Sadie+and%20Morgan

1AC - Inherency

Withdrawal is inevitable, but Obama signaled a shift from the original July 2011 timetable by replacing McChrystal Petraeus.

Riedel, 6/28/10 - Former Obama Advisor (Bruce, Interview with Spiegel, “McChrystal has made a Fool of himself,” Spiegel, [] CT)

Riedel: If there is a silver lining to the McChrystal affair, it may be that we will now see a unity of effort. A counterinsurgency war is, by definition, very difficult to win -- and there are many parts of the counterinsurgency that are beyond your control. One of the few things that is under your control is unity of command and a unity of purpose for your own team. The president is now trying to re-establish that. In General Petraeus, he has picked exactly the right person to do that. SPIEGEL: However, there is still an unresolved divide between the political and the military. Obama wants to start pulling US troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 -- but his generals remain skeptical. Riedel: I think that issue was resolved. The July 2011 date will now be very notional and Petraeus has, in effect, gotten what he wanted. SPIEGEL: So a serious plan for US withdrawal is off the table ? Riedel: Petraeus would not have taken on the job without being reasonably certain that it is not a hard and fast deadline but an aspiration. SPIEGEL: Do you think this was a condition Petraeus set, before accepting the job? Riedel: I know David Petraeus pretty well, and I don't think he would have (made that demand publicly). But by turning to Petraeus, the president has signaled that he understands that that deadline is an aspiration, not a fixed point. SPIEGEL: So Obama is now resigned to the idea of seeing US troops stationed in Afghanistan for many years to come? Riedel: We now have the extraordinary case of two US presidents in a row going to David Petraeus to try to salvage a deteriorating situation. This president is even more dependent upon Petraeus turning this around than Bush was. By the time he turned to Petraeus, Bush was in his second term and had no hopes for re-election. Obama is in his first term and very much hopes he can be re-elected. But to do that, he now needs to succeed in Afghanistan.

1AC - Plan Text

The United States Federal Government should have a phrased withdrawal of its combat troops from Afghanistan starting July 2011.

1AC - Hegemony Adv.

Adv. ___ - U.S. Hegemony

The United States merely needs to maintain its status as a global hegemon. Primary negative scenarios wrong for why military presence are wrong - staying in Afghanistan will only weaken U.S. hegemony.


 * Innocent, 09** – Foreign Policy Analyst Cato Institute (July 2009, CQ Researcher, “Afghanistan Dilemma” http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2009080706&type=hitlist, IC)

No strategic, political or economic gains could outweigh the costs of America maintaining an indefinite military presence in Afghanistan. Washington can continue to disrupt terrorist havens by monitoring the region with unmanned aerial vehicles, retaining advisers for training Afghan forces and using covert operatives against specific targets. Many policy makers and prominent opinion leaders are pushing for a large-scale, long-term military presence in Afghanistan. But none of their rationales for such a heavy presence withstands close scrutiny. Al Qaeda poses a manageable security problem, not an existential threat to America. Washington's response, with an open-ended mission in Afghanistan, is both unnecessary and unsustainable. Policy makers also tend to conflate al Qaeda with indigenous Pashtun-dominated militias, such as the Taliban. America's security, however, will not necessarily be at risk even if an oppressive regime takes over a contiguous fraction of Afghan territory. Additionally, the argument that America has a moral obligation to prevent the reemergence of reprehensible groups like the Taliban seems instead a justification for the perpetuation of American empire. After all, America never made a substantive policy shift toward or against the Taliban's misogynistic, oppressive and militant Islamic regime when it controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s. Thus, the present moral outrage against the group can be interpreted as opportunistic. Some policy makers claim the war is worth waging because terrorists flourish in failed states. But that cannot account for terrorists who thrive in states with the sovereignty to reject external interference. That is one reason why militants find sanctuary in Pakistan. In fact, attempts to stabilize Afghanistan destabilize Pakistan. Amassing troops in Afghanistan feeds the perception of a foreign occupation, spawning more terrorist recruits for Pakistani militias and thus placing undue stress on an already-weakened, nuclear-armed nation. It's also important to recognize that Afghanistan's land-locked position in Central Asia will forever render it vulnerable to meddling from surrounding states. This factor will make sealing the country's borders from terrorists impossible. Finally, Americans should not fear appearing “weak” after withdrawal. The United States accounts for almost half of the world's military spending, wields one of the planet's largest nuclear arsenals and can project its power around the globe. Remaining in Afghanistan is more likely to weaken the United States militarily and economically than would withdrawal __.__

Continuing to commit to larger military footprint in Afghanistan undermines U.S. hegemony in several ways:

First, public support for counterinsurgency will only last for 3 years. While Obama taking ownership for the war reset this clock, the American public will demand improvement by the end of the year. Such improvement is empirically denied - parallels between Afghanistan and 1949 Communist China prove.


 * Gvosdev, 6/25/10** - former editor of the National Interest (Nikolas, “The Realist Prism: Knowing When to Walk Away from Afghanistan,” World Politics View, [] CT)

The **Obama administration is running up against the political clock**, and more particularly, Steven Metz's "three and out" paradigm, by which **the U.S. population is "only prepared to support major counterinsurgency operations for about three years." The president, by reviewing Afghan strategy and taking personal ownership of the war last December, reset the timer. But now he needs to show tangible success by the end of the year in order to sustain the public's commitment**. But changing personnel doesn't get at the heart of the question. The U.S. "surge" strategy for Afghanistan is based, to some extent, not on the American campaign in Iraq but rather on the lessons learned from "Plan Colombia " over the last decade. It assumes that Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai can duplicate the successes of Colombia under President Alvaro Uribe in rolling back entrenched insurgent groups. But that assumes a government in Kabul that is determined and able first to deploy security forces to retake and hold territory, and then to provide security and basic services to win the loyalties of the population. That, in turn, rests on the assumption that the inability of the Karzai government to do so up to this point reflects a lack of capabilities rather than a lack of will. And the July 2011 benchmark for a U.S. troop drawdown is based on the calculation that a massive deployment of U.S. and NATO military force up front will encourage the Karzai administration to follow this course of action, by demonstrating what can be achieved. The offensive in Marjah, of course, was supposed to be the first such demonstration, but the results are so far decidedly mixed. In assessing current developments in Afghanistan, it is striking to read a 1949 State Department White Paper about the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek on the mainland. The report concludes that the Kuomintang had "lost the crusading spirit that won them the people's loyalty during the early years of the war," and that the government had "sunk into corruption . . . and into reliance on the United States to win the war for them." Chiang's defeat did "not stem from any inadequacy of American aid." Rather, the Nationalists "proved incapable of meeting the crisis confronting them, [their] troops had lost the will to fight, and the government had lost popular support." Could a similar memo be written about Afghanistan today? The Taliban, of course, are not Mao's Chinese communist cadres, but the parallels between a corrupt and ineffective Kuomintang and the current regime in Kabul are apparent. And between 1945 and 1949, despite making changes in its military and diplomatic personnel sent to China, and despite large amounts of economic and military aid, the U.S. seemed to find no good and effective way to prevent a communist victory in the Chinese civil war. Perhaps things will change in Afghanistan. The wild card -- just as in Iraq in 2007 -- is whether influential local leaders develop a stake in supporting U.S. efforts. Perhaps Petraeus will be able to duplicate in Afghanistan what he did in Iraq. But as bad as things were in Iraq in January 2007, he has been dealt a much weaker hand to play today. **Metz's parting advice**, given two and a half years ago, **is for policymakers to know "when to walk away" and abandon efforts to re-engineer a failing society, in favor of humanitarian aid and containment of the problem** **. The new personnel should continue to pursue the president's Afghan strategy, for now. But Washington should be considering its alternatives if Karzai ends up bearing a closer resemblance to Chiang than to Uribe **.

Material preponderance not key – if public support for engagement collapses, then unipolarity will unravel

Kupchan, ‘2 - Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University, (Charles A. , The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century, p. 63)

The second trend that will bring the unipolar moment to an end sooner rather than later is the changing character of internationalism in the United States. Unipolarity rests on the existence of a polity that not only enjoys preponderance, but also is prepared to expend its dominant resources to keep everyone in line and to underwrite international order. If the U nited S tates were to tire of being the global protector of last resort, unipolarity would still come undone even if American resources were to remain supreme.

Second, continuing counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan will overstretch the military.

Dorronsoro 10 - Visiting Scholar @ Carnegie (Gilles, “The Case for Negotiations,” May 24th, Carnegie, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=40863)

The coalition's strategy in Afghanistan is at an impasse. The renewed efforts undertaken since the summer of 2009 have failed to temper the guerrilla war. A few tactical successes are possible, but this war cannot be won. The coalition cannot defeat the Taliban as long as Pakistan continues to offer them sanctuary. And increasing resources to wage the war is not an option. The costs of continuing the war-- to use Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's expression in the leaked telegram to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-- are "astronomical." The entire U.S. strategy revolves around a swift Afghanization of the conflict, yet the coalition's Afghan partner is weaker than it was a year ago. The state's presence in the provinces has declined sharply and the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai's government is contested. As a result of the massive fraud in the August 2009 presidential elections, the government has no popular legitimacy, and the legislative elections slated for fall 2010 will probably undermine the political system even further because fraud is inevitable. It is unlikely that the Afghan regime will ever be able to assume responsibility for its own security. As a result, the coalition faces an endless war accompanied by an intolerable loss of life and treasure. A less costly alternative would be to negotiate a broad agreement with the Taliban leadership to form a national unity government, with guarantees against al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan. But even if such negotiations might occur, they hold no guarantee of success. Yet the cost of their failure is negligible compared with the potential gain: a relatively swift way out of the crisis that preserves the coalition's essential interests. Time is not on the coalition's side. The United States should contact Taliban leaders as soon as possible rather than waiting for the situation to deteriorate further. In pursuit of a losing strategy The Taliban cannot be defeated militarily because the border with Pakistan is and will remain open for the insurgents. The Pakistani army, which refuses to launch an offensive against the Afghan Taliban , has never considered taking action against the Taliban leadership based in Pakistan. The February arrest of acting Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is probably a sign that the Pakistani military wants more control over the insurgency to prepare for the negotiation process. What's more, the insurgency is now nationwide and cannot be contained by counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in two or three southern provinces. The COIN strategy cannot succeed because of the immense resources it requires. In a marginal, strategically unimportant district such as Marjah, the coalition would have to keep thousands of troops for years to prevent the Taliban's return. To replicate such strategy, even in one province, would overstretch the U.S. military.


 * Empirically, hegemonic overreach is unsustainable because it destroys diplomatic negotiation as a political tool - it is critical to understanding recurrent global crises and flaws in U.S. hegemony.**


 * Florig, 10** - Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis, “Hegemonic Overreach vs. Imperial Overstretch,” 2/6, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548783_code1259934.pdf?abstractid=1548783&mirid=1 ) JB

The theory of hegemonic overreach contributes to better understanding of several cases of U.S. foreign policy failure, particularly 1 the Vietnam War, 2 the current war in Iraq, and the attempt of Woodrow Wilson to impose his vision of reform at the Paris peace conference after the first world war. Two apparent policy triumphs that later bore bitter fruit are also examples of hegemonic overreach —the restoration of the Shah of Iran and the support for the anti-Soviet Islamic militant rebels in Afghanistan who later evolved into the Taliban. Each of these cases lends credence to the theory of hegemonic overreach as a way of understanding recurrent crises in the global system and endemic flaws in U.S. foreign policy. Wars and key coup d’etat are especially instructive not only because they show the hegemonic system in crisis mode, but also because they mark a shift from reliance on ideological hegemony to the brute enforcement of dominance — the abandonment of hope for persuasion and consent in favor of pure coercion .7 They also reveal the purpose of the relentless Manichean distinction between the absolute goodness of the hegemon and its allies vs. the absolute evil of those who oppose the hegemon—to mobilize citizens to kill or be killed in war. Asking citizens to kill or be killed to maintain U.S. hegemony does not evoke the same passion as asking them to sacrifice to protect freedom, democracy, and Christianity against godless, communist dictatorship or crazed Islamic terrorists who want to destroy your way of life.

Third, large military footprint in Afghanistan skewing spending in favor of defense spending. This unbalanced approach undermines U.S. primacy.


 * Norris and Sweets, 10—**Executive Director of Enough and a research associate at American Progress, (6/8/10, John and Andrew, Center for American Progress, “Less Is More: Sensible Defense Cuts to Boost Sustainable Security,” []) CS

Our current international posture is increasingly unsustainable. The reasons? First, the United States is simply spending too much continuing to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while total defense spending over the past decade grew in an exponential and undisciplined fashion. Second, the relationship between our key foreign policy institutions (in defense, diplomacy, and economic and social development programs abroad) became wildly skewed in favor of defense at the expense of nonmilitary functions. This muscle-bound yet clumsy combination of assets leaves America poorly positioned to deal with the threats and opportunities we face as a nation around the globe today and in the future. Restoring a sense of balance and sustainability to our international posture is absolutely essential. The upshot: We need to spend less money overall on defense weaponry while investing a portion of those savings in sustainable security initiatives that simultaneously protect our national security and promote human and collective security. Shaping this more balanced approach will require sensible cuts in defense spending and concurrent but smaller strategic investments in sustainable security. This will be challenging amid a rising chorus of concern in Congress and from the general public about deficits and the national debt. This year’s deficit is expected to exceed $1.5 trillion, over 10 percent of our nation’s gross domestic product—the highest deficit level since World War II. Yet we pay surprisingly little attention to the staggering cost of our current defense posture. U.S. defense spending has more than doubled since 2002, and the nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars that the United States is now spending annually on defense is the highest in real terms since General Dwight D. Eisenhower left occupied Germany in the wake of World War II. Military costs continue to constitute more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending. Greater and greater sacrifices will have to be made in domestic and international priorities if more isn’t done to strategically reduce defense spending. No one questions the need to fight terrorism and protect our country. That’s precisely why it is so important for us to develop an international posture that is sensible, sustainable, and effective in achieving its core goals. Bringing defense spending under control will clearly enhance the overall health of our economy and thus our overarching influence around the globe. But doing so without investing some of those savings in social and economic development and diplomacy abroad would be unwise. Indeed, Secretary Gates consistently notes that we need to strengthen U.S. civilian foreign policy and development institutions if we want to more effectively promote lasting stability and defend our interests around the globe. And he continually points out in public speeches, interviews, and congressional testimony that these institutions currently lack the capabilities and funding to be effective policy partners in promoting our interests internationally.


