To put it another way, we are not just adding more troops in Afghanistan.
We are transforming our mission — from baby-sitting to adoption. We are going
from a limited mission focused on baby-sitting Afghanistan — no matter how awful
its government — in order to prevent an Al Qaeda return to adopting Afghanistan
as our state-building project.
I recently looked back at Stephanie Sinclair’s stunning 2006 photograph
in The Times of Ghulam Haider, an 11-year-old Afghan girl seated next to the
bearded 40-year-old man she was about to be married off to. The article said
Haider had hoped to be a teacher but was forced to quit her classes when she
became engaged. The furtive sideways glance of her eyes at her future husband
said she was terrified. The article said: “On the day she witnessed the
engagement party. ... Sinclair discreetly took the girl aside. ‘What are you
feeling today?’ the photographer asked. ‘Nothing,’ the bewildered girl answered.
‘I do not know this man. What am I supposed to feel?’ ”
That is the raw clay for our state-building. It may still be worth
doing, but one thing I know for sure, it must be debated anew. This is a much
bigger undertaking than we originally signed up for. Before we adopt a new baby
— Afghanistan — we need to have a new national discussion about this project:
what it will cost, how much time it could take, what U.S. interests make it
compelling, and, most of all, who is going to oversee this policy?
I feel a vast and rising ambivalence about this in the American public
today, and adopting a baby you are ambivalent about is a prescription for
disaster.
Question: why does Obama have to be pressured into this? Why did he opt for a state-building project in Afghanistan, when he was elected in great part by Americans who are very skeptical about such international military projects? Again, this is 'change we can believe in'?
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