The Nexus

The Commander-in-Chief has made a crucial decision for the future of the war in Afghanistan. He has made the difficult call of increasing the amount of troops in the region by 30,000.

This decision was extremely risky on many levels, but it was the necessary decision to aid our country’s success in this war. He is going against his political base and potentially resting the success of his administration on a single effort in order to do what is right.

Despite criticism to the contrary, we are not further entering into this war with little thought, or without a great level of commitment.

The only reason Obama would increase the number of troops is not to help his political agenda, but in order to make important, crucial changes.

Right now, Obama has stated that, as he sees it, the mission in Afghanistan is to secure population centers from the Taliban. This would be an important step towards weakening the power of the terrorist group as a whole.

But a question many Americans are struggling with is, what exactly does this terrorist group rooted in the Middle East have to do with us? Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks, not the Taliban. So why bother?

There are several ways in which the United States is affected by this terrorist group, making it imperative that we further intervene. First, the United States was a supporter of the Taliban since its inception in Afghanistan.

The U.S. had hoped the organization would help give Afghanistan some stability, so we basically gave the group free reign in the region. It is, in part, because of us that the Taliban has been able to grow to such a great size. As such, we are responsible for reining them in as well.

Also, the Taliban has provided support and protection for Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization that has attacked the United States and many of our international allies. By interfering with our relations with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban is forcing the hand of the United States.

Although we have good reason to be in Afghanistan, there can still be doubt as to whether a troop increase was necessary. In a country whose population seems so anti-war, it seems incongruous that we would send more troops into the region.

But we are increasing our efforts in an intelligent manner, not rooting ourselves to one plan that could potentially lead to failure. We are increasing our efforts to avoid violence on a greater, more horrifying scale.

The Taliban is behind many atrocities in the area, including removing more than 30,000 girls from schools in order to maintain their own twisted version of Islam in the region.

They are behind the slaughter of countless innocents in the region. The potential for the United States to hinder such terrible things is reason enough for us to intervene in the area.

The current plan Obama has chosen to implement is loosely based on the surge implemented by President Bush’s administration, one of the only successful efforts of his eight years in office.

By basing plans off of those of the past that have proved successful, we are using precedent to help increase our chances of success. But if precedent does not work on our behalf, we are not constricted by an ego-driven desire to ‘stay the course.’ Obama recently stated that we should be able to determine whether or not our efforts have been successful by the end of 2010, so we will be able to gauge our further plans from there. This statement will hopefully also calm the fears of those who worry about the timeline he set.

The ridiculous notion of a constrictive timeline holds no water in the realm of reality. Obama merely stated when he hoped our war efforts would have been effective by, giving no notion to a concrete date of withdrawal. People need to give our president more credit than that. The sole purpose of the ‘timeline’ is to show we have certain goals set, and we intend to achieve them.

So the United States must support Obama in increasing its efforts and troops in Afghanistan in order to put an end to injustice and violence that we helped breed. We must set our mistakes right.