 * American primacy is vital to accessing every major impact—the only threat to world peace is if we allow it to collapse.**
 * Thayer, 06 -** Professor of security studies at Missouri State (November 2006, Bradley, The National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy”, November/December, p. 32-37)

A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power‑the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, ei­ther because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher __Layne warned of these dangers of pri­macy and called for retrenchment__.1 Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its in­terests. __But retrenchment__, in any of its guis­es__, must be avoided. If the U__nited __S__tates __adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the U__nited __S__tates and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? __America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capa­bilities__. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capa­bilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. __Barring some__ disaster or __tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future.__ With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American pri­macy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action­ but they fall to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensur­ing American primacy takes as its starting point the protec­tion of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on re­trenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, __retrenchment will make the U__nited __S__tates __less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy__. This is because __threats will exist no mat­ter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington can­not call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats__. Whether they are terror­ists, rogue states or rising powers, his­tory shows that threats must be confront­ed. __Simply by declaring that the U__nited __S__tates __is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvinc­ing half‑pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weak­ness and emboldens aggression__. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, **__predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong__**. The same is true of the anarchic world of interna­tional politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, __then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats.__ And when enemies must be confront­ed, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from .American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. __This requires a phys­ical, on‑the‑ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing.__ Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global com­mon"‑‑the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space‑allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent ca­pabilities is increased.' This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly. __A remarkable fact about international politics today‑-in a world where Ameri­can primacy is clearly and unambiguous­ly on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the U__nited __S__tates. Of course, __this is__ not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but __because doing so allows them to use the power of the U__nited __S__tates __for their own purposes, ­their own protection, or to gain greater influence__. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America‑-their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements‑and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this coun­try, or any country, had so many allies. __U.S. primacy‑-and the bandwagon­ing effect‑has also given us extensive in­fluence in international politics, allowing the U__nited __S__tates __to shape the behavior of states and international institutions__. __Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is__ America's ability to cre­ate coalitions of like‑minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or __to stop proliferation__ through the Pro­liferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the where it can be stymied by opponents. American‑led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. __The quiet effec­tiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand coun­tries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezeula.__ Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and ac­tions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But __even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power.__ China proclaims that it will, if necessary, re­sort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communica­tion and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases‑‑Venezuela, Iran, Cuba‑it is an anti‑U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrin­sically anti‑American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power‑‑Rome, Britain or the United States today. Schol­ars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. __Everything we think of when we con­sider the current international order‑free trade, a robust monetary regime, increas­ing respect for human rights, growing de­mocratization‑‑is directly linked to U.S. power__. __Retrenchment proponents__ seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and __need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse__. __The Dark Ages fol­lowed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles__. __With­out U.S. power, the liberal order cre­ated by the U__nited __S__tates __will end just as assuredly.__ As country and western great Rai Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washing­ton and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, __American primacy helps keep a number of complicated rela­tionships aligned‑-between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia.__ This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but __a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: **great power wars**. Second,__ __American power gives the U__nited __S__tates __the ability to spread de­mocracy__ and other elements of its ideol­ogy of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, __once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced.__ This is not because democracies do not have clashing inter­ests. Indeed they do. Rather, __it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. lead­ership__. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Admin­istration for attempting to spread democ­racy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's crit­ics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or sta­bilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Per­haps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Af­ghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threat­ened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Wash­ington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western‑style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Ku­wait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. __Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the glob­al economy.__ __With its allies, the U__nited __S__tates __has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network character­ized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mo­bility of capital and labor markets__. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a glob­al public good from which all states ben­efit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well‑being of America. __This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable__. Economic spin‑offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his ca­reer confident in the socialist ideology of post‑independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recog­nizes that __the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globaliza­tion, which are facilitated through Amer­ican primacy__.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive exter­nalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War‑‑and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, __the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"‑it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department__. __When­ever there is a natural disaster__, earth­quake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, __the U__nited __S__tates __assists the countries in need__. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washing­ton followed up with a large contribu­tion of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. __About 20,000 U.S. soldiers__, sail­ors, airmen and marines __responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as foren­sic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communica­tions capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military__. In fact, UN peace­keeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. __American generosity has done more to help the U__nited __S__tates __fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indo­nesian public opinion was opposed to the U__nited __S__tates__; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America__. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 peo­ple and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediate­ly, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those ill need, the United States also provided fi­nancial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munifi­cence of the United States, it left a last­ing impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al‑Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well‑spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. __When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the U__nited __S__tates. __As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the U__nited __S__tates __humanitarian mis­sions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg__.

1AC - Afghan Stability Adv.

Adv.____ - Afghan Stability


 * US can’t win – unclear objective, can’t replace opium, safe havens in Pakistan, killing increases terrorist recruitment.**


 * O’ Connor ’10 –** former executive director of the Australian Defense Council (6/23/2010, Michael, “Best We Can Do is to Pull Out of Afghanistan” []) HG


 * __This is a war that will not be won on the ground__****, says Michael O'Connor.** **__The war in Muslim Afghanistan cannot be won by__** the **__armed forces__** of a Christian country. Even less can it be won by those of a pagan country which is the way the US and Australia are increasingly perceived. For Muslims, we are too easily portrayed by the Taliban and al-Qa'ida as unbelievers and enemies of Islam. For all our billions of dollars, the theories of counter-insurgency, the brilliant weaponry and the dogged courage of our soldiers**__, this conflict is unwinnable because Western politicians have lost sight of their objective, the cardinal sin of war-making.__** Looking back to the immediate aftermath of the al-Qa'ida attack on September 11, 2001, the US demanded of the Taliban government of Afghanistan that it hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind. The Taliban refused and the US went to war. The Taliban was joined with al-Qa'ida as the enemy. The Taliban was overthrown and a replacement government was manufactured. It was supposed to be a national government of a collection of tribes that demonstrates nationality only when attacked from outside: by the British, the Russians and now the Americans. In the process**__, the West has developed a mythology that Afghanistan can be turned into a modern nation, that its women can be educated to take their place in the modern world and that Western-style democracy will reign supreme.__** Most futile of all, **__the West seeks to replace opium as Afghanistan's premier cash crop with something else that probably won't grow as well, won't pay as well and will have to face competition from other sources.__** So the Taliban has recovered. **__With a combination of fundamentalist Islamic proselytising and terrorism that the North Vietnamese of another era would envy, plus safe havens in Pakistan, the lightly equipped, very mobile Taliban can keep the fight alive indefinitely.__** Certainly they suffer casualties but these are relatively insignificant politically compared with those suffered by the West. And **__every time Western technology kills by accident, it recruits even more willing foot soldiers for the Taliban.__** The religious factor must not be underestimated. It was not a factor in Vietnam which was lost by American incompetence and a loss of will. Whatever we in the West think, religion is the dominant factor in Afghanistan, as it was when the US backed the anti-Soviet Afghan forces between 1979 and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Since that time, militant Islam has become an even more powerful force. It will continue to be the primary motivating factor of the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan. **__If Afghanistan is to be modernised, that will be achieved only by Muslim countries that are frankly reluctant to take on the militants in their own countries, never mind elsewhere.__** When questioned, the soldiers will assert that the job can be done but that is loyalty rather than wisdom speaking. They may - probably will - insist that the cost in money and blood will be significant over the long haul but the decision to stay or go is one which must be made by the political leadership which bleeds no more than votes. **__The only credible solution to the mess is withdrawal__**. The clever people who constructed the case for intervention are equally capable of constructing a credible case for withdrawal. **__The initiative must come from the US which carries the burden of the intervention.__** Its allies who have been more or less willingly shanghaied into the mess need to press the US into committing to a safe but rapid withdrawal. The fundamental problem for all of the US's allies, including Australia, is that they have committed their own security to the American alliance. None - certainly not Australia - provides adequately for its own defence so all are handcuffed to US policy. Australians tend to see the American alliance as one of friends anchored in shared experience in past conflicts. They tend not to see the shackles because it has suited every Australian government since 1944 to severely limit its own commitment to national security. The problem for those governments is that they are then compelled to do what Washington wants regardless of the merits of the case. Sometimes those merits will be obvious to Australia's core security interests. In Afghanistan they are not. Terrorism, especially Islamist terrorism, cannot be defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia or elsewhere. Only good intelligence and solid police work will protect Australia from terrorist attack.

Prolonging military presence in Afghanistan will only allow Islamic extremist takeover of Pakistan

Kristof, ‘9 - a columnist for The Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (Nicholas D., 9/6, “The Afghanistan Abyss,” New York Times, [] CT)

President Obama has already dispatched an additional 21,000 American troops to Afghanistan and soon will decide whether to send thousands more. That would be a fateful decision for his presidency, and a group of former intelligence officials and other experts is now reluctantly going public to warn that more troops would be a historic mistake. The group’s concern — dead right, in my view — is that sending more American troops into ethnic Pashtun areas in the Afghan south may only galvanize local people to back the Taliban in repelling the infidels. “Our policy makers do not understand that the very presence of our forces in the Pashtun areas is the problem, ” the group said in a statement to me. “ The more troops we put in, the greater the opposition. We do not mitigate the opposition by increasing troop levels, but rather we increase the opposition and prove to the Pashtuns that the Taliban are correct. “The basic ignorance by our leadership is going to cause the deaths of many fine American troops with no positive outcome,” the statement said. The group includes Howard Hart, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Pakistan; David Miller, a former ambassador and National Security Council official; William J. Olson, a counterinsurgency scholar at the National Defense University; and another C.I.A. veteran who does not want his name published but who spent 12 years in the region, was station chief in Kabul at the time the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and later headed the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center. “We share a concern that the country is driving over a cliff,” Mr. Miller said. Mr. Hart, who helped organize the anti-Soviet insurgency in the 1980s, cautions that Americans just don’t understand the toughness, determination and fighting skills of the Pashtun tribes. He adds that if the U.S. escalates the war, the result will be radicalization of Pashtuns in Pakistan and further instability there — possibly even the collapse of Pakistan. These experts are not people who crave publicity; I had to persuade them to go public with their concerns. And their views are widely shared among others who also know Afghanistan well. “We’ve bitten off more than we can chew; we’re setting ourselves up for failure,” said Rory Stewart, a former British diplomat who teaches at Harvard when he is not running a large aid program in Afghanistan. Mr. Stewart describes the American military strategy in Afghanistan as “nonsense.” I’m writing about these concerns because I share them. I’m also troubled because officials in Washington seem to make decisions based on a simplistic caricature of the Taliban that doesn’t match what I’ve found in my reporting trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Among the Pashtuns, the population is not neatly divisible into “Taliban” or “non-Taliban.” Rather, the Pashtuns are torn by complex aspirations and fears. Many Pashtuns I’ve interviewed are appalled by the Taliban’s periodic brutality and think they are too extreme; they think they’re a little nuts. But these Pashtuns also admire the Taliban’s personal honesty and religious piety, a contrast to the corruption of so many officials around President Hamid Karzai. Some Taliban are hard-core ideologues, but many join the fight because friends or elders suggest it, because they are avenging the deaths of relatives in previous fighting, because it’s a way to earn money, or because they want to expel the infidels from their land — particularly because the foreigners haven’t brought the roads, bridges and irrigation projects that had been anticipated. Frankly, if a bunch of foreign Muslim troops in turbans showed up in my hometown in rural Oregon, searching our homes without bringing any obvious benefit, then we might all take to the hills with our deer rifles as well. In fairness, the American military has hugely improved its sensitivity, and some commanders in the field have been superb in building trust with Afghans. That works. But all commanders can’t be superb, and over all, our increased presence makes Pashtuns more likely to see us as alien occupiers. That may be why the troop increase this year hasn’t calmed things. Instead, 2009 is already the bloodiest year for American troops in Afghanistan — with four months left to go. The solution is neither to pull out of Afghanistan nor to double down. Rather, we need to continue our presence with a lighter military footprint, limited to training the Afghan forces and helping them hold major cities, and ensuring that Al Qaeda does not regroup. We must also invest more in education and agriculture development, for that is a way over time to peel Pashtuns away from the Taliban. This would be a muddled, imperfect strategy with frustratingly modest goals, but it would be sustainable politically and militarily. And it does not require heavy investments of American and Afghan blood.

Islamic extremist takeover of Pakistan leads to nuclear war.


 * Ricks, 01** – senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and covers Iraq for the Washington Post Staff Writer (Thomas E., 10/21/01, “Some Fear Regional Destabilization, Retribution Against U.S” http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/news/articles/warconsequences.htm, IC)

The prospect of Pakistan being taken over by Islamic extremists is especially worrisome because it possesses nuclear weapons. The betting among military strategists is that India, another nuclear power, would not stand idly by, if it appeared that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal were about to fall into the hands of extremists. A preemptive action by India to destroy Pakistan's nuclear stockpile could provoke a new war on the subcontinent. The U.S. military has conducted more than 25 war games involving a confrontation between a nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and each has resulted in nuclear war, said retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert on strategic games.

