The Army Deserves Better Than Afghanistan--and Fort Hood

November 09, 2009 03:28 PM ET | Jamie Stiehm | Permanent Link | Print

By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Let's get real about the Army and Afghanistan. Now's not the season to study more war.

Let me count the ways, saving the Fort Hood tragedy for last.

Clearly, the Army has suffered enough in the Iraq War—so has the nation and the world since 2003. The president of peace, Barack Obama, has a historic opening to close out two conflicts started by the bellicose George W. Bush. The 43rd president's fingerprints are all over these scenes; let him own the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nor is this a matter of sending 35,000 or 40,000 troops to take care of the problems in Afghanistan. Guess what: All those troops mean another 10 years on the ground (at least). Those troops cost more money and resources than our distressed economy can afford right now. We have lost so many lives—more than 5,000—in these cruel winters of war.

Common sense tells us there is no reason to believe the Army can bring "civil society" and good clean government to Afghanistan. That is not going to happen. Civil society is like a rambling English garden that grows over the years. The seeds of society are planted by those who live with its institutions—just as gardens are planted by people who live on the ground, the soil where they grow. The word many like to use is "stakeholders."

No offense to the Army, but that's not what it is supposed to do. The Army first showed how little it understands social infrastructure when it let Iraq's priceless antiquities get looted on our watch.

Soldiers are warriors, not trained to run schools or libraries or museums or elections, all things that go under the umbrella of civil society. If any part of the United States government should be doing that in Afghanistan, it's the State Department. But tribal Afghanistan is such a civil shambles that it's hard to see how outsiders can invent or impose ways to make it functional.

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http://www.usnews.com/blogs/Jamie-Stiehm/2009/11/09/the-army-deserves-better-than-afghanistan--and-fort-hood.html