It was dinnertime at Bagram Airfield.
In the nearly 16 hours since my day began in neighboring Pakistan, I had participated in a string of back-to-back meetings and briefings with General Petraeus, Afghan President Karzai, Afghan parliamentarians, and U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry.
But as we sat down for dinner in the mess at Bagram, I realized that this was the highlight of my trip. This was the meeting with the unsung heroes of the war I had been waiting for.
Late last month I took an eight-day trip with several of my Senate colleagues to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan and Israel. It was important for me to look beyond the congressional hearings to see the situation on the ground in each of those important countries for myself.
It was there at Bagram, while sharing a meal of chicken and rice, and listening to soldiers from Delaware tell me about their commitment, mission and eagerness to come home to their families, that I came to better understand the scope of their sacrifice and the true cost of this war.
The boxes of Dolles’ saltwater taffy we left behind as a reminder of home seemed like the very least I could do to show our appreciation to these brave troops.
I came away from the trip with several inescapable conclusions, the first and foremost that the men and women serving our country in uniform are extraordinarily professional. Morale was high, even for those on their fourth or fifth deployment in the past 10 years. Every Marine, soldier, airman, Guardsman, and civilian I met had a positive outlook, a clear sense of purpose and believed in the mission he or she was sent to complete.
I went to Afghanistan to ask our military and civilian leaders tough questions about our mission such as: Is our $2 billion-a-week investment making America more secure? Does the Taliban present a clear danger to U.S. interests? Would our personnel and financial resources be better spent fighting Al Qaeda in Somalia or Yemen, as extremist networks proliferate to alternative safe-havens around the globe?
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I knew it was important to get a firsthand sense of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as in the Middle East, to inform my perspective on America’s commitments there.
The U.S. has been engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan for more than 10 years – longer than any other military action in our nation’s history – yet the sustainability of recent progress in stemming the momentum of the Taliban remains in doubt.
I saw a number of reasons to be optimistic about progress being made, such as the young female Member of Parliament reading the Afghan constitution on her iPad, or the village elders in Helmand Province who expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the U.S. military for driving the Taliban out of their village. The Afghan National Security Forces are also making progress given the extensive training program led by a multinational force I was able to observe.
In my view, the biggest challenge to our success in Afghanistan is Pakistan – our ally to which we have given more than $18 billion since 9/11, but which continues to harbor and consort with the very extremists killing American troops across the border. Upon returning to Washington, I am committed to determining the best way forward with Pakistan, and whether we can find more cooperation targeting extremists, especially on the Afghan border. In the absence of a clear strategy for Pakistan, sustaining any progress in Afghanistan remains highly doubtful.
Our costly investment in Pakistan and Afghanistan must be balanced against our security priorities throughout the world. With Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda allies having slipped across the Afghan-Pakistani border, it is important we ensure they don’t escape again to destabilized terrorist harbors like Yemen and Somalia.
Earlier this month Delaware sent another 240 of its sons and daughters to Afghanistan. I remain committed to ensuring that their immeasurable sacrifice, as well as that of the brave Delawareans with whom I shared a meal at Bagram Airfield last month, is honored with a strong commitment from Congress to closely and continually evaluate our mission in Afghanistan.
If the mounting cost exceeds the benefit to U.S. security, it may be worth considering a meaningful drawdown of troops, beyond what the President is considering for July of this year.