Outside the bubble of the president’s inner circle, the public always has engaged in a healthy debate on these very issues.
The war in Afghanistan is one of those issues.

Although this war has not been given the coverage it deserves, some have criticized President Barack Obama’s policies. I thought I would add to the debate by defending his stance toward Afghanistan.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has a criticism that is twofold. The first point is that we could be spending this money at home. The second is that leaving Afghanistan is in the best interest of our national security.

To understand war spending, one has to understand emergency spending. Say a roof costs $1 million. In the event the roof falls off in the middle of a rainy night, one gladly will charge the money required to fix the roof to a credit card.

That money never would have been spent on normal, everyday things — even really worthy things — because most individuals do not have that kind of money. But when the roof comes off, we will pay the $1 million because otherwise the storm outside will make our children ill.

Similarly, war is emergency spending paid on a credit card (The Bank of China). To say, “We could be spending the money here at home” is not true — as no nation spends that kind of money in peacetime.

America has never spent the comparable percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, of war on social programs, even under the most progressive administrations. Thus, the argument does not hold up.

Admittedly, our debt is enormous and unsustainable, and the war is a large component of that fiscal truth. However, leaving the job half done would be more costly in the long run. The Obama Administration understands the America of 2010 cannot be the America of 1989.

With so much poverty and few legitimate news sources in Afghani villages, the administration knows it would aid terrorism’s cause by leaving.

There would be no more effective narrative al-Qaida could use to recruit impoverished youth than the prospect of America leaving Afghanistan after promising not to — just like we did after the Soviet invasion.

It also is important to address criticisms from some on the right. They argue the president should have sent a substantially larger number of troops than the 40,000 U.S. and NATO forces he committed to the war.

These claims are as ignorant of history as those made by progressives. If it was a question of sending more troops into Afghanistan, the Russians would have succeeded decades ago.

We are not there fighting an organized army like we did in World War II. We are fighting an insurgency, and that requires counterinsurgency, not only counterterrorism.

Furthermore, both sides seem to lack an understanding of our stated mission in Afghanistan. We are not attempting to set up a Jeffersonian Democracy or demanding Afghanis change their way of life.

We are not even asking them to give women the same rights the West affords them. These are fights we know we cannot win.

The troop surge is designed to push certain factions of the Taliban to come to a political compromise with the Afghani government to ensure, at the very least, the country would not become a launching point for future attacks.

I will not claim that the execution of this new strategy has been perfect, or that nothing will have to change in order to achieve future success. But I think the president’s Afghan policy has been the right one, and is a strategy most in the political center can agree to.

It is worth defending.

Only time will tell if it all works out. But regardless of party or how the Afghan policy changes, we all should hope a workable solution emerges so our troops can come home as soon as possible.

Ameek Singh is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at sodhiame@msu.edu.