I've been trying to avoid making any pronouncements on President Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan simply because that's what everyone else is doing, but I can't help myself.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 I have been a supporter of what is generally called the war in Afghanistan.  The only difference at the time was that I expected nation building to be the real goal of  the mission and not a 'war' so to speak.  Nothing has changed my opinion since that time, although the argument can and should be made that NATO has some serious problems and the United States took its eye off the ball by making the horrendous decision to invade Iraq.

Recent reports from various sources detail the ridiculous exemptions some NATO countries have in place like the Germans don't fight at night, or the French don't leave their compounds.  There has been a lot of talk chastising NATO and questioning whether it is a useful, functioning institution with any relevance as evidenced by questions from the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to the Secretary of Defence Robert Gates yesterday during Senate hearings on the troop increase for Afghanistan, but that is only half the story.  While there are indeed problems within the organization, the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced shortly after the President's speech that an additional 5,000 NATO troops would also be sent to Afghanistan along with the new American troops. 

The major part of this story is, perhaps with hindsight, the general lack of understanding those who first organized the invasion had of the country itself and its people.  The new plan for Afghanistan is being called a counter insurgency, meaning that the boots on the ground are there primarily to keep Afghan civilians safe from harm and influence by members of the Taliban and al'Queda, as well as helping to build infrastructure and win hearts and minds.  What this really is, is nation building by another name, but no one wants to call it that because politically it means being there for decades.  General McChrystal gave his commanders on the ground something to think about yesterday telling them a story about a recon patrol that met some suspicious individuals digging and who were initially thought to be insurgents burying IED's.  It turned out it was a group of young farmers trying to dig an irrigation ditch, so the members of the recon team took off their equipment and helped the civilians dig the trench.  McChrystal said that this example was what they were there to do and if they could replicate that a million times they could have a chance at being successful in creating a more stable region.

While the general public is turning against the war in poll after poll, I share the concern President Obama has over the stability of Pakistan and the possibility of rogue agents somehow getting their hands an a nuclear bomb.  The initiative has finally been taken in Pakistan for the first time, with government forces cracking down on lawless areas of the country and we can't afford to leave them hanging in the wind, not when they have finally stepped up.  While it's unfortunate that so much time has been lost and there are no guarantees of good news from the region, I believe it would be the worst of all decisions to leave the people of Afghanistan once again without attempting to, at the very least, helping them build some form of stable government with security.  Do we abandon them again and play the part the extremists painted of us as conquerors, just waiting for the surge to end in a year and half so that they can easily seize power once again?

The odds are that Afghanistan won't have a nice cozy little democratic government like we're used to, but that should never have been the goal or message in the first place.  The goal now, and should always have been to help support a government who would reject the acts of 9/11 or the Madrid, London, and Mumbai massacres.  Whether or not Karzai can lead that government or if the surge even works remains to be seen, but to just cut our losses and leave would be disastrous, if not today then sometime down the road.