The United States cut off all aid and stopped receiving refugees. Clinton looked to the Taliban as a stabilizing force in Afghanistan. He tried in vain through his diplomats to persuade the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, long after the Taliban made clear they would do nothing of the kind. That was the first abandonment...