Extinction The foreign policy of the United States in South Asia should move from the lackadaisical and distant (with India crowned with a unilateral veto power) to aggressive involvement at the vortex. **__The most dangerous place on the planet is__** Kashmir, a disputed territory convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and **__sandwiched between nuclear -capable India and Pakistan__**__. **It has ignited two wars**__ between the estranged South Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, **__and a third could trigger nuclear volleys and a nuclear winter threatening the entire globe__**. The United States would enjoy no sanctuary. This apocalyptic vision is no idiosyncratic view. **__The director of central intelligence, the Defense Department, and world experts generally place Kashmir at the peak of their nuclear worries__**. **__Both India and Pakistan are racing like thoroughbreds to bolster their nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery vehicles__**__. **Their defense budgets are climbing despite widespread misery amongst their populations**__. Neither country has initialed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or indicated an inclination to ratify an impending Fissile Material/Cut-off Convention.
 * Fai 7/8/01** (Ghulam Nabi; Executive director - Kashmiri American Council) Washington Times l/n wbw)

Setting clear deadline solves Afghan stability two ways - (1) ensures credible negotiations between Taliban and Karzai and (2) mobilizes assistance for Kabul.


 * Schlesinger, 10—** an Adjunct Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York City, former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York City Governor Mario Cuomo’s speechwriter and foreign policy advisor for 12 years (3/10/10, Stephan, “The Only Way Out Of Afghanistan Is With A Withdrawal Deadline,” []) CS

What else does a deadline accomplish? **__A deadline will__** likely **__give the Karzai government more credibility as it__** **__seeks to__** **__begin serious negotiations with the Taliban__**, perhaps along the lines of a coalition government a la Nepal, especially if Obama’s surge manages to blunt the Taliban offensive and convince the insurgents that their cause is futile. **__Karzai__**, indeed, **__is__** already **__making overtures to the Taliban__**, possibly **__as a result of the Obama deadline__****.** And, as the Taliban is a local Pashtun group, not a global Islamic extremist movement or al-Qaeda, there may be grounds for both parties to work out a deal as Karzai, too, is a fellow Pashtun. **__The Taliban have insisted__** all along that **__they won’t start talks with Karzai until the U.S. sets a date for withdrawal__****.** This means that even if Karzai makes no progress with the Taliban, the Obama deadline at least meets the foe’s condition and will test the Taliban’s readiness to abide by it. And **__a settlement with the Taliban could__** well **__mean__** **__the end of al-Qaeda, since many in the Taliban cannot forgive al-Qaeda for its 9/11 attacks__** on the U.S., which led to the Taliban’s defeat in 2001. In any event, most of al-Qaeda’s band have already fled to Pakistan or Yemen. Neighbors Being Neighborly: **__The deadline is__** also **__a signal to our compatriots__** in the region **__that the U.S. and its__** NATO **__allies are not going to__** continue **__shoulder__**ing **__the burden of__** the **__Afghan war indefinitely and that__** **__the countries that border Afghanistan__** or have interests in it—including Russia, Iran, India, and China and the various “stans”—**__must now__** themselves **__become engaged in this conflict, supplying resources and forces to defeat the enemy.__** One may recall that Russia, Iran, India, and Tajikistan originally assisted the U.S. in ousting the Taliban in 2001 out of fear that otherwise the Taliban militants would foment domestic Islamic insurgencies within their borders and possibly spur narcotics traffic throughout the region. Today **__Iran, India, China, and Saudi Arabia__** (among other nations) **__are already giving economic aid to Kabul and would__** surely **__increase their assistance if the U.S. reduced its own__****__.__**

1AC - Solvency Gen. Stanley McChrystal's [|talent][|[1]] for broadcasting his innermost feelings to the world at large is the least of President Obama's problems in Afghanistan. In the face of rapidly rising violence throughout the country, **__Obama needs to decide how quickly to withdraw U.S. troops from the country.__** Here are **__five reasons wh__** y Obama should end the Afghan war sooner rather than later: 1. **__Karzai hasn't changed since he fudged his re-election last year. Counterinsurgency only succeeds if you're working in support of a government capable of gaining public trust. Afghan President Hamid Karzai does not lead such a government.__** A network of well-connected strongmen, most prominently the president's brother, [|Ahmed Wali Karzai][|[2]], still run the show in Afghanistan, and remain as unpopular among Afghans as ever. And **__Karzai's__** **__[|police force]__**[|[3]], underfunded and demoralized due to widespread graft among its upper echelons and staffed with officers who shake down Afghan civilians to supplement their wages, **__is utterly incapable of securing the country.__** In sum, **__the Afghan president has given NATO no compelling reason to keep writing him blank checks.__** 2. **__Early withdrawal means less cash for the Taliban.__** A recent [|report][|[4]] from Congress lends credence to something [|NATO insiders][|[5]] have been saying for weeks—**__U.S. tax dollars are flowing into the Taliban's coffers.__** Apparently, this is how it works: **__the Pentagon hires Afghan shipping companies to transport goods across the country. These companies then subcontract security for these convoys to local warlords, who in turn provide security by bribing the Taliban not to attack them.__** They then use whatever cash they have left to bribe the Taliban to attack convoys they aren't guarding, so as to persuade shippers to hire them next time. Since the Pentagon seems unable to prevent this from happening while U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, **__a withdrawal seems to be the only way to block off this Taliban revenue stream.__** 3. **__Washington wouldn't have to defend drug lords at the UN anymore. Over 30,000 Russians die each year because of opiates, 90% of which come from Afghanistan.__** But when Russia [|called on the UN Security Council][|[6]] to launch a crackdown on the Afghan opium trade, the United States, along with other NATO countries on the Council, quickly poured cold water on the idea. Spraying Afghan farmers' opium crops, they said, would alienate farmers and in doing so undermine McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy. 4. **__Sticking around won't stop Pakistan from slipping aid to the Taliban.__** **__Despite the Pakistan government's protestations to the contrary,__** [|**evidence**][|**[7**]] **__[|is]__** [|**mounting**][|**[8**]] **__that its intelligence service, in a bid to maximize Islamabad's influence in Afghanistan and entice militants to halt their attacks in Pakistan, is supplying covert aid to the Taliban and other Afghan militant groups.__** Even a massive, open-ended surge won't crush the Taliban as long as its operatives can scurry across the Pakistan border any time they need more ammunition and recruits. Instead, Washington should [|slash its military aid to Pakistan and restore it only when its government cuts all of its ties to the Taliban][|[9]]. 5. **__The rest of NATO won't be in Afghanistan much longer. Canada, which has been Washington's key ally in Kandahar, will be out by 2011. Britain will likely withdraw soon after, along with most of NATO's European contingent.__** **__If Obama does not synch his withdrawal with his allies', it won't be long before America finds itself alone in Afghanistan.__** We can't pretend that an early American withdrawal won't have consequences for Afghanistan. But it's difficult to see how U.S. forces can avoid these consequences as long as the Afghan government remains unwilling to clean up its act, and as long as Pakistan's intelligence service remains committed to propping up militant groups. **This is why President Obama should stick to his plan to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 2011, and finish withdrawing soon after.**
 * Obama should follow deadline established in December 2009. Five reasons: (1) Karzai government corrupt, (2) presence increases Taliban’s funding, (3) U.S. won’t support drug lords, (4) Pakistan undermining US by funding Taliban, and (5) NATO is withdrawing in July 2011 and U.S. cannot fight alone.**
 * Sarro ’10** - studied International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. (6/23/2010, Doug, “Five Reasons to Withdraw from Afghanistan Sooner Rather Than Later” []) HG


 * AND, combat troops unnecessary to stabilize Afghanistan– offshore balancing solves Afghanistan.**


 * Innocent & Carpenter, 09** - *Foreign Policy Analyst at Cato Institute, AND ** Vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at Cato Institute (9/14/09, Cato Institute, “Escaping the ‘Graveyard of Empires’: A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan”, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10533, IC)

Given the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, a definitive, conventional "victory" is not a realistic option. __Denying a sanctuary to terrorists__ who seek to attack the United States __does not require Washington to pacify the entire country, eradicate its opium fields, or sustain a long-term military presence in Central Asia. From the sky, U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles can monitor villages, training camps, and insurgent compounds. On the ground,__ the __United States can retain a__ small number of covert operatives for intelligence gathering and discrete operations against specific targets, as well as an additional __small group of advisers to train Afghan police and military forces. The United States should withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan within the next 12 to 18 months__ and treat al Qaeda's presence in the region as a chronic, but manageable, problem.

LASTLY, continuing a large military footprint without a clear deadline causes the worst case scenario - fast, complete military and political withdrawal, triggering all the negative’s turns. Withdrawing troops critical to prevent the American public from burnout.


 * Moselle 09 -** former Acting Executive Director of the Carr Center, former project manager for both the National Security and Human Rights and the Sate Building and Human Rights projects, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (10/1 Tyler, “Responsible Withdrawal from Afghanistan, Homeland Security Today, ”http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/sbhrap/news/ _HSToday_20091001.pdf”, KK) CS

Thoughtful proponents of increasing US troops argue that Afghanistan requires more military forces to counter the Taliban, al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, and prop up the Afghan government until it can stand on its own feet with its own national military and police forces. Troop surge proponents overlook the fundamental fact that a political compromise is the only sustainable solution for peace in Afghanistan. US and foreign occupation forces do not directly support such a process and only serve to delude American politicians and citizens into believing we are contributing to something positive in the region. Only Afghans themselves can create a political solution to the problems in their country: the best the US and foreign powers can do is to provide minimal - yet sustained - support to aid this long and difficult process. Ironically, a troop surge actually increases the likelihood of causing Americans to become cynical about the prospects of aiding Afghanistan because few results will emerge in a short time span following troop increases. Once Americans become cynical about such efforts, it is likely citizens will demand a total withdrawal, arguably the worst possible unintended consequence of such a policy. Moreover, an increased number of troops feed the propaganda machine of the Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates who claim they are killing infidels and rebelling against a foreign occupation.


 * Case Extensions***

Inh. - Withdrawal Date shifted

July 2011 deadline will shift -

a) Petraeus quietly changed security timetable in Kabul

Boone, 7/20/10 - political columnist (Jon, “Plan to begin Afghan security handover this year dropped,” Guardian, [] CT)

Plans to begin handing control of provinces in [|__Afghanistan__] to Afghan security forces by the end of this year have been quietly dropped amid fears among European countries that General [|David] [|Petraeus], the new US commander in the country, is less committed to a speedy transfer of power. The change of tack, revealed in the final communique from today's historic international conference in Kabul, reflects Petraeus's concerns that security conditions in Afghanistan are too weak for a transition of power to begin as quickly as originally planned , a [|Nato] official told the Guardian. Although the conference agreed that the security needs of the entire country will have to be met by the Afghan army and police by 2014, major European troop contributors were looking forward to more rapid progress in the relatively stable north and west of the country, where [|Germany], [|Italy], [|Norway], [|Spain] and others have personnel. The difficulties involved in any transition were highlighted today when an Afghan soldier killed two US civilians and one of his own comrades in Mazar-e-Sharif, one of the most stable cities of northern Afghanistan. The incident marred the otherwise successful conclusion of an international conference on Afghanistan led by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Beneath the diplomatic niceties, it became clear that plans first agreed by Nato ministers at a meeting in Estonia in April had been quietly dropped. Nato had hoped that by the end of this year a cluster of neighbouring provinces in the north-west of the country would have begun the handover to the Afghan army and police force. But in the final agreement of the conference, a reference to transition taking place on a "province-by-province" basis, which appeared in an earlier draft, had been removed. A Nato official said the change reflected Petraeus's wish to slow the pace of the transfer of power. European powers had wanted to announce which provinces would be handed over at a summit of foreign ministers in Lisbon in November. The official said: "For Petraeus, Lisbon is not a problem. His main concern is the US political timetable, and being able by next summer to show progress that won't unravel." According to the official, the slowing of the timetable sparked a heated exchange between Petraeus and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato's secretary general, during a video conference last week. Speaking before this week's conference, a senior European diplomat said Petraeus's approach was far less welcome than that of his predecessor, Stanley McChrystal. " Petraeus is trying to slow everything down, pushing back any announcement of transition until 2011, " he said.

b) Petraeus will request more troops, pushing deadline back

Tisdall, 6/28/10 - [|assistant editor of the Guardian] and a foreign affairs columnist (Simon, “David Petraeus is the lonliest man in America,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/28/general-david-petraeus-afghanistan CT)

Petraeus may try to buy time by persuading Obama to fudge his July 2011 "deadline" for beginning American troop withdrawals. He implied this month that any drawdown would be determined by conditions on the ground – and not by the White House. But if he goes down this road, he will collide head-on with the vice-president, Joe Biden, and Democrats worried about re-election. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, insisted last week there would be no going back. Biden was adamant, too: "In July of 2011, you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it." On the other hand, defence secretary Robert Gates was more ambiguous – an indication, if Petraeus needed one, of what a can of worms Afghan policy has become. Petraeus may also try to reduce the political heat by de-emphasising the importance of a scheduled White House progress review and Nato's Lisbon summit in November, where mutinous allies are seeking firm exit timelines. He could throw his weight behind attempts to draw Taliban elements into talks, as Pakistan, the UN and others have attempted. He could seek the replacement of Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador to Kabul, and Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy, who have arguably become part of the problem. Or he could chuck more money at the problem, buying off tribal leaders and potential foes – a policy he helped pioneer in Iraq's Sunni triangle. Some or all of this will be attempted. But Petraeus, who made his name with the 2006-7 surge that reputedly turned Iraq around, may be tempted to try and pull that same trick again. Speaking before Congress this month, he said it was "absolutely" possible that if more troops were required in Afghanistan, more would be sent – in addition to the two tranches of 20,000 and 30,000 reinforcements already despatched by Obama. In other words, to avoid definitively losing a war many already believe lost, Petraeus could decide to escalate, to go for broke with a third Afghan surge. Obama may oppose him. But he has not ducked a fight with the president in the past, for example over the Iraq withdrawal timetable, and is now in an immensely strong position, should he have to do so again. .

c) Deadline is currently tied to nation-building goal and will shift because can’t create a central government in Afghanistan in time to begin removing troops in July 2011.

