Many Americans view the presidency of George W. Bush as a disastrous failure. While the war in Iraq and the handling of United States citizens’ privacy rights are issues that have received some of the harshest criticisms of the Bush administration, the war in Afghanistan is starting to show that the effort and lives lost in order to help the Afghani people rid themselves from the tyranny of the Taliban through democratic elections were not in vain.
The Soviet Union was able to illustrate to the United States that invading Afghanistan is by no means an easy task. The Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted an entire decade, was slugged out between native Afghani and Islamic rebel groups against the vastly superiorly-armed Soviets. The Soviets eventually withdrew from Afghanistan, and this conflict was seen as the equivalent to the United States’ war in Vietnam.
Unfortunately, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was faced with the daunting task of invading a country with incredibly difficult terrain to maneuver and found itself ruled by radicals. Low and behold, we have occupied Afghanistan for over a decade and what do we have to show for it? The mainstream media loves to bring to light missteps that were taken throughout the war and say that the war in Afghanistan has been a total failure that should be shouldered by the Bush administration. However, progress in the region has been slowly gaining momentum and with the polling results from the past presidential elections on April 5, it seems that democracy in Afghanistan is hopefully there to stay.
Despite an incredibly high number of threats from the still present Taliban, which included 39 suicide bombers in a two-month span before election day in order to intimidate Afghans away from the polls, nearly 7 million people, close to 60 percent of the eligible voters, came out to vote in the April 5 presidential election. This number is staggering considering that a mere 53 percent of eligible voters in the United States voted in the 2012 presidential election. The fact that so many Afghans, including a large contingency of Afghan women, believed that casting a vote was worth the risk shows how brave the majority of their populace is.
Abdul Wakil Amiri, an Afghan government official was quoted as saying, “Whenever there has been a new king or president, it has been accompanied by death and violence.” It later goes on to say, “For the first time, we are experiencing democracy.” Additionally, this election marks the first ever democratic transition of power in Afghanistan’s history. President Hamid Karzai was not eligible to run due to term limits, and it is becoming more clear that the front runners in the election are Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani. While new democracies are always faced with initial bumps in the road, this election can be seen as a great success for the Afghan people.
The war in Iraq was a failure. Our president got too caught up in the threat that Saddam Hussein posed and chose to wrongfully invade a nation, costing trillions of dollars and the even more valuable lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Has the war in Afghanistan gone directly according to plan? Of course not. Have there been mistakes made along the way? Yes. But when you look at the goal of breaking the strangle-hold of the Taliban and spreading democracy to a region that desperately craved freedom, the question of why we were there becomes all the more clear.
As the presence of the United States military in Afghanistan continually lessens, the path that Afghanistan will take remains unclear. Will Afghan troops be able to fend off the Taliban? Will this democratic transition continue or will Afghanistan once again slip into the clutches of corruption and tyranny? These questions remain to be answered; however, it is my firm belief that what our troops have done to weaken the Taliban and help train Afghan forces will be seen as the initial stepping stone for a democratic Afghanistan in years to come.
Ryan is a junior majoring in political science. Do you agree with him about the war in Afghanistan? Do you believe it created at least the start of democratization? Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
