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By Owen Boss, Chad Cain, Kristen Palpini
Staff Writers
NORTHAMPTON - As President Obama prepared to lay out his mission for Afghanistan in a much-anticipated address to the nation Tuesday, Paki Wieland embarked on a mission of her own.
The longtime Northampton peace activist and three other Valley women traveled to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., the site for Obama's speech. As members of Code Pink, a national anti-war group whose membership comprises mainly women, Wieland and her companions joined others in a "visible protest" against the president's plan to increase the number of troops in the troubled Middle Eastern country by 30,000.
"It's part of the ongoing reminder to ourselves and to the world that everybody in this country is not behind an insane policy," said Wieland before she left Tuesday.
She and numerous others throughout the Valley believe that funneling more military personnel - and the accompanying price tag of $30 billion a year - into Afghanistan is not the solution to the country's long-running problems and will likely do more harm than good.
"A war brings with it bad things for everybody involved," said Jeff Napolitano, director of the western Massachusetts chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization that conducts social justice and peace programs throughout the world.
In addition to reducing security stateside, a troop increase will mean less money for this country, especially at a time when more resources are needed at home, said Napolitano. It also could lead to the death of more troops and innocent civilians and further stoke anti-U.S. sentiment, others say.
Joel Dansky, a Northampton resident and member of the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq, said Obama is on the wrong path and will likely be back in six months asking for more troops or pushing for a different plan entirely.
The scholars' view
Area political scientists were more measured in their comments, noting that the surge may help in the short term but that it's unlikely to lead to long-term stability.
For that, the infrastructure of the Afghani government would have to shed the corruption that is plaguing its system, most noticeably in the recent presidential election. The central state would also have to become more able to provide its civilians with basic human services, including public education, a court system, health care and an agricultural plan that does not include poppy production. "The Obama administration is rightly connecting its troop surge strategy with efforts to stabilize the Afghani government, local social and economic capacity building projects and coordination with policy in Pakistan," said David M. Mednicoff, a professor of legal studies, public policy and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts.
"It's hard to imagine what it (the surge) can do to stabilize an Afghani democratic government or destroy armed Islamist groups in the medium run," he said.
Although infrastructure building is a focus of the surge, Jon W. Western, a Five Colleges professor of international relations, pointed out that troops trained for combat might not be able to create and establish a stable government.
"The counterinsurgency strategy makes a whole lot of sense at the theoretical level, but when you actually go from the theory to apply it, it's an enormously complex process," Western said. "We have the best-trained and equipped fighting force assembled ... but it's a fighting force that is not a particularly strong instrument to build state institutions."
Or, as Napolitano put it, "Increasing the troop presence is not going to help unless they bring something other than guns. That's not the way to do it."
Vets weigh in
Inside the Michael Curtin VFW Post in Florence, local veterans had formed strong opinions on the surge long before Obama took the podium.
Mike McCarthy, 63, of Florence, who served with the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, said Obama is doing a good job given that he inherited a nightmare from the previous administration.
"The poor guy, he's going to age overnight," he said. "It really is a thankless job, and he seems to be doing well with it so far."
McCarthy's main gripe with the surge is that lasting corruption within the Afghan government could reverse progress after American troops pull out.
"If the Afghan government is corrupt, you just don't know what is going to happen once we pull the troops back out of there," McCarthy said. "You'd end up right back in the same place you were to begin with."
Joe Grabon, 66, of Florence, a past commander and current president of the post who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, supports America's change in approach outlined in a recent television interview by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan.
"(McChrystal) was pretty clear about changing the strategy away from just putting more units on the ground, and he said accomplishing that goal would require this number of troops," Grabon said.
And while he may not fully support sending more troops, Grabon said he felt the American government owed it to the Afghan Army to give them enough time to train a security force that can eventually inherit the struggle with the Taliban.
Standing in adamant opposition to increased troop levels was Edwin Jaworski Sr., of Hatfield, a disabled World War II Navy veteran who served on the USS Carney.
"When Obama ran for president, he said he was going to send more troops over there and then cut it off and now he's shipping more of them out, instead of cutting them off like he said he would," Jworski said.
Protesting the plan
Numerous protests against Obama's plan took place throughout the country Tuesday, and more are on the way. One of those protests will take place locally this morning when members of the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq holds a 7:30 a.m. vigil at the Coolidge Bridge.
While the group's name singles out Iraq, its mission is to stop war in Afghanistan as well, said member Sally Weiss. The committee's ultimate goal is to see the country withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, where the group views the U.S. presence as occupations.
"Occupations are doomed to create more problems than they're supposed to solve," Weiss said.
Michael T. Klare, a Five Colleges professor of peace and world security studies, expressed a similar concern that a military surge could lead to greater anti-American sentiments in the Middle East. "It will appear like America is performing an occupying role," Klare said. "There will be increased resentment."
But a quick withdrawal of troops would leave the area unstable, Mednicoff said, an undesirable situation that could also give rise to anti-American sentiment.
Both Klare and Mednicoff said the United State should focus on training Afghani forces to be self-sufficient and work to suppress governmental corruption. In addition, Klare suggested using American special air forces and unmanned drones to continue attacks on Al-Qaida as a way to address that threat.
"I'm just not sure I see the deployment of 30,000-35,000 troops on such a short time table to be an effective remedy, even if these models work," said Western, of the 2011 exit strategy. "He's asking to do a lot in a short period of time, and the U.S. doesn't have a good track record of building this type of institution for the level of stability that he's suggesting."
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