In our last post, P.S., we posed the — somewhat hopeful — possibility that there is a strategic big-picture plan (something beyond “Fight ’em over there, so we don’t have to fight ’em here!”) behind our reason to still be in Afghanistan after nine years. Well, here’s what we heard from The Washington Post’s, well-respected foreign policy expert, David Ignatius on Thursday.
According to Ignatius both sides in the conflict are thinking ahead to what the political solution might look like. Both sides know that there is no military solution. What the US and the Taliban are doing now is fighting hard to try to get the upper hand so that they can negotiate from a stronger position. How long this fighting will go on before these negotiations begin is unclear.
Somehow, just knowing that both sides are actually thinking about a peaceful Afghanistan future is truly reassuring. And, the fact of the matter is: we really don’t want to have to negotiate from a weaker position, because that part of the world is a dangerous place and we need to have the best possible outcome in Afghanistan that we can achieve at this point. Not a lofty reason to still be fighting for, after nearly a decade, but dare we say it’s a “pragmatic” (very Obama-ish) one?
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