The Afghanistan Withdrawal and its Risk to our National Security

Op-Ed by Robert L. Caslen, Jr., Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (Retired)

I’ve often wondered what the driving rationale is behind the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting and building Afghanistan’s capacity? Is it that our defined strategic objectives are not attainable? Do we even have the right strategic objectives? Or is it that we are just fatigued of remaining in what appears to be a never-ending conflict? Regardless, the one item that seems to be missing in any discussion of our Afghanistan withdrawal policy is what are our national interests in staying, and what are they in leaving? Frankly, I’m not sure they’ve ever been well-articulated. Some argue they have morphed into goals like “building capacity” or “building representative governance” – strategic goals we hadn’t planned on when we first went over. I suggest it is worth going back to revisit why we initially went into Afghanistan and assess the risks of our withdrawal against our national interests. A good place to start is to understand why we went to war in Afghanistan in the first place, and see whether those national interests remain today. And if they do, how do we mitigate the risks of failure with our departure?

We all remember how the events of 9/11 propelled us to go to Afghanistan. I was on the Joint Staff during 9/11, working with our Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P), Hon Doug Feith, at the time. Under Feith’s leadership, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) identified our national interests as defeating terrorist organizations that were a threat to U.S. interests with global capability (e.g., Al Qaida), and to deny states that sponsored and provided a safe-haven for terrorist organizations (e.g., the Taliban). I argue both national interests still remain today.

Al Qaida’s leadership may have been rendered ineffective with Usama bin Laden’s death, but we all know its ideology remains, and it seems to morph itself into new radical organizations. ISIS is an example, and one of the latest ISIS variants has already established a presence there. The question you have to ask is whether these organizations can gain capacity and become a global threat as Al Qaida was at one time or as ISIS aspires to be?

The other national interest is more concerning, assuming the Taliban ultimately do come into power as they were back in 2001 and before. Will they again sponsor and provide safe-haven to terrorist organizations as they did before? We can argue these terrorist organizations do not have the global capacity they once did. But if offered safe-haven and resources, could they not grow their capacity and threaten U.S. interests not only abroad but back here in the homeland as we experienced 20 years ago?

Many of us know up close and personal the amount of treasure and American blood spilled and left over there, and that seems to be the crux of the argument whether it is right to leave or not. But if you look at this issue from a national interest perspective, and whether our interests are at risk with our withdrawal, you really have a better set of criteria to debate whether our “Afghanistan fatigue” is placing too much risk on our national interests, and in turn, our national security? Those who witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our homeland never want to experience something like that again. Terrorist organizations seeking global capacity that threaten U.S. interests abroad and at home, with a safe-haven to build that capacity, will again put us at risk as we were 20 years ago. It is a lesson none of us want to relearn. But it is something that deserves at least a discussion to ensure we’re doing the right things right now.

I personally think the risk we’re putting ourselves into is close to being unacceptable. Knowing our Department of Defense as I do, I have to assume we are, or have developed contingency strategies to address these risks. I just hope our national leadership possesses the will to implement them in a timely manner when conditions place us into unacceptable risk situations. Said another way, I hope our “Afghanistan fatigue” does not force us to relearn the 9/11 lessons all over again.