The situation in Afghanistan is becoming even more dangerous. When the United States originally went into the Middle Eastern nation, President George W. Bush said we needed to take the Taliban out of power and introduce democracy. Obviously, this has been much easier said than done.

Then the war with Iraq came along, which was hotly contested. Because of the way the Bush administration led the public to believe that going in was absolutely imperative because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for Sept. 11, the overwhelming consensus was that we needed to go in immediately. Now we’re fighting two wars with goals that have become seemingly convoluted and the current administration isn’t quite sure what to do.

Obama has made it clear that we need to focus on Afghanistan, because that’s where the Taliban is and that’s the most dangerous place right now. Republicans who were not so happy with the decline of troops in Iraq were then pleased to see that Obama felt a pressing need to put more troops in Afghanistan. This has recently caused much strife because the Afghani government seems to be tired of U.S. presence there, despite the essentiality of it.

So we’ve said that we’re going to refocus our efforts to where they are needed most. Check. We’ve put extra troops in there. Check. All reports coming from the country say we’re doing relatively well and the troop surge is working. Check. So what exactly is it that we’re doing wrong? What is leading Hamid Karzai to say that he’s so fed up with America that he’s thinking about joining the Taliban?

The answers to these questions are among the most pressing in order to figure out when we can get out of the Middle East and really see what the fruits of our heavy-handed diplomatic labor will yield.

Could it be American arrogance? It seems like the Bush administration bit off more than it could chew, and now the Obama administration isn’t exactly sure how to digest it all. We’re taking a step in the right direction by attempting to meet with Karzai, but even that meeting is in jeopardy.

Are the things we’ve done irreversible? We need this meeting. We need it because we need to listen. Karzai is corrupt and there’s plenty of evidence to support that. But transparency is key. We need this meeting because we need to understand what we as America can do to help Afghanistan, other than simply packing our bags and leaving.
The reasons the meeting might be canceled are not because Karzai refuses to meet with the U.S., but the U.S. might refuse to meet with Karzai. 

This could be potentially disastrous. The White House said that the meeting may not happen because of Karzai’s recent slew of anti-Western comments. Who cares? So what if he says some anti-American things — it’s not like he’s made any threats. He’s frustrated and so are we.

This government and nation is susceptible to the same fall it took in 1980, when the Russians turned it over to the Taliban in the early ‘80s. If the U.S. is not careful, it could see a dangerous repeat of the 20 or so years that preceded Sept. 11.

David Kaplan is a sophomore broadcast journalism and political science major. His column appears weekly and he can be reached at dhkaplan@syr.edu.
 

Published on April 6, 2010 at 12:00 pm