Kissinger, 6/24/10 (Henry A., “America Needs an Afghan Strategy, not an alibi,” Washington Post, [] CT)

I supported President Obama's decision to double American forces in Afghanistan and continue to support his objectives. The issue is whether the execution of the policy is based on premises that do not reflect Afghan realities, at least within the deadline that has been set. The central premise is that, at some early point, the U nited S tates will be able to turn over security responsibilities to an Afghan government and national army whose writ is running across the entire country. This turnover is to begin next summer. Neither the premise nor the deadline is realistic. Afghanistan has never been pacified by foreign forces. At the same time, the difficulty of its territory combined with the fierce sense of autonomy of its population have historically thwarted efforts to achieve a transparent central government. The argument that a deadline is necessary to oblige President Hamid Karzai to create a modern central government challenges experience. What weakens transparent central governance is not so much Karzai's intentions, ambiguous as they may be, but the structure of his society, run for centuries on the basis of personal relationships. Demands by an ally publicly weighing imminent withdrawal to overthrow established patterns in a matter of months may prove beyond any leader's capacities. Every instinct I have rebels against this conclusion. But it is essential to avoid the debilitating domestic cycle that blighted especially the Vietnam and Iraq wars, in which the public mood shifted abruptly -- and often with little relation to military realities -- from widespread support to assaults on the adequacy of allies to calls for an exit strategy with the emphasis on exit, not strategy. Afghanistan is a nation, not a state in the conventional sense. The writ of the Afghan government is likely to run in Kabul and its environs, not uniformly in the rest of the country. The attainable outcome is likely to be a confederation of semi-autonomous, regions configured largely on the basis of ethnicity, dealing with each other by tacit or explicit understandings. American counterinsurgency strategy -- no matter how creatively applied -- cannot alter this reality.

d) Bickering in Senate committee hearing on Petraeus proves

CNN, 6/29/10 (“Bickering over Afghan troop withdrawal date marks Petraeus hearing,” [] CT)

A Senate committee hearing on Gen. David Petraeus, picked by President Barack Obama to be the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was marked Tuesday by bickering over Obama's plan to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Michigan, stressed the date's importance, saying it "imparts a sense of urgency to Afghan leaders" and is an important method of "spurring action." When the date was announced, Levin said, there was a surge in recruits for the Afghan army. But Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the committee, said Obama should make clear that any U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be determined "solely by conditions on the ground." Potential allies are less willing to back the U.S. mission in Afghanistan because they believe American troops will leave in July 2011, he said, and announcing a date to begin troop withdrawals is making the war "harder" and "longer." The "facts on the ground" suggest more time is needed, McCain said.


 * A2: Case Arg’s***

A2: Need to Defeat Insurgents

Continuing conflict feeds psychological need to continue insurgency - sustaining threats to global security, including terrorism, organized crime, refugee flows, humanitarian disasters, ecological damage, and proliferation.

Metz, ‘8 - Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and a research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, ½, “Three Years and Your Out,” [] CT)

CONTEMPORARY INSURGENCIES are just one dimension of deep, complex conflicts caused by flawed or ineffective political, security, social and cultural systems. Insurgency is intertwined with a range of other destabilizing phenomena: extensive organized and street crime; gang violence; economic, public health and ecological problems; social, ethnic or sectarian strife; rampant corruption; ineffective governance; and, in the broadest sense, a crisis of legitimacy. The cast of characters has also expanded. Modern insurgencies don’t simply involve the insurgents, the government and external state sponsors. Unaffiliated militias, organized criminal gangs and private military corporations all affect the outcome too. And it doesn’t end there. Diaspora communities, the media, transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations also play a major role in the evolution of the conflict. And now insurgents must generate their own funds. The Soviet Union, Cuba and China no longer serve as sponsors. This means that insurgencies shift from “grievance” to “greed” as they evolve. While they initially form in response to real or perceived political threats, over time they become more focused on generating resources. Because big states are no longer underwriting the costs of battle, insurgent victory is unlikely, but it does mean battles can go on for a very long time. Modern insurgencies tend toward a stalemate in which the insurgents have vested personal interests in sustaining the conflict: They become political enterprises rather than political movements. And the longer a complex conflict persists, the greater the damage to regional and global security. Today, the dangers insurgency produces—terrorism, expanded organized crime, refugee flows, humanitarian disasters, ecological damage, the profusion of arms and so forth— come not from the unlikely possibility of radical insurgents seizing state power, but rather from the continuation of the conflict itself. Though few insurgencies have ever ended with an outright, decisive and final win, today this is even less likely. So long as a handful of militants can raise money, gain access to the Internet and the transnational media, and undertake regular acts of terrorism, they can sustain an insurgency. It is impossible to kill them all as long as whatever motivates them inspires new recruits and the United States is unwilling or unable to occupy a foreign country for an extended period. Furthering this intractability, as an insurgency matures, personal motives —especially the desire for revenge— become more important. Placating someone’s anger at a real or perceived personal wrong can be more difficult than meeting their political demands. Participation in armed rebellion is empowering; it provides fulfillment, excitement and identity, particularly for young males who had few of these things during peacetime. As insurgents, they are respected and feared. But w hen the insurgency ends, most return to marginalization, becoming simply one more uneducated denizen of society’s bottom tier. Thus, it is less political objectives driving insurgents than deep psychological needs.

Empirically, insurgencies fail and don’t shift the global balance of power - prolonging military counterinsurgency only threatens national interests

Metz, ‘8 - Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and a research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, ½, “Three Years and Your Out,” [] CT)

THESE ISSUES suggest three broad strategic approaches. All should be pursued multilaterally whenever possible, but we have to understand what we’re getting into. When there is a flawed but functioning state with reasonably good leadership willing to undertake serious political, economic, security and cultural reform, our existing methods of regime support make sense. In this construct, the U.S. military’s primary function is what doctrine calls “foreign internal defense”—supporting the efforts of a partner state to augment its capabilities, effectiveness and legitimacy. When there is no functioning state with a relatively strong leadership, and the economic, social, political, security and cultural systems are dysfunctional, our approach should be nuanced. When there is UN and multinational support for re-engineering such a state—for establishing what would be, in effect, a neo-trusteeship—the United States should participate. In cases where there are particularly strong ties to American national interests, we might even play a major role. Again, though, the United States must be aware of the narrow window of opportunity before public and congressional support begins to erode, particularly if there are American casualties. We should count on major support for three years, with a significant diminution thereafter. Finally, if there is no multinational support for the creation of a neo-trusteeship, the United States should eschew counterinsurgency, opting instead for humanitarian relief (perhaps with the creation of refugee sanctuaries) and containment (largely by bolstering neighboring states). We must know when to walk away. We must remain aware at the start that a flawed or failed system needs extensive re-engineering, not simply an aid package and a pat on the back. We should thus think in terms of system re-engineering with an emphasis on psychological and cultural shifts, rather than just political reform. Counterinsurgency is always about more than political grievances. Its causes—and solutions—lie deep within a failing culture. Currently, the U nited S tates lacks the expertise to do this even when our partner is receptive. We have an adequate number of military trainers and advisors but are short in many vital non-military fields including law enforcement, judicial systems, civil-society building, and intelligence advice and training. We are unable to re-engineer the psychological structure of failed systems by providing alternative means of empowerment for the disillusioned and methods for constraining the risk-taking behavior of young males (such as women’s empowerment). We cannot do this in our own inner cities much less in a foreign culture. And we must be honest with ourselves: Often it is the very culture of a state that makes it uncompetitive and breeds instability. Modest political reforms and an infusion of security assistance will not fix this. In all likelihood, we are facing a tumultuous security environment over the next few decades. This means there will be many insurgencies where a solution is bereft of multinational support or neo-trusteeships. This leaves the United States best served by offering up humanitarian relief and containment, not guns and soldiers. Few insurgencies, if any, will seize control of the state. We should not let the prevalence or the ideology of insurgents draw us into involvement when the chances of success are low. We must remember the Cold War assumption that without American action, insurgents would take over states, become Soviet satellites and shift the global balance of power did not hold. Insurgent victories in Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe did not save the Soviet Union or do serious damage to the United States. This remains true today. The chances of an insurgency affiliated with Al-Qaeda seizing and holding control of a state are limited. And, if one does, the chances that it will make a major difference in the global security environment are almost nil. It is, then, the protraction of insurgencies that threatens American interests. And the strategic costs of avoiding involvement in counterinsurgency are less than those of involvement in a drawn-out and potentially failed counterinsurgency campaign. The sooner the revision of U.S. strategy for counterinsurgency begins, the better.

Troops strengthen Taliban resistance - they are an excuse to support Taliban. Only local populations resist Taliban in longterm.

Gopal, 6/29/10 - an Afghanistan-based journalist who has covered the war for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor. (Anand, “The Paradox of Boots on the Ground,” The New Republic, [] CT)

All these areas have something in common. Five years ago, these regions had few troops and had instead been under firmly entrenched Taliban control. The insurgents became practiced in impunity, and the population suffered for it. Even after the large influx of troops to the south over the past few years, the dynamic persisted: the Taliban were so powerful that it obviated the need to win over the population. On the other hand, in those areas where the insurgency’s growth roughly coincided with or followed the arrival of the foreign forces —in the provinces near Kabul, for example—the Taliban have been more sophisticated. They have had to compete with the foreigners for the population’s allegiance, and in the process had to administer their rule with a softer touch. In such places, troop presence actually makes the insurgents more popular in local eyes. Minus the U.S., the Taliban are robbed of their legitimacy. It is a trend that belies conventional wisdom. A central element of the strategy that Petraeus will oversee is the reliance on a large U.S. military footprint. But after more than eight years, the United States has failed to rally rural Pashtun villagers to its side or break the back of the insurgents. For this reason m any of these Pashtuns call for a negotiated ceasefire to end the war and maintain that only they can solve the Taliban problem, and on their own terms. It won’t be easy, and it may take years or even generations. But as the Taliban in Hiratian showed, they can be their own worst enemy.

A2: Withdrawal Increases Terrorism

US forces exacerbate violence – use of force and corrupt government

America will best serve its interests in Afghanistan and the region by shifting to a new strategy of off-shore balancing, which relies on air and naval power from a distance, while also working with local security forces on the ground. The reason for this becomes clear when one examines the rise of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. General McChrystal’s own [|report] explains that __American and NATO military forces themselves are a major cause of the deteriorating situation, for two reasons. First, Western forces have become increasingly viewed as foreign occupiers; as the report puts it, “over-reliance on firepower and force protection have severely damaged the International Security Assistance Force’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people.” Second, the central government led by America’s chosen leader, Hamid Karzai, is thoroughly corrupt and viewed as illegitimate: “Local Afghan communities are unable to hold local officials accountable through either direct elections or judicial processes, especially when those individuals are protected by senior government officials.”__
 * Pape 9** -Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.”(Robert, 11/13/09, The New York Times, [] AZ)

US presence in Afghanistan fuels terrorism – suicide bombing statistics prove
 * Pape 9** -Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.”(Robert, 11/13/09, The New York Times, [] AZ)

Unfortunately, these political facts dovetail strongly with developments on the battlefield in the last few years. In 2001, the United States toppled the Taliban and kicked Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan with just a few thousand of its own troops, primarily through the combination of American air power and local ground forces from the Northern Alliance. Then, for the next several years, the United States and NATO modestly increased their footprint to about 20,000 troops, mainly limiting the mission to guarding Kabul, the capital. Up until 2004, there was little terrorism in Afghanistan and little sense that things were deteriorating. Then, in 2005, the United States and NATO began to systematically extend their military presence across Afghanistan. The goals were to defeat the tiny insurgency that did exist at the time, eradicate poppy crops and encourage local support for the central government. Western forces were deployed in all major regions, including the Pashtun areas in the south and east, and today have ballooned to more than 100,000 troops. __As Western occupation grew, the use of the two most worrisome forms of terrorism in Afghanistan — suicide attacks and homemade bombs — escalated in parallel. There were no recorded suicide attacks in Afghanistan before 2001. According to data I have collected, in the immediate aftermath of America’s conquest, the nation experienced only a small number: none in 2002, two in 2003, five in 2004 and nine in 2005. But in 2006, suicide attacks began to increase by an order of magnitude — with 97 in 2006, 142 in 2007, 148 in 2008 and more than 60 in the first half of 2009.__ Moreover__, the overwhelming percentage of the suicide attacks (80 percent) has been against United States and allied troops or their bases rather than Afghan civilians, and nearly all (95 percent) carried out by Afghans. The pattern for other terrorist attacks is almost the same. The most deadly involve roadside bombs that detonate on contact or are set off by remote control.__ Although these weapons were a relatively minor nuisance in the early years of the occupation, with 782 attacks in 2005, their use has shot up since — to 1,739 in 2006, nearly 2,000 in 2007 and more than 3,200 last year. Again, these attacks have for the most part been carried out against Western combat forces, not Afghan targets. __The picture is clear: the more Western troops we have sent to Afghanistan, the more the local residents have viewed themselves as under foreign occupation, leading to a rise in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks__. (We see this pattern pretty much any time an “outside” armed force has tried to pacify a region, from the West Bank to Kashmir to Sri Lanka.)


