LOPEZ: What’s your best assessment of “Bush’s legacy” vis-Ã -vis Afghanistan?
YON: That Afghanistan is more akin to Jurassic Park than a modern country is not the fault of President Bush. I sounded the alarm from Afghanistan in 2006 that we were starting to lose the war, but at the time, Iraq was going so poorly that we did not seem to have the assets or attention span for the growing problems in Afghanistan. I would have blamed President Bush if we failed in Iraq, but we are succeeding. Afghanistan will be up to our new president ”” which is fitting enough, since Obama has expressed his opinion that that war is the one we should be fighting. Obama will have the troops at his disposal, and he’s already made a wise decision by asking Secretary Gates to stay on. So we’ll see. But Afghanistan will be Obama’s baby.
LOPEZ: What ought to be Barack Obama’s first priority there?
YON: Firstly, listen very closely to his military advisers, including Generals McKiernan and Petraeus. They don’t put lipstick on the pig, as it were. I see General McKiernan as a realistic commander and a truth-teller. Secretary Gates will tell you that we need more trainers to train the Afghan army and police, and our commanders on the ground will say the same. We need more money for infrastructure and development. We need roads, roads, roads. And more roads. We need to more vigorously address the poppy economy and find alternative livelihoods for the Afghan people. We need to work to not alienate the Afghan people because if we lose the wide approval that we still have, we likely will lose the war.
We need to stop fighting insurgents with air strikes in villages that kill large numbers of civilians and turn the polple against us and the government. As Mr. Yon says, if we lose the approval we still have among the polulace, we will lose the war.