We Shall Study War: Worthy Goals Undermine One Another

“Funded by the people of Japan,” read a plaque on a school in Afghanistan’s Arghandab province. “Start Date=Dec 03. Completion=June 04.”

But the promise the people of Japan had for that school had turned to despair within a few years. The school was vacant. Windows were broken. Walls were in disrepair. By 2009, the building was little more than a place for soldiers to seek shelter during patrols.

The school seemed a symbol of everything thing that had gone wrong in Afghanistan.

But it was an imperfect symbol.

Schools, economic development, women’s rights and other improvements may be highly touted parts of the United States’ work in Afghanistan. Yet they aren’t why American forces invaded the country. The U.S. military invaded to prevent terrorists from using the Afghanistan as a safe haven.

So-called soft approaches are still a valuable part of that goal. After military force creates the right conditions, through other means—economic, political, even reconciliation.

But those are still just means to achieve the larger goal—security. They are not goals in and of themselves.

And sometimes those means can actually interfere with the primary war aim. While few outside of Afghanistan agree with the Taliban’s attitude toward women, insisting upon western gender mores can alienate the very Afghans the United States must rely upon to prevent the Taliban’s return.

Other laudable goals—such as eliminating corruption or drug production, both forms of livelihood to those without adequate incomes—may leave people feeling more vulnerable and less likely to take a chance on a new future.

Of course, that doesn’t mean those goals must be abandoned altogether. They just have to be weighed against their impact on the primary war aim.

“But all planning is compromise; there is no such thing as the perfect plan, only the best compromise of competing priorities in the circumstances—circumstances that in war include the enemy,” British Gen. Rupert Smith wrote.

The school may have been falling apart, but success in Afghanistan isn’t measured by the number of schools built.

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Be sure to check out the entire series:

• May 22:
• May 23:
• May 24:
• May 25:
• May 26: Worthy goals undermine one another.
• May 27: Wars are not bipolar.
• May 28: Wars are not about victory.

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