 * US combat troops fuel terrorism and hurt the central government – air and naval presence key to longtern stability**
 * Pape 9** -Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.”(Robert, 11/13/09, The New York Times, [] AZ)

So as General McChrystal looks to change course in Afghanistan, __the priority should be not to send more soldiers but to end the sense of the United States and its allies as foreign occupiers. Our purpose in Afghanistan is to prevent future attacks like 9/11, which requires stopping the rise of a new generation of anti-American terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists, who are super-predators able to kill large numbers of innocent people__. __What motivates suicide attackers__, however, __is not the existence of a terrorist sanctuary, but the presence of foreign forces on territory they prize.__ __So it’s little surprise that Western forces in Afghanistan have provided a key rallying point for the insurgency, playing a central role in the Taliban’s recruitment campaign and propaganda, which threaten not only our troops there but also our homeland.__ __The presence of our troops also works against the stability of the central government, as it can rely on Western protection rather than work harder for popular support.__ Fortunately, the __United States does not need to station large ground forces in Afghanistan to keep it from being a significant safe haven for Al Qaeda or any other anti-American terrorists. This can be achieved by a strategy that relies on over-the-horizon air, naval and rapidly deployable ground forces, combined with training and equipping local groups to oppose the Taliban__. __No matter what happens in Afghanistan, the United States is going to maintain a strong air and naval presence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean for many years, and these forces are well suited to attacking terrorist leaders and camps in conjunction with local militias__ — just as they did against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001.

Afghan government can’t be pushed toward a Western style democracy - social and psychological complexity precludes transition

Metz, ’10 - Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and a research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, March-April, “Unruly Clients: The Trouble with Allies,” World Affairs, [] CT)

Afghanistan and Pakistan form the central front in the conflict with al-Qaeda, but both are flawed and sullen allies who maintain the U.S. partnership only out of dire necessity. When Hamid Karzai was installed as Afghanistan’s president after the initial collapse of the Taliban regime, he seemed the best option available to balance U.S. objectives and Afghan reality. He was a member of the Pashtun ethnic group, which is Afghanistan’s most numerous, and fluent in English, with degrees in political science from Indian universities. He did not have a large personal power base so he relied on U.S. sponsorship. But he knew that Afghan history showed that reliance on an outsider could be deadly, as former president and Soviet client Mohammad Najibullah learned the hard way. And unlike the Americans, Karzai understood that Afghanistan could only stomach reform in small bites. He has gone along with the American program as much as necessary to keep Washington interested and sustain the flow of assistance, but not a step further. The United States has pushed its new ally toward what it believed was the only form of government that would be stable over the long term: a relatively secular one based on the rule of law, which retains legitimacy because most of the population considers it best able to provide vital goods and services like security, infrastructure, education, health care, and economic opportunity. This view, codified in the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency doctrine, assumes that all nations function more or less like Western ones. A government acquires legitimacy and stability when most of the population trusts it to exercise authority in their interests and in accordance with law. Hence counterinsurgency succeeds when America’s allies become more like America. Unfortunately, this hardly reflects the reality of those parts of the world susceptible to violent extremism. The Afghan political system runs on patronage and power; a psychologically and culturally shaped notion of justice and personal affinity (based on ethnicity, sect, race, family, clan, tribe) intermingle with personal benefit derived from patronage. This social and psychological complexity is very different from the materialistic notion of legitimacy that undergirds the U.S. approach to counterinsurgency, which assumes that “the people” support whichever side in a conflict provides the most goods and services. Nor is this the only problem in American counterinsurgency strategy. According to its central tenets, success comes when a national government controls all of its territory and thus can prevent terrorists and other extremists from developing sanctuaries. Yet governments with full control of their national territory do not exist in much of the world. Many nations have inaccessible hinterlands, and central governments regard parts of sprawling cities like Karachi, São Paulo, Nairobi, and Lagos as no-go zones.

A2: Must Support Karzai

Elite regimes have a vested interest in continuing insurgency to ensure steady flows of foreign assistance

Metz, ‘8 - Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and a research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, ½, “Three Years and Your Out,” [] CT)

Flawed assumptions about the regimes we support also stifle progress. Our strategies are based on a commitment to a state; our objective is to sustain the regime and improve its legitimacy and capacity for self-defense. And as we partner up with fledgling governments, we take for granted that those in Baghdad or Kabul share our objectives—defeating insurgents. We also often foolishly presume our partner government is both willing and able to undertake major political and economic reforms. And that strengthening our partner is the best avenue to stability and security. Reality is different. The elites we support often develop a vested interest in sustaining an insurgency, at least so long as the rebels cannot win. Having a comfortable, controlled insurgency lowers pressure on the regime for reform, allows it greater latitude in controlling its opponents, and often provides a stream of foreign assistance that can be skimmed or used for patronage. And while we ask our partner regime to improve its security forces, these may be more of a threat than the insurgents themselves. After all, many more governments have been overthrown by military coups than insurgencies. We critique corruption and nepotism even though these are the lifeblood of patronage-based systems. Ultimately, American counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine assume that our partner elites will commit de facto political and economic suicide, reforming away the system that made them powerful and rich. Yet we are bewildered when this does not happen.

A2: Taliban return - Taliban Win Inevitable

Taliban inevitably winning war - American tactics irrelevant


 * Ghazi, 6/20/10** - a producer of the Peabody Award-winning show “Mosaic: World News from the Middle East,” for Link TV, and author of the column “Eye on Arab Media” for New America Media (Jalal, “Eight Reasons the Taliban Are Winning,” []) JS

As much as President Obama would like to declare victory – or at least progress – in Afghanistan, there is little doubt in the minds of most Arab commentators that America is losing the war. The reasons for this have little to do with immediate tactics being employed by the head of NATO operations, General Stanley McChrystal, and more to do with the structural aspects of the occupation that necessarily favor the Taliban. Here, then, are eight reasons the Taliban are winning the war: First, the Taliban have the upper hand in the "waiting game” strategy. They can continue a war of attrition at a time when both the United States and Europe face major economic problems. The Taliban know the United States and NATO are exhausted. The war in Iraq is not going well for the United States, which limits the ability of the U.S. military to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. Second, the Taliban’s intensified and consistent attacks on NATO have successfully weakened the coalition’s unity. Some NATO members have been reconsidering their commitment to what they now see as an "unwinnable war.” When the Taliban mount three major attacks in six days, killing at least five American soldiers and one Canadian, it not only means NATO lives lost; it also means there is a weakened desire to continue the war. Canada, which has been playing a major role in combat operations, announced that it will withdraw by 2011. In fact, the Taliban have been making major military achievements for months. In April 2010, they forced U.S. soldiers to leave Korengal Valley, which has been called the Valley of Death by some commentators. Forty-two American soldiers died defending it, but eventually the United States had to abandon the area. Obama’s additional 30,000 troops will not be enough to turn the war around. Weakness was also clear in the statements of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who according to Al Jazeera said during the latest NATO meeting in Brussels that the mission in Afghanistan had not been achieved and that the Taliban resistance was increasing. He added that NATO forces would face difficult times. Third, NATO has failed to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Instead, NATO members stress the importance of transferring security responsibilities to the Afghan forces, which will only leave behind a security vacuum, not a secure country. Al Jazeera reports that senior Afghan officials have already lost confidence in NATO’s ability to control the situation in Afghanistan. Fourth, the Obama administration, which campaigned during the 2008 presidential elections on the use of force in Afghanistan, refuses to acknowledge that the Taliban enjoy broad support among the Afghan population. The U.S. media often portray the Taliban as an extremist and unpopular organization, but this is not true. Afghan political analyst Muhammad Qasim told Al Jazeera, “The Taliban is not an isolated movement. It is rather a populous movement. The Afghan people are the ones who are resisting; the people are the ones who support the Taliban. The people are the ones who feed the Taliban.” This is why the Taliban have been able to withstand the past nine years of war against the most advanced and formidable western armies. In fact resisting foreign forces makes the Taliban even more popular in a country where people take pride in expelling past foreign occupiers. Former Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah told Al Jazeera English, “When Mr. Karzai visited Marja, he was told we prefer the Taliban to your corrupt officials.” He continued, “That is the strongest message that the people can tell us.” Fifth, a new generation of foreign Arab fighters who once helped the U.S.-backed Afghan Mujahideen defeat the former Soviet Union are now helping the Taliban defeat NATO. Not only are Afghan tribes joining ranks with the Taliban for economic and social reasons; Arab fighters are also moving into areas where the U.S. forces are withdrawing. These groups are attacking NATO convoys as a way to strengthen their bonds with the Taliban. Sixth, unlike corrupt government officials who use the opium trade to enrich themselves, the Taliban are using it to create jobs. According to an article in Alshraq Al Awsat, by Lebanese writer Huda Al Husseini, growing opium is much more profitable than growing wheat, and needs nine times more labor. Growing opium, which takes only half the amount of water needed for wheat, provides more than one million Afghans with jobs (an incredible 20 percent of the Afghan population). In addition to this unconventional economic stimulus, the Taliban provide protection for local Afghan farmers who grow opium and prevent middlemen from abusing them. Seventh, the Obama administration has failed to provide an economic alternative to growing opium. Between 20023 and 2007, Al Husseini reports only $237 million of the $22 billion the United States has spent in Afghanistan went to to developing the Afghan agricultural sector. Finally, the Taliban control much larger areas than the government, which they use to generate billions of dollars in the opium trade. This, in turn, is used to finance the war against NATO. According to Al Husseini, the Afghan soil is three times more fertile than that of Burma, which competes with Afghanistan in growing opium. This may explain why it produces up to 90 percent of the world's opium. To put things in perspective, the CIA estimates opium is being grown on 400,000 acres of land in Afghanistan.

A2: Taliban Return - Won’t Gain Power

Non-Pashtuns will ensure Taliban won’t regain power


 * Katz 09 –** professor of government and politics at George Mason University. (9/12/09, Mark, “Assessing an Afghanistan Withdrawal” http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=105801”, KK)

First, it is not clear that a US/NATO withdrawal would lead to the Taliban returning to power in much more of Afghanistan than they control now. While the Taliban have a base of support among the Pashtuns in the south, they appear to have no support among non-Pashtuns elsewhere. Because of their experience under Taliban rule from 1996 through 2001, the non-Pashtuns have no illusions about what life will be like for them if the Taliban return to power. This could well motivate them to put aside differences among themselves (which helped the Taliban in 1996) and resist it - something with which the US and NATO could assist even after a complete or partial troop withdrawal.

Al Qaeda won’t return to Afghanistan


 * Bandow, 10** **- senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to president Ronald Reagan** (Doug, 1/5, “Afghan War Has Stopped Making Sense,” [|**http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11106**] CT)

The only sensible argument for staying is, as Obama put it, "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda". But that already has been done. Al Qaeda has been reduced largely to symbolic importance, as most terrorist threats now emanate from localised jihadist cells scattered about the globe. US National Security Adviser Jim Jones estimates that there are just 100 al Qaeda operatives now in Afghanistan. Even if the Taliban returned to power, it might not welcome back the group whose activities triggered American intervention. Nor would al Qaeda necessarily want to come back, since a Taliban government could not shield terrorists from Western retaliation. Pakistan offers a better refuge, and there are plenty of other failed states — Yemen comes to mind — in which terrorists could locate. Far more important than Afghanistan is nuclear-armed Pakistan. However, continued fighting in the former is more likely to destabilise the latter than increased Taliban influence.

Terrorists weak - only 50-100 militants operating inside Afghanistan and Pakistan border

AP, 6/27 (6/27/10, " AP Top News at 1:11 pm EDT ", http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD9GJOCE81 CT)

CIA Director Leon Panetta said Sunday that al-Qaida is probably at its weakest since the Sept. 11 attacks because of U.S.-led strikes, with only 50 to 100 militants operating inside Afghanistan and the rest hiding along Pakistan's mountainous western border. Panetta said the U.S. hasn't had good intelligence on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts for years and that the terrorist network is finding smarter ways to try to attack the United States.

