We should leave Afghanistan Immediately

P1: 13 years of warfare have done nothing to defeat the Taliban. The Taliban continue to build up new forces in their safe havens in Pakistan, where they can cheaply build new armies and return with new forces the next year. P1A: Only the invasion of the Tribal Areas will eliminate this threat. Pakistan will not, and we will not invade Pakistan to stop it. The same cycle continues endlessly. P2: The tribal dynamics actually encourages the above cycle, with excess young men being sent to ride the tribe of unemployed young men, and returns warriors who are used to further tribal politics in the ungoverned areas. We do nothing to change this. P3: The military cannot change this. The current battlefield conditions are doing nothing to change the dynamic. Every spring the same thing happens again, despite numerous press reports of ‘improved’ conditions. Continued military engagement will not change this dynamic and will, at best, merely delay the next chapter of Afghan violence. P4: It’s a strategic drain. P4A: Pakistan and Russia and being handed significant strategic influence over our forces by virtue of the logistical lines that must cut through their territory to sustain the fight. P4B: The India-Pakistan rivalry is playing out in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, to stabilize itself, is using training, money, and weapons from India, and is establishing its own safe zones to send tribal elements against Pakistan in return. We are in the middle of a blood feud with no clear trajectory or possible gain for the US. P4C: Afghanistan is achieving nothing for us on the strategic scale, its sucking up intellectual, economic, and military forces and having a hobbling effect on our strategic deterrence. China and Russia are both seizing upon that. P5: The Al Qaeda ‘threat’ is greatly diminished, and is unlikely to be a threat again. If it is, the Taliban, who seek to rule Afghanistan, will be very vulnerable to our strategic air power, just as they were in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. My opponent appears have tossed out responses without engaging in the subject. C1: Afghanistan is already vulnerable to the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban are conducting operations across the country with virtual impunity. Unless we destroy their safe havens in Pakistan, that impunity will be there indefinitely. Neither we, nor the Pakistanis have the will to do so. Without doing so, we are condemning our Soldiers to die needlessly to have absolutely no effect on the Taliban insurgency at all. C2: US Training. Who exactly are we training? To what end? In sharp contrast with Iraq, where we were able to bring in Suna/Shia and even Kurds under the same national movement to restore order, what exists in Afghanistan? My last tour there, the Afghan forces remain largely ethnic and tribally pure. Working with Tajiks in largely Pashtu areas it was clear that the tribal animosity is quite real. The police forces are often barbaric, if local. Empowered over their people, they often brutalize, rape (no joke), and other wise extort the local people who are powerless to do anything least US forces send in massive military responses. As we transition, we are shrinking these forces, because the expense of maintaining them is too much for the Afghan economy to sustain. Loosening these armed and trained men back to their tribal homelands – where they will no doubt be employed, and not by the government. And what happens when we finally do leave? Will the Tajiks just lay down arms and go home? Will the Uzbek’s? Or will the same thing happen as happened after the Soviet invasion? The Soviets too left behind advisor forces and propped up the post invasion regime. All the indigenous forces eventually descended into a massive civil war that Soviet training enabled, and the neighboring powers, Pakistan, Iran, and even Russia continued to flood the forces to advance their desires through proxy. What exactly is our training and steady flow of money actually accomplishing here? C3: Although the situation in Iraq is not good, there is, as I wrote this a functional parliamentary system, a functional central government, and a rebuilding effort well underway. None of these exist in Afghanistan. The central government is corrupt on a massive scale, where the goal is to amass as much money as quickly as possible through bribes and other forms of corruption and then fleeing to Pakistan or the Gulf. Holding up the rickety shack of Afghani governance is not a path to success. If we look at Afghan History, we clearly see what happens in political transitions. The power brokers of the previous regime, literally and bloodily, fight over the spoils. This happened after the Iron Emir died, this happened when the last King of Afghanistan was overthrown. This happened when the Soviets switched leaders during the invasion. The Afghan Civil War that followed the Soviet withdrawal was no shock to the Afghans. The revenge of the Northern Alliance when we overthrew the Taliban was hardly a shock. The Taliban can, and are, easily manipulating the tribal alliances that they are familiar with and we, largely are not. While we favor the Badrakhi tribe, the Isaakzai (vegetable people) are exploited by the Taliban. Its not a matter of our ability to prevent this, its about when its going to happen. We shoved ourselves into a tribal blood feud we did not understand, and were often lead down dark and bloody paths in support of a tribal policy we did not understand. That has left behind massive grievances, and the tribes are already looking for the post invasion reality – there are scores to settle. Does it make sense for more American money and blood to be spilt to … possibly delay the inevitable? Conclusion: I hear Afghanistan being called the Graveyard of Empires or Unconquerable. The reality is that almost any idiot can shoot their way into Afghanistan. Once they are there however, they discover the same things Afghans already know: The place is ungovernable. It’s too remote. Too poor. Too little infrastructure. Too riddled with corruption. Too rife with rivalry. Peace exists only so long as the major tribes wish it to, and that requires someone with the skill to balance their desires – and that is a desire no foreign power wishes to meddle in much less master. Without doing so, we are but unwitting puppets supplying someone else’s game. Simply put, Afghanistan is going to be what it is going to be. Wasting more money, asking someone else’s son or daughter to die to have absolutely no effect on the situation is pointless. We need to stop pretending that we are getting anything out of the sunk cost fallacy of Afghanistan. Its time to leave. There is simply no point in continuing to fight a fight we don’t want to win.