What would you like to hear Obama say about Afghanistan?

In response to this request for comments in the New York Times today,

“What would you like to hear from the president tonight? Will his supporters be open to persuasion? How can he best convince you that he is proceeding on the right path in Afghanistan?

Share your thoughts.”

I wrote the following:

I admit, I am nervous about the war. It has numerous similarities to Vietnam – though also some key differences. We are deep in dept and can ill afford this war. I was against the War on Terror when Bush began it. I was against going into Afghanistan. Even as a high schooler I understood that Al Qaeda were terrorists and not linked to any country. I was even more against going into Iraq. It was obvious to me that President Bush’s justifications for it were empty.

However, here we are. Eight years into both wars. And President Obama has taken on the thankless task of figuring out what to do with them. He has determined to take us out of Iraq, for which I am grateful, but he’s doing it slowly and carefully. As much as I think we need to be out right this moment, I appreciate his reasons for making sure Iraq can remain roughly stable after we leave. The more difficult decision he has made is Afghanistan.

No matter what decision he made, President Obama was going to upset a large part of this country and the world. It is by no means clear cut, stay or go. And even among the myriad of possible actions, it is immensely hard to determine which is the best. Only President Obama truly has the information in front of him to best make the decision. I hope no one in the government with held information from him in an attempt to bias his decision.

Afghanistan is a mess. A mess, at least partly, of our making. The government is corrupt, the countryside largely unpatrolled and in the hands of extremists. Many Afghanis who are friendly to our face, fight us by night.

Pakistan is under siege, fast becoming a place where the extremists are flocking and have targeted. Even more terrifying, Pakistan has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. If it decays one or more is almost guaranteed to fall into the wrong hands.

The two are linked. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is porous. So the enemy being fought in both countries is one and the same. They cannot be separated.

If we leave Afghanistan, we may leave the Taliban and the extremists strengthened with a stronghold in Afghanistan from which to double their attempts to destabilize Pakistan. If they succeed, America could become the next target. A target of nuclear armed extremists. Or the extremists could become emboldened and attempt to further destabilize other areas of the Middle East.

Or it is possible our leaving may remove the wind from the sails of the extremists. With out us meddling in Middle Eastern affairs the extremists would no longer have an immediate enemy to point to and proclaim, “They are fighting a war against Islam. We must fight them!”

If we stay, we may further inflame the situation and send more young Muslims to the cause of the extremists. We may sink billions of dollars and thousands of American lives into a Vietnam style quagmire, and gain nothing. The result may end up being the same as if we had left, only we’ll be worse off.

Or we may be able to stabilize Afghanistan, much as we did Iraq. We may be able to employ a COIN strategy that wins over the populace, builds a stable democratic government, defeats or marginalizes the extremists and leaves whole region far better off than it was when we went in.

Both decisions have terrifying worst case scenarios. And both have attractive best case scenarios.

I deeply appreciate President Obama’s thoughtfulness and deliberation in making his decision. Frankly, I don’t know what decision I wanted to hear. The more I read about the situation the more I become convinced that it is a problem that I do not know the answer to.

For me, the question of whether or not America should fight a war boils down to this: would I be willing to be drafted to win this war?

I don’t know the answer to that question with regard to Afghanistan. It is simply too complicated.

What does Obama need to say to convince me he’s made the right decision? He needs to tell me how we’ll pay for staying. If we’re going to stay, then we all need to contribute to paying the cost. If that means more taxes or cuts elsewhere, then so be it. He needs to prove to me that our that our strategy will at least have a chance of succeeding. He needs to show me how we’ll try to reform Afghanistan’s corrupt government, how we’ll win over the populace and how we’ll corner, defeat and marginalize the extremists. He needs to show how he’ll win over the Pakistanis as well. Right now they fear us almost as much as the extremists. But we need their help if we are to succeed.

Finally, he needs to show that it is not just us carrying the burden. Nuclear armed extremists – the ultimate threat from this situation – are a threat to the whole world. The world should be behind us in this. If staying and fighting is truly the answer then our allies should be in this with us. Thus far they’ve shown a willingness to send symbolic troop amounts and pat us on the back. They need to do more.

I’ve had bad luck getting my comments through their moderation for reasons unknown to me.  Just wanted to make sure the comment was preserved.