In his prepared remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Secretary Gates does a much better job of explaining the relationship between fighting the Taliban and defeating al Qaeda than the president did last night.
As the president first stated in March, and re-emphasized last night, the goal of the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda and to prevent its return to both countries. The international military effort to stabilize Afghanistan is necessary to achieve this overarching goal. Defeating Al Qaeda and enhancing Afghan security are mutually reinforcing missions. They cannot be un-tethered from one another, as much as we might wish that to be the case. While Al Qaeda is under great pressure now and dependent on the Taliban and other extremist groups for sustainment, the success of the Taliban would vastly strengthen Al Qaeda’s message to the Muslim world: that violent extremists are on the winning side of history. Put simply, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have become symbiotic, each benefiting from the success and mythology of the other. Al Qaeda leaders have stated this explicitly and repeatedly. Taliban success in re-taking and holding parts of Afghanistan against the combined forces of multiple, modern armies – the current direction of events – has dramatically strengthened the extremist mythology and popular perceptions of who is winning and who is losing. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side. That, with a Western defeat, they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory – as long as their senior leadership lives and can continue to inspire and attract followers and funding. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
If Obama had said this kind of thing last night, Republicans would have been a lot more comfortable with the speech. One of the things that has really unnerved Republican supporters of the war over the last few months has been the talk from the White House about refocusing the mission to target al Qaeda while reaching out for some kind of negotiated settlement with the Taliban. There was a Washington Post piece that had a senior administration official talking about how the Taliban could be turned into a kind of Hezbollah (as if that would be a good thing) — a terrorist group with a stake in the political process. Here we have Gates saying what we all know to be true — allowing the Taliban to survive would be a victory for al Qaeda and a humiliating defeat for the United States.
