A Letter to President Barack Obama

Mr. Barack Obama, President

United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

October 15, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

Congratulations to you on joining the community of Nobel Peace Prize winners. It was the recognition of your vision and wise policies for creating a more peaceful world.  This recognition I hope will help you to evaluate the situation in Afghanistan from every possible angle.

Mr. President, you had been referring to the Afghanistan War as a “good war” as opposed to the “dumb war” in Iraq. Well, I believe there are no good wars. War is war and it is dirty and destructive. However, there is a necessary war, i.e., the allied war during the WWII against Hitler to stop evil from spreading. According to the new military analysis about the Afghanistan War more troops are needed otherwise the war would be lost within a year. This is, as you know, a serious assessment and has to be taken more seriously if we are not to repeat the failed experience in Viet Nam. I pray that you would not repeat the same failed policy of President Lyndon Johnson by sending more troops to Afghanistan without a lucid “graceful exit” out of Afghanistan.

Furthermore, Iraq and Afghanistan are two different scenarios with two various national dimensions. Therefore, we also should have two different approaches. In Iraq, Saddam’s oppression of the Iraqis for more than thirty years made the US mission in Iraq easier to gather support from the majority of Iraqi people and engineer a “graceful exit” out of Iraq. However, the situation is different in Afghanistan. The people under Taliban had a relatively stable life, thus many Afghans considered the Taliban as a national force and the Afghans by, nature and nurture, are stubborn fighters and have a very unfriendly attitude toward the foreign invaders—defeating the British in the 19^th century and the Russians in the 20^th century. Why should we think we will win it this time around?

  

As it was important for America, after September 11, to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban regime I believe the US has accomplished its goal by removing threats against America. We didn’t go there to make Afghanistan a democracy, but if we are to make this tribal nation a democracy, then there has to be a better approach to replace the military solution. American-led/NATO forces have been fighting the war in a ”protective” manner (meaning they fight while protecting themselves) as opposed to the strategy of the Taliban in which they go on the offense and are willing to give their lives in suicide bombings, etc. The Taliban forces also see themselves as fighting the war against the invading foreign forces, and they see their deaths as martyrdom.

We know that the Taliban is rooted in Afghanistan while Al-Qaeda is a loosely-based organization with no specific country to claim as its own. It has not been a good policy to put Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the same category. They are two separate groups, and we should deal with them separately if we are to maintain the Taliban and weaken the Al-Qaeda movement, America should come up with another (a more integrative approach), i.e., something like the six-party approach we had with the N. Korea by doing so we internationalize the Afghanistan issue politically rather than relying on the NATO’s military solution. Listening to the increasingly opposing and disapproving voices of the people against the war in the allied nations indicates that America might have to shoulder the burden of the war in Afghanistan. Therefore, it will be wise to, sooner rather than later, bring an end to this war and stop the bloodshed of innocent people.  

Early on General Musharaf of Pakistan requested the Clinton administration to recognize the Taliban, not out of love, not out of respect for the Taliban, but out of necessity to contain Talibanism inside Afghanistan. We didn’t listen to Musharaf’s advice and continued with our unpractical approach vis-à-vis Afghanistan.  

When Bin Laden was in Sudan taking care of his construction business, where we could have monitored him, against the Sudanese advice to let him stay in Sudan, we forced the Sudanese government to expel him without paying any attention to his future destination. So Mr. Bin Laden found sanctuary in Afghanistan-a vacuum to which we contributed, when, after defeating the Russians we left Afghanistan without helping the Afghans to create a form of democratic government. I believe we had a better chance to work with the Afghans then than after we invaded their country after 9/11. Because, back then they were alluding to us as their friends, now they see us as foreign invaders.   

Considering the fact that Afghanistan is one of the most primitive societies in the world and surrounded with several undemocratic nations—what makes us think that we can make such a society a democracy?

Mr. President, when we put pieces together we realize that our own mistakes contributed to world instability and unnecessary military conflicts.  Therefore, you as the President of this great nation have a moral duty to find a peaceful way to bring an end to the bloodshed and human misery. We shall continue to pray for your success.

Sincerely yours,

Kirmanj Gundi

Associate Professor