A friend of mine’s son was injured in Afghanistan the other day.
Fortunately, his wounds were minor after an RPG round hit the convoy he was traveling in, and he is back to his duties protecting our country from harm.
In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, we can’t lose sight of the fact that our men and women are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, voluntarily putting their lives at risk to protect our freedom.
I can’t help but think of the similarities between the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the war my generation fought — Vietnam. From the time I hit junior high school, I argued with my teachers about Vietnam. My position was the same then as it is today: Vietnam was a war worth fighting, but if we were going to fight it, we needed to untie the hands of our military fighting men, and let them do their jobs. I was and remain 100% in support of going to war to preserve our freedom, and to prevent those who wish to do us harm from having a nesting ground.
This is where, even in the wake of the successful bin Laden operation, I run into problems in Afghanistan and Iraq. In many respects, we are making many of the same mistakes we made in Vietnam and putting our troops on the ground at risk.
The most glaring example is the very restrictive rules of engagement in Afghanistan, effectively making our men and women sitting ducks. These rules practically require our troops to Mirandize the Taliban before engaging them.
Sitting here in Washington, D.C., none of us knows the increased danger our troops are put in by a policy which demands that they don’t shoot first and takes away the individual discretion to determine when they are threatened.
The Taliban knows that our troops will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties regardless of the rules of engagement, and they use this to their best advantage. That is the price of our nation’s Judeo-Christian ethos, which values life. However, adding rules of engagement that allow civilians to second-guess those “heat of battle” judgments by Americans on the ground is wrong.
Our troops should not have every shoot/don’t shoot situation scrutinized outside the fray of battle. They are not police on the streets of D.C. They are men and women engaging an enemy who is quite happy to walk up, shake their hands, and then kill them in a suicide bombing.
The second glaring comparison to Vietnam is that there doesn’t appear to be any definition of victory in this fight.
Has victory been achieved now that Osama bin Laden has been killed? Was this actually just about revenge? Do we need to kill the spiritual leader of the Taliban, Sheik Omar, as well?
Or is victory achieved when the Taliban is no longer a threat in Kandahar Province?
Or is victory achieved when Afghan forces loyal to President Hamid Karzai are able to keep the peace without U.S. intervention?
Or is victory achieved when a date a few months before the next presidential election is reached and it is political expedient to declare victory and make a show of bringing troops home?
As it appears more and more likely that the last criteria will be the driving definition of victory, I would just as soon declare victory now and get our troops home. If we are not willing to actually attempt to achieve a complete and total military victory that seeks out and destroys those who would use Afghanistan and Iraq as a launching pad for attacks against the U.S., let’s save the lives of our sons and daughters and the billions of dollars in cost, call it a war and throw a ticker tape parade.
America has many brave fighting men and women who have gone back for multiple tours of duty because they know they are doing something important. I hate to think that they are putting their lives on the line for their country while their country forces them to fight under unreasonable rules of engagement.
A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit with some wounded and recovering American service members in San Diego, Calif., and I know the sacrifice these heroes have made and are making. Sacrifices made without regret. More sons and daughters will die or lose limbs to IEDs in the months ahead. Their loved ones deserve to know how the president defines victory.
Rick Manning served under Secretary Elaine L. Chao in the Bush Labor Department and is a former National Rifle Association state lobbyist.