“And every American fighting there is a volunteer.”
What does this mean, exactly? They are volunteering to fight in Afghanistan?
It means none are draftees. You’re right that people join the military for all sorts of reasons, but in contrast to Vietnam, there’s no American in Afghanistan who the government forced to join by threatening imprisonment.
There are nearly 1.3 million active service members in the U.S. Armed Forces, plus over 800,000 reservists. With about 170,000 in Iraq and 100,000 in Afghanistan at their respective peaks, most active troops in the 2000s did at least one tour in a combat theater, even if they didn’t know that was going to happen when they signed up. But with much smaller commitments in the 2010s — 14,000 in Afghanistan, about 6,000 in Iraq and Syria — many will not.
About 3,000 of those deployed to Afghanistan are combat forces, and many of those are Special Operations Forces. The arguments you mention about socioeconomic factors incentivizing some volunteers to do something they would not do otherwise applies less to them.
As for Afghanistan, “hold the line” sounds good. Who holds it? Why? and when does this “end” for the Afghani people?
I’m writing from the perspective of American strategy, so my answers to these questions are:
- A moderate commitment of American ground troops — in the range of current levels, varying with circumstances — along with drones and intelligence operatives.
- Primarily for U.S. national security and geopolitics, as I laid out in the article, but there are humanitarian reasons as well.
- I don’t know. There’s been fighting, on-and-off, in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan for a very long time. I don’t know when it will end. But America withdrawing certainly wouldn’t end it for the Afghans.
I am unconvinced that immediate withdrawal is the solution. But I am equally unconvinced that we can never withdraw.
Then we agree. But for me to support withdrawal, I would need to see evidence that circumstances have changed to the point where removing American forces would be less likely to precipitate the dangerous outcomes I outlined in the article.
