By Whitney Burbank
BOSTON- Boston University’s 27th Great Debate asked a question that is under deep consideration at the Whitehouse: Is the war the war in Afghanistan worth fighting? According to the vast majority of Great Debate attendees, the answer is no.
The Great Debate, held Wednesday night at the Tsai Performance Center, featured two panels, affirmative and negative. Each panel consisted of two professors and one student. Journalism professor Robert Zelnick, mediator of the debate since the spring of 1999, introduced Thomas Johnson as the first panelist from the affirmative.
Johnson, a faculty member of the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, advocated for fighting the war in Afghanistan if there were to be a change in U.S. military and political strategy.
Johnson stated, “The war in Afghanistan is worth fighting only if we have well-defined goals and realistic political and military strategies to achieve those objectives- right now we have neither.”
He disagreed with the notion that more soldiers are necessary. He proposed that the troops currently stationed in Afghanistan be used to stabilize governance in rural areas.
“A culturally adept policy would seek to reestablish stability in rural Afghanistan by reestablishing traditional village government systems and processes.”
Andrew Bacevich, a B.U. Professor of history and international relations, offered a strong rebuttal. He declared, “War is a great evil, a blight on human existence.” Bacevich, a former U.S. Army Colonel, argued war in Afghanistan was unnecessary.
Bacevich offered the counter-terrorism approach as an alternative to war, a combination of surveillance and targeted attacks, along with “outsourcing” techniques.
According to Bacevich, providing Afghani warlords with “material incentive” would keep Al Qaeda out. He said, “Together these two complementary approaches can keep us safe at a far, far lower cost then we will pay to a perpetual and quite unnecessary war.”
Panelist Marin Strmecki, White House foreign policy advisor to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski from 1985 until 1990, he argued on Wednesday that the U.S. should not abandon the people of Afghanistan again, as it did following the occupation of Afghanistan by the then Soviet Union.
Strmecki maintained that U.S. involvement with Afghanistan has already yielded benefits for the Afghani people. In a country with an adult literacy rate of 28 percent Strmecki said educational programs are being pushed to the forefront.
He asserted, “Millions of Afghan children are going to school in Afghan institutions including girls who had never had an opportunity to go to school under the Taliban.”
Nick Mills, associate professor of Journalism at B.U., suggested that it was American involvement in Afghanistan that partially led to the empowerment of the Taliban.
“They took our money, they took our weapons, they hated us for it,” Mills recalled, ”We thought they loved us, but we couldn’t buy their love and respect. We didn’t understand them then, we don’t understand them really now.”
President Barack Obama must wrestle with the issue of understanding the people of Afghanistan as U.S. Commander General Stanley McChrystal pushes to increase military presence by sending at least 400,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