A2: Terrorism Safe Haven Terrorists are incompetent. Only a force working against counter-terrorism is needed.
 * Byman, 10** - Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy (Daniel L., 6/10, “More Terrorists Lack Training, Expertise” Brookings, []) AP

In the years after 9/11, the images we were shown of terrorists were largely the same: shadowy jihadists who, even when they were foiled, seemed always to have come terrifyingly close to pulling off a horrific attack. We’ve all become familiar by now with the stock footage of Talibs in black //shalwar kameez//es zipping across monkey bars or, more recently, perfecting kung fu kicks in some secret training camp. Even in the aftermath of the botched Times Square bombing earlier this spring, **__the perception persists that our enemies are savvy and sophisticated killers.__** They’re fanatical and highly organized—twin ideas that at once keep us fearful and help them attract new members. **__But this view of the jihadist community is wildly off the mark.__** To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta, the careful and well-trained head of the 9/11 hijackers. Their leaders and recruiters can be lethally subtle and manipulative, but **__the quiet truth is that many__** of the deluded **__foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable.__** **__Acknowledging this fact could help__** us tailor **__our counterterrorism priorities__**—**__and publicizing it could__** help us **__erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding.__** Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that **__the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: //one in two manages to kill only himself//.__** And this **__success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks__**. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika. Many Taliban operatives are just as clumsy when suicide is not part of the plan. In November 2009, several Talibs transporting an improvised explosive device were killed when it went off unexpectedly. The blast also took out the insurgents’ shadow governor in the province of Balkh. **__When terrorists do execute an attack__**, or come close, **__they often have security failures to thank, rather than their own expertise__**. Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the Nigerian “Jockstrap Jihadist” who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list. Fortunately, Abdulmutallab, a college-educated engineer, failed to detonate his underpants. A few months later another college grad, Faisal Shahzad, is alleged to have crudely rigged an SUV to blow up in Times Square. That plan fizzled and he was quickly captured, despite the fact that he was reportedly trained in a terrorist boot camp in Pakistan. Indeed, though many of the terrorists who strike in the West are well educated, their plots fail because they lack operational know-how **.** On June 30, 2007, two men—one a medical doctor, the other studying for his Ph.D.—attempted a brazen attack on Glasgow Airport. Their education did them little good. Planning to crash their propane-and-petrol-laden Jeep Cherokee into an airport terminal, the men instead steered the SUV, with flames spurting out its windows, into a security barrier. The fiery crash destroyed only the Jeep, and both men were easily apprehended; the driver later died from his injuries. (The day before, the same men had rigged two cars to blow up near a London nightclub. That plan was thwarted when one car was spotted by paramedics and the other, parked illegally, was removed by a tow truck. As a bonus for investigators, the would-be bombers’ cell phones, loaded with the phone numbers of possible accomplices, were salvaged from the cars.) A similar streak of ineptitude has been on display in the United States, where many of those arrested on terrorism-related charges possess long criminal records and little sense of how to put a nefarious idea into action. A group of Miami men schemed (often while smoking marijuana) to attack targets in South Florida as well as the Sears Tower in Chicago, but they couldn’t get their hands on explosives and were uncovered when the FBI easily penetrated their ranks. If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea—sometimes rather graphically. One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow. Pentagon officials and intelligence analysts concede privately that our foes also have a voracious appetite for pornography—hardly shocking behavior for young men, but hard to square with an image of piety. Many laptops seized from the Taliban and al-Qaeda are loaded with smut. U.S. intelligence analysts have devoted considerable time to poring over the terrorists’ favored Web sites, searching for hidden militant messages. “We have terabytes of this stuff,” said one Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It isn’t possible that they are encrypting messages in all of this stuff. Some of these guys are just perverts.” Tawdry though this predilection for porn may be, it is not necessarily trivial. There is, after all, potential propaganda value in this kind of jihadist behavior. Current U.S. public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, **__we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers__**. More and more, as **__we work to disrupt training efforts, the jihadists we face are likely to be poorly prepared__**, and while that won’t always ensure a bungled attack, it suggests that terrorists are likely to select targets that are undefended and easy to hit. The United States has spent billions on port security since 9/11, even though terrorists have shown little interest in ports as targets and even less ability to actually strike them. In contrast, even **__small investments in training for police and airport-security personnel can make a big difference, as these are the people most likely to encounter—and have a chance to disrupt—an unskilled attacker.__** The difference between a sophisticated killer like Mohamed Atta and so many of his hapless successors lies in training and inherent aptitude. Atta spent months learning his trade in Afghanistan and had the help of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership—a fact that underscores the importance of rooting out al-Qaeda havens in Pakistan. After all, fighting terrorism is a chore made simpler when we can keep the terrorists as inept as most of them naturally are.

A2: Humanitarian Needs Justify

Humanitarian justifications not sufficient - loss of lives and money prove

Bandow, 10 - senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to president Ronald Reagan (Doug, 1/5, “Afghan War Has Stopped Making Sense,” [] CT)

Some analysts offer humanitarian justifications for intervening. The Afghan people would be better off under some kind of Western-backed government. However, this is true largely despite rather than because of the Karzai regime. And many of the improvements are merely relative. Moreover, any gains are threatened by the bitter conflict now raging. Estimates of the number of dead Afghan civilians since 2001 exceed 30,000. In any case, humanitarianism is an inadequate justification for waging war. Washington is full of ivory-tower warriors who have never been anywhere near a military base, yet who busily concoct grand humanitarian crusades for others to fight. However, the cost in lives and money — as well as the liberty inevitably lost in a more militarised society — can be justified only when the American people have something fundamentally at stake in the conflict. Their interest in determining the form of Afghan government or liberties enjoyed by the Afghan people is not worth war.

A2: Drug Turns

Current U.S. and NATO poppy eradication increasing Al Qaeda recruitment

Kendall & MacDonald, 07 – *Former secretary general of Interpol, AND ** Founding president of the Senlis Council (7/16/07, The Japan Times, “Winning with Opium in Afghanistan” http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070716a1.html, CT)

Despite considerable effort by the international community in Afghanistan since 2001 to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaida, the insurgency in the south of the country has gathered momentum at breakneck speed in recent months. Our field research shows that we are not winning the campaign for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people — the Taliban are. Indeed, the international community's methods of fighting the insurgency and eradicating poppy crops have actually helped the insurgents gain power. The international community has so far pursued policies of destruction, rather than the promised reconstruction. The aggressive United States-led counter-narcotics policy of crop eradication has failed to win the support of Afghans, because it has triggered a chain reaction of poverty and violence in which poor farmers, with their only livelihood destroyed, are unable to feed their families. This has been exacerbated by the failure to provide even the most basic aid and development in the country's poorest areas. At the same time, communities have been torn apart as a result of bombing campaigns, which have destroyed the very homes we came to protect. This, in addition to four years of drought, has forced entire families to leave their villages for makeshift internal refugee camps. You do not win people over by bombing them, but by helping them. The Taliban have exploited the failures of the international community in extremely effective anti-Western propaganda that has fueled significant doubt in the minds of the public concerning the reasons justifying the international presence in Afghanistan. Sadly, our troops are often the first to pay the price — sometimes with their lives. It is not too late to win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. International troops are excelling in an exceptionally hostile environment, but this is not a war that will be won by military means alone. With public perception a crucial factor in winning the war, and the Taliban poised to launch a large military initiative next spring, failure to adopt a successful local strategy could signify the last chance the international community will have to build a secure and stable Afghanistan. But a successful strategy — one that responds to Afghanistan's extreme poverty crisis — requires that the international community reverse course on crop eradication. In fact, the eradication of poppy crops not only damages local communities and undermines the international community's goals, but it is also failing: Opium production last year was at an all-time high. In September, the United Nations Office on Drugs Crime announced that poppy cultivation soared by a record-high 60 percent. Eradication will never be successful in Afghanistan, because it destroys the single crop that will grow in the south's harsh climate — and thus serves as the main source of income to millions of people. So a new, long-term, economically sustainable solution is urgently needed — one that directly engages with the communities that are suffering most — in order to achieve the support of the deeply impoverished rural population.

A2: Expensive Re-Intervention

Cheaper to re-intervene than to stay and increase terrorism


 * Peña 09 -** Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute (12/09/2009, Charles, “Can the U.S. Withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq?,” http://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?eventID=145#3”, KK)

Since the whole point of having gone into Afghanistan in the first place, which I would argue we had to do at the time, is to try and reduce the terrorist threat to the United States, not increase the terrorist threat to the United States, at this point in time, eight years later, having not really achieved the objectives that we wanted to achieve when we first went into Afghanistan, it is now high time for the U.S. to leave and let Afghanistan be run by the Afghans however imperfectly that might be. Our only criteria has to be that the government, whichever government it is, whether it’s the Karzai government, whether it’s a Taliban government, that any government in Afghanistan not openly provide aid and shelter to Al Qaeda and if they decide to do that, we come back and we do this all over again, which by the way is cheaper for those of us who may be worried about the costs. It’s cheaper for us to leave —and if things get out of hand again, just come back and do it all over again— than it is for us to stay to try and make something work that maybe we can’t make-work.

A2: Alt-Cause Iraq

Obama is serious about withdrawing from Iraq, even if there are delays, withdrawal will happen. At the Pentagon, "there's been a renewed focus on Iraq lately," said the senior military official there. He said all options were being considered, including later delays, adding that "we need to get out in an appropriate way ... not completely tied to a timeline." Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said Tuesday that troops "are on track" to draw down by the president's Aug. 31 deadline, but he would not discuss whether the pace was being slowed. Although "there is still work to be done here," Lanza noted that overall violence across Iraq is lower than it has been in years. "There are still terrorists who wish to disrupt Iraq's forward progress and Monday's attacks are an example of that," Lanza said. Shortly before the election, there were 96,000 U.S. troops in the country. About 4,000 troops were sent home in April — including military dentists, postal workers, truck drivers and other support personnel. As of last week, there were about 92,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, meaning an average of 10,500 a month would have to be pulled out **__.__** Obama will stick to current withdrawal in Iraq. We see no indications now that our planning needs to be adjusted ,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “We did anticipate an extended period of government formation,” and recent Iraqi-led missions that have [|killed leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq] show “their growing capacity to provide for security, which of course is critical to ending our combat mission at the end of August .” While Mr. Obama has not convened a full-scale meeting on Iraq lately, Mr. Rhodes noted that Vice President [|Joseph R. Biden Jr.], who manages Iraq policy, does hold such meetings regularly and keeps Mr. Obama informed. “It’s something that he’s obviously regularly engaged in,” Mr. Rhodes said of the president__.__
 * Associated Press, 10** (May 11th, “US ‘reconsidering’ pace of Iraq withdrawal”, http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0511/reconsidering-pace-iraq-withdrawal/)JP
 * NYT, 10** (PETER BAKER and ROD NORDLAND, 4/27, "Obama Sticks to a Deadline in Iraq", [] ) JP


 * A2: T***

A2: Topicality - Military Presence Excludes Combat troops

Presence is part of combat operations https://www.hsdl.org/homesec/docs/theses/08Dec_Mastapeter.pdf&code=9b55800f98c1150b31a774eadc3a294b
 * Mastapeter, 8** - Senior Planning Officer, Department of Homeland Security, Master’s Thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School (Craig, “THE INSTRUMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER: ACHIEVING THE STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE IN A CHANGING WORLD,” December,

According to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, presence is defined as the state of being present, or of being within sight or call, or at hand; as opposed to absence .438 YourDictionary defines presence as the fact or condition of being present; existence, occurrence, or attendance at some place or in some thing.439 From the perspective of the purpose of this paper, the FreeDictionary provides the most relevant definition: the diplomatic, political, or military influence of a nation in a foreign country, especially as evidenced by the posting of its diplomats or its troops there .440 Interestingly enough, //The Joint Publications 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms// does not include a definition of presence. However, //__Joint Publication 1-0, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States__//__, clearly states that an extended U.S. presence will be required,__ post-termination, __to conduct stability operations to enable legitimate civil authority and attain the national strategic end state__441 __and that, as a nation, the United States wages war employing all instruments of national power__ to achieve national strategic objectives on terms favorable to the United States.442 __It can therefore be inferred from this entry that a U.S. presence is necessary prior to and during operations because presence demonstrates U.S. commitment, facilitates access, enhances deterrence, and supports the transition from peace to war and a return to peace once hostilities have ended on terms favorable to the U.S.__ The U.S.’ ability to maintain and fully employ its military, informational, diplomatic, legal and law enforcement, intelligence, financial, and economic resources overseas enhances U.S. security and that of its partners, bolsters prosperity, and promotes democracy. This ability is commonly called “presence.” In the context of U.S. basic national security policy and strategy, presence, especially forward military, informational (i.e., cultural), diplomatic, legal and law enforcement, intelligence (overt, covert, and clandestine), financial, and economic presence, unequivocally demonstrates U.S. resolve and sets the conditions for stability and undeniable commitment to a cause. U.S. presence, government and private sector, creates a planning and future operational environment that is conducive to establishing and operationalizing information dominance, or knowledge superiority, (situational awareness of the common operating picture) and thus creating a strategic advantage. Presence is therefore the ability to project actionable U.S. power and influence, the means by which the U.S. frames and shapes the international environment in ways favorable to the nation’s interests and objectives. Presence is and has been a fundamental principle of U.S. basic national security policy and strategy since 1942, and perhaps as early as 1898. Ultimately, actionable influence and leverage is gained through the totality of the instruments of national power — military, informational, diplomatic, legal and law enforcement, intelligence, financial, and economic – and underpinned by the strength of the nation’s geographic and demographic position and its resources and/or access to resources.

Military presence refers to combat operations
 * Pape, 6** – professor of political science at the University of Chicago (Robert, __Dying to win: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism,__ p. 105-106)

__The standard I use is American military presence, defined as heavy combat operations__ on the homeland of Sunni Muslim majority countries for a sustained period prior to the onset of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorist campaign against the United States in 1995. If American military presence, so defined, has expanded to include still more countries during the course of al-Qaeda’s suicide campaign, then I include those new countries as well, since they could also serve as recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda’s ongoing suicide campaign. “__American military presence” includes cases where American combat forces are based in the country__ or where the United States provides explicitly or widely understood security guarantee that could be implemented using its forces in an adjacent country. It does not include cases where American military advisors are present or where the country’s military and the U.S. military conduct joint training exercises. This standard comports with the meaning of “occupation” in Chapter 6, because it defines American military presence from the perspective of the terrorists, who are likely to fear the possibility that foreign control may be imposed by force and to suspect that security “guarantees” actually indicate American intention to defend the regime against revolution. This is Osama bin Laden’s view of the role of U.S. troops on the Arabian Peninsula; it is not the perspective of the United States, which, in most of the relevant cases, would see itself as supporting an allied government.

