Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [366]
My position was that we were not in Afghanistan to transform a deeply conservative Islamic culture into a model of liberal modernity. We were not there to eradicate corruption or to end poppy cultivation. We were not there to take ownership of Afghanistan’s problems, tempting though it was for many Americans of goodwill. Instead, Afghans would need to take charge of their own fate. Afghans would build their society the way they wanted. With our coalition allies we would assist them within reason where we were able.
Some political opponents of the administration claimed that the war in Iraq “distracted” the Bush administration from what was referred to as the “good” and “right” war in Afghanistan.5 Yet it was precisely during the toughest period in the Iraq war that Afghanistan, with coalition help, took some of its most promising steps toward a free and better future. In my visits to the country every few months, I felt a palpable energy and excitement. Women were beginning to claim their place in society: starting businesses, serving in the parliament, and once again receiving education and medical aid. Afghan presidential and parliamentary elections in October 2004 and September 2005 took place essentially without incident and were heralded as free and fair. A vibrant media—many dozens of radio and television stations and newspapers—was free to comment on and criticize the coalition presence and Afghanistan’s new leaders. By 2006, nearly four million Afghan refugees had returned to their homeland.6
An Afghan “face” on the effort was enormously beneficial. Though most of the participant nations had failed to deliver fully on reconstruction pledges made at the 2001 Bonn conference, members of the international community were finding it harder to ignore the pleas of a legitimate Afghan government they had earlier offered to support. Levels of violence remained relatively low, in part because would-be insurgents seemed reluctant to challenge the popularly supported Afghan government. I did not think Afghanistan had suddenly shed centuries of ethnic strife and endemic corruption, but it did seem Afghans might be finding their way to managing their problems without our permanent assistance.
If some later contended that we never had a plan for full-fledged nation building or that we under-resourced such a plan, they were certainly correct. We did not go there to try to bring prosperity to every corner of Afghanistan. I believed—and continue to believe—that such a goal would have amounted to a fool’s errand. It struck me that sending U.S. servicemen and-women in pursuit of an effort to remake Afghanistan into a prosperous American-style nation-state or to try to bring our standard of security to each of that nation’s far-flung villages would be unwise, well beyond our capability, and unworthy of our troops’ sacrifice.
Our more modest goal was to rid Afghanistan of al-Qaida and replace their Taliban hosts with a government that would not harbor terrorists. We were willing to let Afghan traditions and processes determine the political outcomes. Our objectives reflected a healthy sense of the limitations of what we could achieve in a country suspicious of foreign influence.
I also did not see