Reply #12: A heartbreaking hearing

[TayTay]

Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is tell someone of good intentions that time has run out and they no longer have the chance to right a wrong or see a cause through to it's end. This was the overwhelming feeling I got from watching the hearing in the SFRC on Thursday morning.

The Committee took the testimony of 5 people, 4 veterans of the Operation Enduring Freedom and one Professor on International Relations at Boston University,who was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and who had lost a son in the Iraq War back in 2007. All of these people offered poignant and heartfelt testimony that spoke to their experience in war and hopes and fears for the future of the US involvement in Afghanistan.

The four service people spoke about their involvement with Afghani civilians. The overall impression I got from their testimony was one of genuine humanitarian concern for the well-being of the Afghani people going forward. The disagreements among the soldiers centered on whether or not the US can actually do anything to better that future. Three of the veterans believed we could, one veteran believed we could not. I found all their testimony compelling.

Prof Bacevich's testimony was more about the overall picture of US foreign policy and how the particulars of Afghanistan fit into that overall policy. Bacevich's goal seemed to be to drastically downsize US goals and insert a dose of realism into the discussion.

This was the heartbreaking part of the hearing for me. The soldiers spoke about the connections they feel with the Afghani people and how it would be wrong to abandon those people. We have the opportunity to do much good there and to help rebuild a nation and alleviate genuine suffering. These soldiers had put in a lot of time and effort and had seen lives of friends lost in this cause. That was very touching. They made a compelling case for continuing our effort in Afghanistan and, perhaps, putting more troops on the ground in order to stabilize that country.

One soldier related the story of holding the hand of a dying soldier and that the thought of abandoning the mission in Afghanistan would, to him, dishonor the memory of what that soldier was trying to do. I can understand that and I could plainly see the pain of that memory as it was related.

This is the crux of the matter then. It is not a faction against faction case where we draw up false sides and pretend that one side is right and another is wrong. All the sides are right. It is morally wrong to abandon Afghanistan. It is morally wrong to see 40,000 villages in Afghanistan where there are no schools or health care or other basic necessities and then leave them. It is wrong and, in the end, this is what we will do.

It is not physically or fiscally possible for the United States to rebuild Afghanistan. We lack the manpower, the commitment of other nations and the money to do so. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that anything that we do in that country will last beyond the tenure of the US term there. If we want to secure Afghanistan and it's future, then we commit to an open-ended term there that has no end. We commit to spending untold amounts of money that we don't have in search of an uncertain goal that might never be reached.

If we stayed and put in time to rebuild Afghanistan for, say, 15 years, there is zero guarantee that the billions of dollars we would spend there would make any political, humanitarian or social difference. There is plenty of evidence that pulling out would make things worse for the Afghani people and destabilize the country. It might also make things worse in terms of human rights for women and religious minorities. This is the very definition of a quagmire.

I found this hearing heartbreaking. The pleas of the soldiers for more time, more troops, more effort for the people in that strife-torn nation was genuine. I felt it. I also heard Prof Bacevich and the questions from the panel. The writing is on the wall, as far as I can see. The mission there, and elsewhere in that area, is going to change. We are not going to be the caretaker nation there. We are not going to rebuild the schools and roads and hospitals. We are going to be the international police who come in and do investigations. That is a big, big difference.

We are in an economic crisis. The federal deficit is expected to double over the next decade to 20 trillion dollars. Twenty trillion dollars. It does not take a genius to see that the amount of money necessary to do nation-building in Afghanistan or elsewhere does not exist. (It does not exist.) The longer the economic crisis goes on, the more we will be pitting the interests of US poor against the poor of other nations. (This is a terrible thing. They are all worthy.)

All our choices in Afghanistan, and Iraq and soon Pakistan, are bad. That is the point. These are not hopeful hearings wherein we hear about good things that we can do to alleviate suffering and build friendships. They are hearings about the limits of what we can do. They are heartbreaking hearings.