Former Secretary of State and retired four-star Gen. Colin Powell met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office in mid-September to discuss the looming question of what to do about Afghanistan. While no one can be certain of what the two discussed, questions from the so-called Powell Doctrine probably floated around the room.
The Powell Doctrine is a series of questions that must be answered affirmatively before taking any massive military action against another country. Like most sane people, Powell believed questions such as, "do we have a viable exit strategy?" and "does the country actually pose a threat to the United States?" were important when considering whether or not to go to war. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1990, Powell made sure these questions were answered affirmatively in the run up to the Gulf War (a successful war). Unfortunately, these questions were seemingly not considered in the run up to the Iraq War in 2003 (a failed war).
Yet these questions have never really applied to Afghanistan. The Afghanistan War, after all, was always deemed the "good war," the war that was the child of necessity, as compared to the Iraq War, a war that was the illegitimate child of the Bush administration's White House and Department of Defense.
Al-Qaida attacked us at home, so we turned around and attacked them at home, driving both them and the Taliban out of their Afghan safe haven and away from the seat of power. Then, for whichever reason history will ultimately record, we turned our sights to Iraq.
What happened in Afghanistan when we turned our attention away? For one, the Taliban has come back with a vengeance and a thirst for control of Kabul. Al-Qaida has popped back up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has set its sights on Islamabad. Finally, our efforts in establishing a successful democratic government in the country have been doubted with the recent presidential election fraud, most likely perpetrated by Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-friendly president.
Obama, in the midst of an incredible debate about what role the federal government should play in its citizens' lives, now wants to focus the national attention on the Afghanistan war front, and whether or not to adopt Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's recommendation to send an additional 40,000 troops to the perilous region.
McChrystal's route isn't the only option for Obama's consideration. Vice President Joe Biden has also offered up a strategy to scale back the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and focus more on clearing out the al-Qaida horde there as well as in Pakistan by using teams of elite special forces.
This week, Obama will face his most important decision yet as commander in chief. If he decides to follow McChrystal's recommendation, Obama will signal to the world that he intends to follow former President George W. Bush's precept of rooting out all evildoers from the world, a grossly unrealistic and dangerous approach to foreign policy that could lead us from the deserts of Somalia to the lush valleys of North Korea, to every other despot's cave.
If he decides to follow Biden's recommendation, Obama will signal to the world a return to a U.S. pragmatism that focuses on those who do us harm, rather than the list of those who wish to do us harm.
For that is a list a mile long with a steep body count as its footnote.
Matthew Christ is a political science sophomore. His column appears on Mondays.