Presence is the physical deployment of combat forces


 * Murdock, 2** – Senior Advisor at the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Clark, “The Navy in an Antiaccess World,” http://web.archive.org/web/20040204233100/http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/Books_2002/Globalization_and_Maritime_Power_Dec_02/26_ch25.htm)

__In its April 2000 Strategic Planning Guidance, the Navy identified “combat-credible forward presence__” as its “enduring contribution” to the Nation.10 According to this document, “sea-based, self-contained and self-sustaining” naval expeditionary forces project power and influence through the means of “Knowledge Superiority and Forward Presence,” defined as follows: Knowledge Superiority is the ability to achieve a real-time, shared understanding of the battlespace at all levels through a network which provides the rapid accumulation of all information that is needed—and the dissemination of that information to the commander as the knowledge needed—to make a timely and informed decision inside any potential adversary’s sensor and engagement timeline. __Forward Presence is being physically present with combat credible forces to Deter Aggression, Enhance Regional Stability, Protect and Promote U.S. interests, Improve Interoperability, and provide Timely Initial Crisis Response where our national interests dictate__.11


 * A2: DA’s***

A2: Deterrence


 * Local deterrence possible - US can stabilize Afghanistan without ground forces – win over local populations, offshore forces, and allies**
 * Pape 9** -Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.”(Robert, 11/13/09, The New York Times, [] AZ)

The United States has a strong history of working with local groups, particularly the Tajiks and Uzbeks of the old Northern Alliance, who would ensure that the Taliban does not recapture Kabul and the northern and western regions of Afghanistan. And should more substantial threats arise, our offshore forces and allies would buy time and protect space for Western ground forces to return. Further, the United States and its allies have made some efforts to lead Pashtun tribal militias in the southern and eastern areas to abandon their support for the Taliban and, if not switch to America’s side, to at least stay neutral. For instance, the largest British gains in the southwest came from winning the support of Mullah Salam, a former Taliban commander who is the district governor of Musa Qala. Early this year the United States started what it calls the Afghanistan Social Outreach Program, offering monthly stipends to tribal and local leaders in exchange for their cooperation against the Taliban insurgency. The program is financed at too low a level — approximately $20 million a year — to compete with alternatives that the Taliban can offer like protection for poppy cultivation that is worth some $3 billion a year. One reason we can expect a strategy of local empowerment to work is that this is precisely how the Taliban is gaining support. As General McChrystal’s report explains, there is little ideological loyalty between the local Pashtuns and the Taliban, so the terrorists gain local support by capitalizing on “vast unemployment by empowering the young and disenfranchised through cash payments, weapons, and prestige.” We’ll have to be more creative and rely on larger economic and political carrots to win over the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns.

A2: Contain China

Non-unique – Prior Central Asian base closings prove China won’t perceive USA Today, ‘7 (12/15, “New 'Great Game' for Central Asia riches” [] AZ)

China's growing clout makes many Central Asians anxious. "Sometimes, it feels uneasy to be next to such a mighty neighbor," said Anastasiya Zhukova, a 24-year-old ethnic Russian and Kazakh citizen who works as a linguist for Chinese companies. __No one expects China to try to conquer Central Asia by military might__. But __some fear China may transform these countries into "vassal states"__ with little power to resist Beijing in conflicts over trade or foreign policy. After Sept. 11, the __U__nited __S__tates seemed poised to vastly expand its influence here. But after establishing two military bases, it __lost ground. It has been forced to close its base in Uzbekistan, and the other, in Kyrgyzstan, is under pressure. Experts say the U.S. has retreated__ partly __because of pressure from__ Russia and __China, partly for a lack of interest: some American officials see Central Asia's oil and gas fields as too remote__ to meet U.S. energy needs. __Washington has alienated the region's authoritarian governments by criticizing human rights abuses__. The Iraq war, meanwhile, raised concerns that the U.S. will push regime change to secure oil supplies -- a fear the Chinese have exploited. __"China does not pursue a policy of waging wars for energy resources, unlike the United States in Iraq,__" Dong Xiaoyang, a Chinese diplomat, told a September conference of scholars and diplomats in Almaty.

No China war – defensive military, economic interdependence, strong relations, joint military actions People’s Daily Online, No Date (China poses no threat in Post-Cold War world, [] )

__China's military development and its defense modernization drive, which are tuned to a moderate pace, are defensive in nature.__ __China does not challenge anyone, nor does its military strength pose a threat to anyone. In the nuclear era, it is impossible to imagine that any country could rise by resorting to military means**.**__ A wide gap exists between Chinese and US military strength. __China is not foolish enough to challenge the position of Uncle Sam by using force.__ So, __the theory that China's military power constitutes a threat to the US is at the very least based on ignorance, if not on ill intent.__ It is also impossible to imagine that the US could get away with using force to rob China of its right to peaceful development without paying a price in the nuclear era. In the Cold War era, the United States and the Soviet Union maintained a balance of terror based on nuclear parity. In the Post-Cold War period, nuclear parity has lost its significance in the face of the overkill power of over-stockpiled nuclear weapons. As a result, the balance of nuclear strike effects is replacing the equilibrium of nuclear strength. So, __no country can emerge a victor from a nuclear confrontation. China and the US have no reason to be locked in confrontation, let alone nuclear confrontation__. We should be on the alert against those with ulterior motives who are trying to lure the two countries into confrontation __US Defense Secretary__ Robert Gates stated clearly at a news briefing on March 7 that he __did not regard China as the United States' strategic foe and that engagement with China in various areas was very important__. __General Pace remarked, in his meeting with the leaders of China's Nanjing Military Command on March 23, that the US and China both had strong military strength but neither party wanted to go to war with the other.__ He went on to say that he did not see any threat from China. He also remarked that the two countries should not focus on how to fight a war but should focus on how to prevent war. This is quite to the point. Pushed by far-sighted Chinese and American politicians and military leaders, __Sino-US military ties are showing signs of strong momentum.__ Apart from that, military leaders from both countries maintain ever closer liaison; recently high-level military visits have been frequent; and __the Chinese and US navies have staged a joint maritime search-and-rescue exercise. The Chinese and US military are discussing establishing a hotline.__

A2: US-Israeli Relations DA

Multiple reasons instability is inevitable – Chechnya, Afghanistan instability, religious fundamentalism, weapons shipping Oliker & Szayna, 5 (Olga Senior International Policy Analyst RAND, and Thomas S. Szayna, Associate Director, Strategy, Doctrine, and Resource Program at the RAND Arroyo Center, "Faultllines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus," Rand, 2005, [] AZ)

__Both Central Asia and the South Caucasus are vulnerable to external forces that could all too easily combine with internal weaknesses to create far-reaching instability__. These forces differ, of course, between the two subregions. __In the South Caucasus__, Georgia in particular faces the __danger of spillover from the Chechnya conflict.__ For its part, Central Asia needs to be viewed as a border region with Afghanistan and Iran, with close proximity to Pakistan. In other words, it has the misfortune to be __located next to the largest heroin- producing region in the world. Moreover, states bordering Afghanistan have suffered to one degree or another from the spillover effects of the drug trafficking and internecine warfare in that country. The rise of religious fundamentalism__ has also created new dangers and tensions for Central Asia. And because borders in both subregions are so porous, __weapons are easily transshipped into and through the countries of the region__, offering easy opportunity for those intent—for whatever reason—on challenging the regimes, revising the political status quo, or pursuing ethnic agendas.9 The ready availability of arms is a potent vulnerability for countries in which governments have limited legitimacy and state capacity is low. In sum, t__he permeability of the region to external forces adds to the demands placed on governments, while also offering more serious opportunities for interethnic violence, terrorism, or insurgencies.__ Turn- US presence fueling terrorism and instability in Afghanistan
 * Pape 9-** professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” (Robert, 10/14/09, The New York Times, [] AZ)

__As Western occupation grew, the use of the two most worrisome forms of terrorism in Afghanistan — suicide attacks and homemade bombs — escalated in parallel__. There were no recorded suicide attacks in Afghanistan before 2001. According to data I have collected, in the immediate aftermath of America’s conquest, the nation experienced only a small number: none in 2002, two in 2003, five in 2004 and nine in 2005. But in 2006, suicide attacks began to increase by an order of magnitude — with 97 in 2006, 142 in 2007, 148 in 2008 and more than 60 in the first half of 2009. Moreover, the overwhelming percentage of the suicide attacks (80 percent) has been against United States and allied troops or their bases rather than Afghan civilians, and nearly all (95 percent) carried out by Afghans. The pattern for other terrorist attacks is almost the same. The most deadly involve roadside bombs that detonate on contact or are set off by remote control. Although these weapons were a relatively minor nuisance in the early years of the occupation, with 782 attacks in 2005, their use has shot up since — to 1,739 in 2006, nearly 2,000 in 2007 and more than 3,200 last year. Again, these __attacks have for the most part been carried out against Western combat forces__, not Afghan targets. __The picture is clear: the more Western troops we have sent to Afghanistan, the more the local residents have viewed themselves as under foreign occupation, leading to a rise in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. (We see this pattern pretty much any time an “outside” armed force has tried to pacify a region, from the West Bank to Kashmir to Sri Lanka.)__

US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is putting a strain on US-Israel Relations.

(Avigdor, 2010, //Relations of mutual liability//, Haaretz.com, [])
 * Haselkorn 4/9** – strategic analyst, author of "The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence"

The deployment of military forces abroad by a foreign power is often intended to defend its local allies and deter its enemies. But in the Middle East, especially since the second Gulf War, a curious strategic paradox is unfolding. Accordingly, the more extensive the U.S. military involvement is in the region, the more Israel's maneuvering space and freedom of action are constrained. At the same time, the impact of the robust American presence vis-a-vis Israel's regional enemies has been negligible. Not only is Washington more determined than ever to prevent an Israeli preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, but lately even the approval of plans by the Jerusalem municipality for new housing in East Jerusalem has reportedly brought grumbles from the U.S. Central Command. The latter supposedly sees any tension between Israel and the Palestinians as inimical to the well-being of its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the deterrent effect on radicals like Syria, Iran and their allies of the introduction of over 200,000 U.S. soldiers, backed by the most advanced air and naval assets, into Iraq and Afghanistan, is yet to be felt. By all indications, the American troop buildup failed to deter Iran's (and before that, Syria's) nuclear program. Additionally, the re-arming by Tehran and Damascus of another implacable Israeli and U.S. foe - Hezbollah - with ever more lethal, accurate and long-range weapons, has proceeded unhindered since 2006. Iran has also taken action against U.S. forces themselves. For example, Gen. David Petraeus, then the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said in October 2007: "They [the Iranians] are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers." The same month, the U.S. Treasury Department announced economic sanctions against the Al-Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for being the "Iranian regime's primary instrument for providing lethal support to the Taliban ... to support anti-U.S. and anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan." In freezing the assets of nine IRGC-affiliated entities and five IRGC-affiliated individuals, among them the commander of the Al-Quds Force, the treasury accused Iran of providing the Taliban with a wide range and substantial quantity of weaponry and ammunition. Rather than deterring radicals, the continued deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has been used as leverage against America. By threatening to target their regional bases, Iran is in effect keeping these contingents hostage and acting to dissuade any military undertaking against its nuclear facilities. For instance, Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC commander, said in a June 2008 interview: "We believe that the Americans are more vulnerable than the Israelis, and the presence of their forces in the region, not far from Iran, is part of this vulnerability." The bottom line is that Middle Eastern radicals have been able to turn the tables on America, and indirectly, Israel as well. Instead of Iran and Syria feeling hemmed in by the expanded presence of U.S. forces on their borders, it is Jerusalem that is increasingly fearful of a multi-pronged attack. Rather than keeping regional radicals in check, the U.S. deployment has become a handicap for Israel. The setback for Israel is due to U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan by co-opting local adversaries, coupled by the Obama administration's principal shift toward an "extended hand" policy vis-a-vis its regional enemies. In turn, any Israeli military initiative is viewed in Washington as "unhelpful," if not downright dangerous, as it may cause an Arab/Muslim backlash against America and endanger U.S. regional assets. Last September, Zbigniew Brzezinski, president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser in the 1970s, even went so far as recommending that U.S. pilots shoot down Israeli aircraft if they crossed into Iraq's airspace to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and refused to turn back. As a result of this approach, the U.S.-Israeli relationship today is one of mutual liability. Israel is increasingly perceived as a strategic liability in Washington, because its actions threaten to derail the courting of Arab/Muslim radicals deemed central to America's global "war" on terror. At the same time, the United States is a growing burden on Israel, given the Obama administration's efforts to deny it the strategic initiative that is vital for preserving its national security. In hindsight, the first Gulf War model, which saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as the guns fell silent - even though Saddam Hussein remained in power, a move that was roundly criticized in Israel - was more in tandem with long-range Israeli security interests than the model of the second conflict. Ironically, Jerusalem and the Obama administration now share a desire to see the U.S. troops return home: The sooner America's soldiers leave Iraq, the quicker the two countries' security interests will become more compatible and bilateral relations will be more harmonious. Those in Israel who advocate formal ties with NATO should remember that even a geographically remote ground presence of an allied military in the region inhibited Israel's freedom of action, eroded its deterrent posture and strained its ties with its foremost friend.

