After nine years of fighting in Afghanistan, the “good war” is no longer looking so good to me. I have had debates with some of my best friends at this site (mainly Brian) in the past about our military chances of success in the region, and while I still think that what we did in both Iraq and Afghanistan were initially right, on Afghanistan I have come to the conclusion that enough is finally enough. I don’t claim to understand all of the complexities of waging war in that part of the world, but it is becoming more and more apparent to me that this fight can’t be won the way we’re fighting it.

In the time that we have been engaged in Afghanistan, I have watched my son go from an elementary school student to finishing his first year of high school/early college; I have reunited with my wife, had a daughter, watched her go through kindergarten, and separated from my wife again; and I have lost my longtime job, started college, and finished a 6 years of college. And after all of that time, we are really no closer to whatever our new goals in Afghanistan are than we were when we started.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I am not some dove who doesn’t think that our military should ever sally forth and meet an enemy. I am well aware that we need a strong national defense, and I wholeheartedly supported our original mission in Afghanistan; we went in to root out and destroy Al-Qaeda and to topple the Taliban regime that allowed them to launch their terrorist strike on us on 9/11. But somewhere along the way, we went into nation building mode there, just like we did in Iraq, but with much worse results.

In Iraq, there was at least a chance of building a stable nation with a form of democracy there, mainly because the Iraqis shared a sense of national identity. Afghanistan is a far different story than Iraq.

Afghanistan is not so much a nation as a loose confederation of tribes, that as often of as not, are vying with each other for regional supremacy. They are much like the American Indians in that regard, which is why when we look at the history of the Indian Wars in this country we all understand why things were as one sided as they were; the Crow did not see themselves as “Indians” who shared a common heritage with the Lakota. When they looked the Lakota, they did not see a fellow “Indian”, but a generations old rival. That same sense of tribal identity is present in Afghanistan today, as certain tribes are willing to work with the coalition troops in fighting. Therefore it is imperative that we understand that they are not so much working to establish a stable Afghanistan, as much as they are to eliminate a tribal rival. And when viewed through that lens, it starts to become obvious that the idea of building an Afghan nation is nearing pipe dream status.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that we are dealing with a government that is monumentally corrupt. From week to week we do not know if Hamid Karzai is helping us, the poppy growers in the drug trade, or about to open a dialogue with the Taliban. Karzai is only in this fight as a way for him to consolidate his own power and enrich himself off of the monies that we have invested in trying to build a functioning nation in Afghanistan. Why should the members of rival tribes support a Karzai-led government in Kabul, when they can see more clearly than our leadership just how venal and corrupt the current government really is? Why would they support our efforts if we are seen as fighting to prop up this corrupt strongman?

Finally, I have become convinced that the surge will not work in Afghanistan, and even if it does, it may not be worth the blood and treasure already expended there.

First, I have serious qualms about the idea that a surge in conventional forces in Afghanistan will work as well as it did in Iraq. In Iraq, the surge was able to work because the fighting was in and around cities and towns. It isn’t easy to do counterinsurgency operations work anywhere, but it is much easier in an urban setting than it is in godforsaken mountainous tribal regions like we see in Afghanistan. This isn’t to disparage the men and women of our armed forces carrying out those operations, nor the commanders who drew up the plans. It is a critique of the plan that I feel is as valid and any other. I just don’t see how using conventional forces to tramp around in the mountains after people who know the area by heart is going to work.

Also, it seems to me that there has to be a better way to spend the money of our taxpayers and lives of our soldiers than we are currently engaged in. Since our invasion in 2001, we have spent an estimated $400 billion in Afghanistan waging this war, with around $100 billion of that having been allocated for this year alone. And what have we gotten for the money we have spent there? Not a whole lot, in my estimation. We are seemingly no closer to establishing a functioning national government in Afghanistan today than we were when we toppled the Taliban. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda remain in the country, the various warlords remain a thorn in our sides, and the drug trade has gone on nearly unabated. If that’s what nearly one half trillion dollars buys, we should be demanding a serious refund.

But even more importantly are the lives of the men and women that we have put at risk in this endeavor. Since the invasion, the coalition has had 1,725 deaths as of June 7, 2010; 1,016 of those have been American service members. Furthermore, there have been over 6,100 service members injured during the campaign, to come to a stunning total of 7,865 combined casualties. I recognize that we have suffered far more casualties than that in other wars, but those other wars did not seem to be as…senseless…as this has turned out to be.

Again, I am no expert on military strategy, but it seems to me that there is another course of action that we should seriously consider taking. We probably should give up on the nation building aspects of this mission ASAP and get back to the original mission: destroying the Taliban, smashing Al-Qaeda, and eliminating Osama bin Laden. And to do that we would enhance our chances of success if we were to draw down our conventional forces in the country, and let the Special Forces operators and the drones do the job they were made for. The loss of life and limb would decrease and maybe we could accomplish our goals there if we made those adjustments.

However, if we keep on our current path in Afghanistan I fear that we are trying to complete an impossible mission.