Trump plan does not change the war

On Monday President Trump delivered what was said to be a major speech about new policies for the war in Afghanistan. There were, however, no changes which seemed to me to be changing the course of the war.

The President said that a major "pillar" of his new policy was that the U.S. was shifting from a "time based" approach to an approach based on conditions. This supposed change ignores the fact that Presidents Bush and Obama both set time schedules for U.S. withdrawals which were to be carried out if conditions warranted. If, first the Iraqi and then the Afghan, military was ready to take over more of the responsibility for the conduct of the war, the U.S. would begin withdrawing our forces and replace our combat forces with training and support troops. The problem in both cases was the government forces were not ready to be the primary fighting force.

We have consistently ignored some basic facts about the Iraqi and the Afghan military. These countries have never had a strong sense of national identity. The people have identified first with tribal cultures which demand loyalty based on religious affiliation by sect. These affiliations replaced a sense of a national identity. Trying to build a national military with a population that does not have primary loyalty to the nation is doomed to fail.

We saw this when ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria. The trained and equipped Iraqi military offered little resistance, and then fled, ditching weapons and uniforms as they ran. The difference was that ISIS is a force built around a created religious sect which demands compete loyalty.

Unless and until we can develop a sense of loyalty and national identity in the Afghan military, a time-based strategy in itself will not work. If we cannot develop that national identity, the conditions will never be right for a complete U.S. withdrawal. Both the time-based and conditions-based strategies will demand a severe cultural change which cannot be forced on the Afghan people from an outside force.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.