Speaking on Monday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, President Obama could not have been more definitive. “We must never forget,” he said of the conflict in Afghanistan. “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.”
The president did not break new ground so much as reinforce existing policy. Earlier this year, he decided to send an additional 17,000 combat soldiers and 4,000 trainers to Afghanistan, raising American force levels there to more than 60,000. And in March he articulated a broader mission: The United States would now “take the fight to the Taliban in the south and the east,” in effect making the United States a full party to Afghanistan’s civil war.
As a result, American soldiers are fighting the Taliban, partly to provide time and space while Afghan forces are better trained and partly to persuade some Taliban that resistance does not pay. Call it armed state-building.
But is Afghanistan a war of necessity? And if not — if in fact it is a war of choice — so what?
Wars of necessity must meet two tests. They involve, first, vital national interests and, second, a lack of viable alternatives to the use of military force to protect those interests. World War II was a war of necessity, as were the Korean War and the Persian Gulf war.
In the wake of 9/11, invading Afghanistan was a war of necessity. The United States needed to act in self-defense to oust the Taliban. There was no viable alternative.
Now, however, with a friendly government in Kabul, is our military presence still a necessity?
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