LAWTON, Okla. — The basic-training graduates looked sharp as they proudly marched across the auditorium stage in their recently issued Class A uniforms.
As Sir Winston Churchill said in another context, it wasn’t the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning.
After too brief a time with their families, the graduated soldiers of G Battery, 1/19 FA left Fort Sill for more training at sites around the country on their way to becoming the muscle behind U.S. foreign policy.
Once they make it through advanced training, their next destinations will hinge on world events and the needs of the Army.
Odds are good that most will join that surge of 30,000 combat troops — not counting support personnel — that President Barack Obama announced last year.
Though there were few references to the war in either the official or unofficial events that weekend, it was obviously on the minds of the parents and spouses of the soldiers of Golf Battery.
I looked in the young faces of the soldiers as they marched toward the buses that carried them away from the graduation ceremony and wondered again what victory in the War on Terror will look like.
My interest transcends professional obligation. I’m an editor, sure, but first and foremost I’m a citizen — a citizen whose son was in that graduating class.
Teo, 24 and a recent college graduate, finished in the top 10 percent of the class and is now at Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. No question that he will make a fine officer. The question is whether all the troops, equipment and money we’re pouring into Afghanistan will yield victory — or even something that looks like it.
Five days after the graduation, I was sitting in a conference room with James B. Steinberg, deputy secretary of state and former dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin, Texas.
Steinberg also served as deputy national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, making this his second tour in official Washington.
What does victory in Afghanistan look like? Steinberg replied that victory would be secured when the Taliban and al-Qaeda no longer will be free to recruit, train and operate there. We didn’t ask for this, Steinberg reminded, but we can’t let our Islamic fundamentalist enemies hit us again.
How long, then, before the Afghan government is able to provide the security necessary to meet that end? When can we expect the Afghan government to construct a framework of economic stability needed to sustain such a victory? Well, the answers to those questions are complicated by geography, topography and politics, Steinberg replied. Afghanistan really can’t be considered secure until al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan are effectively compromised. Steinberg said there is progress being made there, but it’s a long process.
A recent Newsweek article reported that the U.S. had spent billions of dollars to pay for an ineffective training program for Afghan police officers. The training money has been largely wasted, the article concluded.
“I’m familiar with what’s in the (Newsweek) report,” Steinberg commented. That training program has been overhauled — “ripped up by its roots,” he said — to give it a sharper, more effective focus.
An efficient, well-trained police force is essential to providing the kind of security Afghanistan needs to keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda at bay.
Afghan farmers also are going to have to be sold on alternatives to planting poppies. The Afghan poppy crop is the base for heroin production, and the profits from heroin sales finance terrorists.
That’s why Obama ordered agricultural specialists to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan soil is receptive to growing fruit and other crops, Steinberg commented.
All of that, Steinberg cautioned, won’t necessarily produce a model Jeffersonian democracy. He’s right; it would be a stretch to think that we can turn a country largely unfazed by the industrial revolution into a democratic Utopia overnight. What we’re looking for is a country that is strong enough to shut the door on terrorists.
The conversation with Steinberg yielded neither news nor surprises. If there were a quick fix, we would have used it already. There are no shortcuts in any war, but this one is an especially tough maze.
There are going to be a lot of sleepless nights all over the country before we find our way out.
Arnold Garcia Jr. is editorial page editor of the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: agarcia@statesman.com.
Tina Griego’s column will return next week.
