Democrats differ on wars with no clear exit plan
WASHINGTON — The Democratic presidential field is united in lambasting President Donald Trump’s handling of America’s military presence in the Middle East, but the candidates are sharply divided on how to do it better. Their solutions range from pulling out to cutting back.
Aside from relying more heavily on allies and diplomacy, the Democrats are imprecise about ending America’s “endless wars.” They spoke in unusual detail about their Mideast policy views in Tuesday night’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont took the more aggressive stances on reducing the U.S. military role in the Mideast. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota called for a continued though curtailed presence. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, broadly spoke of remaining “engaged without having an endless commitment of ground troops.”
Warren says it’s time to stop asking the military to solve problems that require political solutions, including in Afghanistan, where about 13,000 U.S. troops are performing two main missions: training and advising Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and conducting direct combat against an affiliate of the Islamic State group.
The war in Afghanistan, which the U.S. started by invading in 2001, has lasted longer than any in American history.
“We need to get our combat troops out,” Warren said twice during the debate. In one case she was referring to Afghanistan; in the other, the broader Middle East. Diplomats have tried, with some recent signs of potential success, to bring the Taliban and the Afghan government to the table to negotiate a peace deal. The U.S. military’s prevailing view is that a sudden U.S. pullout would embolden the Taliban, leave the Afghan government vulnerable and undermine near-term chances of ending the war.
Three presidents have struggled with the Afghanistan problem, starting with George W. Bush, who ordered the invasion in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida, which the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan had been harboring at the time. President Barack Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq War, which Bush started in 2003, but Obama saw Afghanistan as the “good war,” and he vastly increased the U.S. troop commitment there in 2009.
Biden, who as vice president had unsuccessfully urged Obama to narrow the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan to countering terrorism rather than building up the Afghan army and police, did not directly address Afghanistan during Tuesday’s debate.