Liberals out of touch with Afghan war

Nicholas Kristoff:

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

...

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

...
The hawks are right. There may be a few schools that the Taliban have not blown up, but many of them are occupied by our troops. The Taliban are control freaks who will prevent girls from getting an education and will limit teaching to their own bigotry.

The argument that our troops are feeding the insurgency is based on a false premise. The absence of our troops does not mean an absence of the Taliban. They oppose our presence because it means they have lost control over the people in the area we are operating. In areas controlled by the Marines right now, the economy is improving and their is less violence. That is what happens when you have an adequate force to space ratio. That is what we should seek for the country as a whole.

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