As part of the Spy’s continued coverage of the Democratic Party primary race for the 1st Congressional District, we have asked the candidates to respond to specific questions from our readers. Each week, the Spy will be asking the candidates to provide a summary of their positions.
This week “Ask the Candidates” focuses on on Afghanistan.
Given the latest tragedy in Afghanistan, when an American solider murdered several innocent civilans (many of them children), isn’t it time to significantly step up the United States withdrawal from that country?
Wendy Rosen
The latest tragedy in Afghanistan underscores the problems we have encountered during this long lasting military action. The time has long since past for us to begin a full withdrawal of United States forces there. The long term success of failure of this operation will largely be gauged by our ability to maintain a positive relationship with the nation of Afghanistan as well as that nations ability to foster freedom and democracy for its citizens. The current plan of action would have U.S. Forces fully withdrawn from Afghanistan by sometime next year; this is a reasonable time frame for such a large withdrawal to occur, although if it can be hastened without compromising stability in Afghanistan that should be considered.
John LaFerla
The horrific killing of 16 Afghan civilians by an American soldier, or soldiers, compels us to give pause for the victims of this tragedy. Incidents like this do damage to both our reputation and our mission in Afghanistan. It strains the already frail relations between our government and military allies and that of Hamid Karzai and the Afghan people.
I believe we were justified in going into Afghanistan when we did. However, we have been in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001. It is the longest war in the history of our country. Had the previous administration not taken its eye off our Afghan objectives—capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda– and not gone into a war of choice with Iraq, we might have accomplished our mission earlier with much less loss of life and treasure.
I believe we should continue withdrawal plans now being formulated by the military and Obama administration to bring our troops home in timely and organized way. We may have to keep small a number of troops behind, possibly to mount operations against organizations that are planning terrorist attacks against us. But it is time to end the large scale deployment in Afghanistan.
We need to stop the policy of fighting extended wars with a tiny, tiny percent of the population bearing the entire burden. Our commitment, now stretching into a second decade, forces the military to recycle our troops, in many instances National Guardsmen, into theatre with such regularity as to invite disasters. Many times our troops are rotated back overseas without sufficient rest, appropriate medical or psychological treatment or observation or with little warning. We are imposing super human stress on our troops and it is neither wise nor fair.
As loose talk about another war—this one with Iran—dominate the airwaves and presidential primaries, we need to refocus again.
We need to learn from our ongoing wars well before we start another one. We will be a lot stronger for it.
Photo by Khaama
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