A2: Spending/Economy

Turn—Maintaining troops in Afghanistan hurts US econ


 * Wolf 10**- journalist, [|MSNBC] commentator, and author of the [|Barack Obama] book //Renegade: The Making of a President// (Crown, June 2009). (Richard,5/13/2010, USA Today, [] AZ)

WASHINGTON — __The monthly cost of the war in__ [|Afghanistan]__, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped__ [|Iraq] __costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up__. Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. __As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly.__ The shift is occurring because the Pentagon is adding troops in Afghanistan and withdrawing them from Iraq. And __it's happening as the cumulative cost of the two wars surpasses $1 trillion__, including spending for veterans and foreign aid. __Those costs could put increased pressure on President Obama and Congress, given the nation's $12.9 trillion debt.__

A2: Politics - Withdrawal popular (Public)

Afghan war unpopular in US


 * SMH ’09 –** (8/16/2009, Syndey Morning Herald, “US Support for Afghan war at 39%: poll”, []) HG

US support for the war in Afghanistan has hit a new low, according to a poll released on Tuesday. The CNN Opinion Research poll showed record levels of opposition to the eight-year-old conflict, with 58 per cent of respondents saying they opposed the conflict, while 39 per cent were in favour. The poll surveyed 1,012 Americans on September 11-13 and had a three per cent margin of error. A previous CNN poll released two weeks ago showed 57 per cent of Americans opposed to the war in Afghanistan. In July, 54 per cent of those polled said they were against the war, already steeply up from 46 per cent in April. Two years ago, the US public was more evenly divided on the conflict, with 50 per cent in favour and 48 per cent opposed, CNN polls showed.

Obama is losing more credibility every moment he lets combat troops stay in Afghanistan- Democrats strongly oppose.


 * Hadar, 09**- research fellow in foreign policy studies, specializing in foreign policy, international trade, the Middle East, and South and East Asia. (Leon T., October 2, 2009 “Obama Should Adopt the "Public Option" in Afghanistan” [] RR

But now it looks as though President Obama could have difficulties in pursuing this delicate foreign policy act. The majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, and just a quarter say more U.S. troops should be sent to the country. In fact, by a large majority, Democrats and Independents, those Americans who had voted for Obama last November, are opposed to increasing the number of U.S. troops and support the gradual withdrawal of American forces from that country. The only support for expanding the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan comes from Republican and conservative voters. So Obama, not unlike his predecessor in 2006, is now coming under enormous public pressure to bring an end to a costly U.S. intervention in a bloody war in the Great Middle East, and not unlike in 2006, the elites in Washington — ranging from U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, to the editorial page of the //Washington Post//, backed by many of the experts in both Republican and Democratic leaning think tanks — are providing him with the same gadget they had handed to Bush in 2006 — a military "surge" — that would allow Washington to continue fighting in the mountains of Hindu-Kush for many years to come.

Public supports withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan- money and time


 * Innocent, 09** -foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute (Malou, September 16, 2009, [|Huffington Post], “No More Troops for Afghanistan” []) RR

As public support for the war in Afghanistan hits an all-time low, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has endorsed an increase in U.S. forces there. But President Obama should strongly resist any calls to add more troops. The U.S. and NATO military presence of roughly 110,000 troops is more than enough to carry out the focused mission of training Afghan forces. Committing still more troops would only weaken the authority of Afghan leaders and undermine the U.S.'s ability to deal with security challenges elsewhere in the world. The Senate hearings this week on Afghanistan are displaying the increased skepticism among many top lawmakers toward a war that is rapidly losing public support. At a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked Mullen, "Do you understand you've got one more shot back home?" alluding to polls showing most Americans oppose the war and oppose sending more troops. "Do you understand that?Sadly, a common view among policymakers and defense officials is that if America pours in enough time and resources--possibly hundreds of thousands of troops for another 12 to 14 years--Washington could really turn Afghanistan around. But while military leaders like Gen. Stanley McChrystal say a new strategy must be forged to "earn the support of the [Afghan] people," Washington does not even have the support of the American people . The U.S. does not have the patience, cultural knowledge or legitimacy to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty-stricken, tribal-based society into a self-sufficient, non-corrupt, and stable electoral democracy. And even if Americans did commit several hundred thousand troops and pursued decades of armed nation-building--in the middle of an economic downturn, no less--success would hardly be guaranteed, especially in a country notoriously suspicious of outsiders and largely devoid of central authority. The U.S. and its allies must instead narrow their objectives. A long-term, large-scale presence is not necessary to disrupt al Qaeda, and going after the group does not require Washington to pacify the entire country. Denying a sanctuary to terrorists that seek to attack the U.S. can be done through aerial surveillance, retaining covert operatives for discrete operations against specific targets, and ongoing intelligence-sharing with countries in the region. Overall, remaining in Afghanistan is more likely to tarnish America's reputation and undermine U.S. security than would withdrawal.

A2: Politics - Bipart

Both Democrats and Republicans support troop Afghan withdrawal


 * PARIS 9** -- //Roland Paris is director of the Centre for International Policy Studies and associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.// (11/03/09, Roland, “In Afghanistan, One Last Shot”, [] AZ)

Barack Obama has apparently been waiting for a resolution of the Afghan election fiasco before announcing the result of his review of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. In the next few days or weeks, he is likely to endorse the recommendations of his hand-picked Afghan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who has called for a shift in NATO's strategy toward the kind of counterinsurgency approach that worked in Iraq – one that prioritizes the protection of the Afghan population over the killing of insurgents. Mr. Obama probably will also deploy more U.S. troops, although perhaps not the full 40,000 additional forces that Gen. McChrystal has reportedly requested. As the White House studied its options, __more Americans have called for the withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan. These calls have come not only from the Democrats' liberal base but also from conservative foreign-policy “realists” such as columnist George Will, Harvard's Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago's Robert Pape, who argue that al-Qaeda can be battled from a distance using U.S. commandos, cruise missiles and armed drones.__

A2: Midterms

Afghanistan not perceived - will not have an effect on the Congressional elections.
 * Zelizer**, **10 -** Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, one of the leading figures in the field of American political history, the author and editor of numerous books that examine U.S. political leaders, policies, and institutions since the New Deal (Julian E., June 28, “How Afghanistan became the ignored war” []) RR

If the Korean War, which began 60 years ago this past weekend, was America's forgotten war, Afghanistan has been America's ignored war. Since President Obama authorized a surge of troops in Afghanistan in December 2009, there has been a notable absence of public debate or interest about this conflict. Although the media has tracked conditions on the ground and more recently has examined the rapid deterioration of U.S. military strategy, Afghanistan has not elicited the same kind of civic dialogue that surrounded President George W. Bush's war in Iraq and certainly nothing like President Johnson's war in Vietnam. Indeed, when the controversy over Gen. Stanley McChrystal's comments in Rolling Stone magazine erupted in the past week, one of the most surprising aspects of the story was that, for a brief moment, Americans were actually talking about Afghanistan once again. Our nation is in the middle of a war that has gone on for over nine years, but many people have not been paying attention. [|__Afghanistan__] cannot be ignored. The war, which started in the aftermath of 9/11, costs the federal government about $6.7 billion a month. That's more than the monthly cost of Iraq. June 2010 marked one of the deadliest months in this war. Since the war began, more than 1,000 American servicemen and women have died. The government of Afghanistan, our ally, remains mired in corruption and teeters on instability. Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy is apparently not working its magic. Many experts doubt that the president can abide by the July 2011 timetable that he set to begin withdrawal. The end is not in sight, and it is unclear whether policymakers even know what the end is. According to Newsweek, one expert working with the Pentagon commented, "We could sink in billions more dollars for another 10 to 20 years, and if we're lucky, we'll get Haiti ..." What accounts for the utter lack of attention to this war? The first factor has been the fragile state of the economy within the U.S. The severity of economic conditions since the financial crash in the fall of 2008 has naturally led citizens to focus on the health of their pocketbooks and the stability of their mortgage payments rather than on war and peace. The listless recovery that has left high rates of unemployment has means many families don't have the time or energy to pay attention to events overseas. The second factor has to do with the political incentives that inhibit liberals and conservatives from making too much of an issue of this war. Many liberal Democrats have been either angry or quietly uneasy with Obama's decision to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan. Yet they have generally remained silent since the surge began, fearing they could undercut Obama as he moved forward with health care, a high priority for Democrats. They were also in a bind since they had based much of their criticism of President Bush on the claim that he had diverted resources from the war in Afghanistan, where the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 had been given shelter by the Taliban, and used them for the war in Iraq, which they said was not essential to the war on terrorism. At the same time, conservatives have not made much noise either. Although there are many conservatives who support President Obama's strategy, there are also political factors at work. Talking too much about Afghanistan cuts against a central argument that they want to make about this administration: that Democrats are weak on defense.


 * A2: CP’s***

A2: Consult NATO

NATO alliance collapsed now – political battles

BBC, 09 (British Broadcasting Corporation, “Iran Daily: NATO, collapsing from within,” Jomhuri-ye Eslami, p. LexisNexis JS)

Text of editorial headlined "NATO, collapsing from within" published by Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami on 26 October General Rick Hillier, the former chief of staff of the Canadian armed forces, unveiled the vast dimensions of internal differences within NATO over the crisis in Afghanistan and said that __the war in Afghanistan__ had __transformed__ the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (__NATO__) __into a "decomposing corpse"__ [punctuation as published here and throughout] which was impossible to revive. The stance taken by the former head of the Canadian armed forces is one of complaint and objection, and reiterates Ottawa's views on the never-ending war whose future holds no bright prospects and which leaves new casualties in its wake every day. Other opinions of this prominent Canadian soldier are as follows: __NATO is plagued by widespread and vicious political battles__. The jealousies, __which increase day by day__, create discord amongst its members, and they are regularly tormented by a lack of clarity, cohesion and professionalism. The Canadian army sent 2700 troops to Afghanistan, most of who were stationed in dangerous and volatile regions, while other countries put their forces in safe, peaceful regions. This led to the death of 131 Canadian soldiers. From the time it first set foot in Afghanistan, __NATO has lacked a clearly defined strategy. It did not know__ what it had to do and __what its aims were.__ __The war in Afghanistan demonstrated that NATO has reached the stage of instability and collapse; it has lost its credibility and has no way out.__ Although General Hillier's comments are surprising and unexpected, he is not the first person to talk about NATO's failure and defeat in Afghanistan. That which has made Hillier's comments novel is that he has gone further than pointing to the failure and has revealed NATO's instability, confusion and disintegration. In reality, everything goes back to "the philosophy of NATO's existence". __NATO was initially formed to confront the "Warsaw"__ military __pact,__ and for a few decades it acted as the West's collective military defence structure against the Eastern Bloc. __Even though the__ Warsaw __Pact was dismantled in__ 1369 [__1991__] with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, __America has always prevented the dissolution of__ the __NATO__ military alliance. In practice, __the European side of NATO has repeatedly called for its opinions and stances to be separate from those of America__, and it continues to do so. __Washington, however, so as to preserve__ its military upper hand and, beyond that, __its military dominance over Europe wants NATO's continuance__ and survival. It should not be forgotten that __over the last decade, France and Germany attempted to form an "independent European army"__ in order __to distance themselves from America and NATO.__ Washington objected to this idea using local tools; it even managed to foil the attempt. It is precisely for this reason that the "independent European army" is a lost dream which has troubled the minds and souls of the Europeans. They constantly lament the fact that in their policies they cannot diverge from Washington. The problem is that NATO's current philosophy is seen as a cover under which Washington implements its plans to "control Germany". In general, however, by raising marginal issues, America has tried to overshadow its main aims and plans by urgent, impromptu decisions. Attempting to attract new members from the Eastern European countries so as to "expand NATO" to the borders of Russia; "redefining" NATO's strategy with the aim of extending its realm of military interference beyond the geographical borders of those countries who are members of this treaty are the familiar policies that Washington constantly tries to justify. Perhaps it is for this reason that today, NATO's European members not only do not insist on the continuation of a military presence in Afghanistan, but they even count the minutes to the time that their troops are taken out of this country. A far more important matter, which has only added to the confusion of Washington's allies, concerns the highly contradictory policies, which reveal serious and tangible differences between what the officials in Washington say and what they actually do regarding Afghanistan. It is by reviewing these blatant contradictions that one is able to understand the position of Washington's allies. 1 - Washington claimed that through the creation of international unity to confront international terrorism it would uproot the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah in a short period of time. This claim was made with so much conviction that Bush Junior, the American president at the time, stated that other countries were either with America or with the terrorists! Later, however, it was revealed that America continues to be the main element of support for terrorists in Afghanistan and takes it upon itself to support and even transport terrorists by helicopter in Afghanistan.

2 - America maintained it wanted to get rid of the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah and would not be happy with anything less than the annihilation of these terrorist groups. But it became clear that while this is what it was saying, in practice it was holding talks and socialising with the Taleban. Basically, it actually benefited from the existence of the Taleban and their crimes because it could use them to justify its goals and plans.

3 - By maintaining that the only way to crush terrorists was through the military solution, Washington engaged the NATO army in Afghanistan. Now, however, the American army generals and former politicians are saying that the war in Afghanistan is futile and they should deal with the Taleban through political means.

4 - America says that in order to prevail over the Taleban, more forces should be sent to Afghanistan and more budgets earmarked for the war. So the main question is if they are meant to be negotiating and coming to a political understanding with the Taleban, then who should they be fighting in this country?

5 - Aside from the differences of opinion which set apart Washington's views from those of other NATO members, the European members of NATO feel with some bitterness that Washington is trying to change "NATO's existing philosophy" by getting it involved in areas outside Europe's security zone, and thus guarantee the continuation of NATO's military activities and its survival.

The recent comments by General Rick Hillier, the former chief of staff of the Canadian armed forces, about the dissolution of NATO and it becoming a "decomposing corpse" which is impossible to revive, shows that __NATO's members believe with all their heart that it has reached its lowest point and is collapsing from within.__ For two decades America has tried to keep NATO from breaking up at any cost through artificial ventilation and "political doping". But according to General Hillier's admission, __it is impossible to revive that defective and unbalanced structure, and everyone should accept that NATO has reached the end of its life.__