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  Erika Lovley Moderator :

  Is the U.S. pursuing the right strategy in Afghanistan or should it change course, and if so, how?

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  Rep. Walter Jones Congressman (R-N.C.) :

  No.

  I recently spoke in the Republican Cconference. Everyone was talking about the debt ceiling, this deal, that deal. I said, Madam Chair, I want to speak on behalf of the five Marines and one soldier recently shot and killed by the Afghans they were training. How many more young men and women have to die at the hands of the Afghans they are trying to help?

  We need to wake up. We need to get out of Afghanistan. There’s nothing we’re going to change, and yet, in both parties, this issue is not even making the Top 10 list of the leadership’s concern. We lost 32 Americans in October and November.

  I have signed over 10,800 letters to families and extended families since we went into Iraq. I still write the letters because kids are still dying. I don’t know where the outrage is here in Congress. I don’t see it except for a few Democrats and Republicans. Not to mention we’re spending money we don’t even have over there.

  We’re having a meeting in December with a few people from outside of Congress. We’re going to see if we can put pressure on Congress to debate on the House floor some kind of legislative vehicle that would start the process of bringing troops home in fall of 2013. If we wait until December 2014, which is the current timeline, it will surely slip into 2015. All the polling as recently as two months ago shows 70 percent of Americans want out of Afghanistan.

  I don’t understand why the leadership in the House is deaf to this call from the American people to bring our troops home - and why they can’t see the pain of war.

  I’m focused on working with some of the Democrats, and my hope is we can get some sort of mechanism to force debate on the floor by next spring. I’ve had at least three or four of my Republican friends say that if I can get the right vehicle on the floor for debate, they’ll back me.

  I’m going to keep beating this drum because the American people want us out.

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  Leif Babin U.S. Navy SEAL officer; Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy Reserve :

  I think the strategy right now is almost exactly Vietnamization. For any student of history, it’s hard not to see it that way. Our most senior military leaders and politicians have decided we can’t win and need to leave. In Vietnam, Nixon called it “Peace with Honor.” The rest of the world called it defeat.

  Once we leave, the Taliban will most likely retake much of Afghanistan, and it will look much like it did pre-9/11. It's hard to see that as anything but a defeat for us. I spoke recently with combat troops who are there, and they tell me they believe this thing is lost. That’s not something they say very lightly because we’ve certainly lost a lot of people and many have been seriously wounded. They want those sacrifices to be justified. The frustrating thing for the combat troops is that they feel this hopelessness. If winning means defeating the Taliban, we can do that. U.S. troops are ready and eager to achieve that objective. But if winning means establishing a flowering democracy, strong centralized government and a technologically advanced military, that’s not going to happen nor was it ever a realistic outcome.

  If you talk to troops serving there, they’re asking to either let us win or bring us home. This arbitrary 2014 timeline has no tie to military objectives. It’s completely politically contrived. The reality is, if our military leaders say we can’t win, why are we still there? Why are U.S. servicemen and women fighting and dying or sustaining horrific wounds with many losing their limbs for a war their leaders have decided to lose?

  The Taliban see the writing on the wall, they know they have this thing won. We’ve already established a timeline so all they have to do is hang on. U.S. forces have done a tremendous job of beating back the Taliban, but the question becomes: If we announced we’re leaving next year, who is going to side with us? We’re refusing to look at the realities.

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  Jim Schweiter Partner, McKenna Long & Aldridge; Former senior defense official :

  It’s a very difficult question to answer. I say that because you can’t look at Afghanistan in isolation. You have to look at the situation more broadly than that.

  Here’s the issue: When the U.S. withdraws our troops from Afghanistan, that creates an economic and security vacuum in that country. Who’s going to step into that vacuum?

  It’s been largely our military presence that’s provided the stability that has allowed the Karzai government to thrive and remain in power. We’ve turned the Afghan National Police and Army from very ineffective constabulary groups into real forces, even though they may not yet be fully effective or self-sustaining.

  The downside to the U.S. withdrawal is there’s not necessarily a high degree of confidence that the Afghan government can preserve stability and allow the freedom of movement within the country that’s needed for commerce to develop and for Afghanistan to move forward.

  Basically, I think there are pros and cons to the policy of military withdrawal. You can’t look at Afghanistan in isolation. There are broader regional considerations at play. It’s complicated, and there are a lot of permutations to that.

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  James Carafano Heritage Foundation, Defense and Homeland Security :

  When President Obama undertook his strategic review of Afghanistan policy he chose a strategy that matched his chosen narrative of a decisive leader whose moves on the battlefield conveniently coincided with his political calendar.  That may have served his reelection campaign well...not so much the war on the ground.

  The president gave commanders on the ground half the troops they needed and half the time required before beginning his drawdown. Further he telegraphed to the Taliban his every move. Finally he rushed the fielding of afghan security forces without adequate training or vetting. As a result, he repeated the mistakes of the previous president and gave the Taliban a chance to get back in the game....and they have.

  The president has created a security situation that is unsustainable after 2014. When it all collapses after the U.S. combat troops leave. He will adopt the Bart Simpson strategy..."I didn't do it."

  The problem is we will be right back where we were on September 10, 2001.

  There are already signs this is happening with reports of foreign fighters joining the Taliban to learn how to fight the West.

  This is war that can still be won, but it would require the U.S. stop running for the exit and working to build sustainable effective capacity to provide security in the countryside.

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  Anthony Cordesman Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, CSIS :

  I think the fact is that we only have two strategies. You can’t reinvent the basic course of events. It’s not like we can go back and shift to some new approach. So either we have to make the current strategy work or basically withdraw.

  At that point, the strategy becomes how do you put the best face you can on an exit? In practice, one of our great problems is that we don’t really have a strategy at present that makes it clear what we should do. We have rhetoric and concepts, but there is not a plan regarding presence that we’d like to maintain in Afghanistan. There is no timeline. We have very broad conceptual figures with the Afghanistan National Security Forces, but none of those involve specific levels of U.S. support.

  We have broad concepts for outside economic aid, but we never followed up with any kind of analysis on what Afghanistan will need during and after transition. We are talking about trying to make the 2014 election successful, but that election by itself won’t matter unless there is a successful leader and serious reform. We don’t even have a plan for the election, much less a concept of governance that’s achievable by 2014. Iraq and Vietnam should have taught us something, but it taught us nothing.

  The best approach, if it’s possible and feasible, is to create an “Afghanistan Good Enough.”

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  Richard Benedetto American University professor; former USA Today political columnist :

  The last time President Obama made a speech entirely on Afghanistan was more than seven months ago, on May 1, when he made a surprise visit to that turbulent country to highlight the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. "The goal that I set – to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild – is within reach," he declared.

  Since that time, an Afghanistan milestone was reached: In August, the American death toll there reached and passed 2,000, with nearly 1,500 killed in the four years that Obama has been commanding that war. Oddly, few seemed to care. Obama, running for re-election, rarely mentioned Afghanistan, and seldom was pressed by the media to talk about it until the third debate with Republican rival Mitt Romney. And then, he had only positive things to say "We're now in a position where we can transition out, because there's no reason why Americans should die when Afghans are perfectly capable of defending their own country," he said.

  But are the Afghans "perfectly capable" of defending their own country? Recent news reports from Afghanistan raise new questions about the effectiveness of U.S. policy, and whether the enemy is really "on the run," as Obama says. Over the weekend we heard of the death of a U.S. Navy Seal killed in a successful mission to rescue an American doctor kidnapped by Taliban insurgents.

  Obama issued a written statement praising the " extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism" of our troops, but did not appear on camera.  He clearly does not like to talk publicly about Afghanistan unless he absolutely must. But like it or not, time has come for the president to make a speech clarifying and explaining Afghanistan progress and policy. It is his job, not that of his surrogates such as Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton.
   

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