President Barack Obama says the U.S. is not winning the war in Afghanistan and he's willing to open the door to negotiating with some moderate Taliban leaders.
Obama made the comments to the New York Times Friday in a half-hour interview on Air Force One.
He pointed out the success in pulling moderate elements of the Iraqi insurgency away from the hardcore Al Qaeda membership, a strategy many have credited to significantly reducing violence in that country.
"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region," Obama told the newspaper, while stressing the circumstances in that area are more complex.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper made similar comments recently, saying that Western forces alone could not defeat Afghan insurgents.
The leaders' comments demonstrate that NATO is at a crossroads in Afghanistan and that a significant change in strategy is in the works for the conflict that has now lasted longer than World War Two.
Obama has already ordered 17,000 additional troops to enter the Afghanistan theatre and plans on drastically ramping up operations there, as military action in Iraq winds down.
One of the first moves of his young administration was to start a review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan in hopes of finding a winning strategy for the region.
Obama told the New York Times that reconciliation with some members of the Taliban, similar to Gen. David Petraeus' strategy in Iraq, might be one of the initiatives to come out of the review.
"If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq," Obama said.
However, Obama said there are no guarantees that what worked in Iraq would work in Afghanistan.
"The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," he said. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge."
Obama's Vietnam?
The Afghanistan mission has become increasingly more deadly. 661 American soldiers have died since the conflict began in 2001, along with 434 coalition soldiers. Of those casualties, 111 have been Canadian.
Worryingly, coalition casualties have increased significantly year after year since 2005.
The Canadian government is also estimating the mission will cost the country more than $11 billion, though critics say the cost could be much higher.
With the number of casualties, many are asking what has been accomplished for such a high toll.
A UN report released on Thursday said the situation in Afghanistan is worsening, "marked by a rise in civilian casualties, setbacks for women, mounting attacks on freedom of expression and a culture of impunity when it comes to punishing perpetrators of abuses."
"Afghans have continued to suffer significant rights deficits that pose serious challenges to the enjoyment of their human rights and to the country's long-term prospects for peace, stability, democracy, development and the rule of law," the annual report on Afghanistan for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said.
Harper has repeatedly said Canada will end its military mission in 2011, despite suggestions that Obama might ask Canada to stay on longer. The U.S. has repeatedly asked its NATO allies for more troops for Afghanistan but the war is increasingly unpopular in many European nations.
With the U.S. troop increase, they have 55,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. Its allies have about 30,000, including 2,800 Canadians.
After nearly eight years in Afghanistan, the U.S.'s original target, Osama Bin Laden, has not been found. The Taliban has been thrown out of power but is still influential in some regions in the country. The Afghan government is struggling with corruption and its police and army are not ready to control the country on their own.
The facts have politicians admitting that the traditional concept of 'victory' is probably out of reach.
"We have to define what victory means in Afghanistan, and I don't think victory realistically can mean international or Western forces under NATO eliminating every last vestige of the insurgency," Harper told reporters on Friday.
"But I think what is realistic is we would considerably push back the insurgency."
Critics have already started calling Afghanistan "Obama's Vietnam" and the comparison, while a clich� attached to every conflict since the Vietnam War, may be apt. An inherited war without a clear endgame and a plan to increase military action could refer to either Obama or former president Lyndon Johnson.
Marine Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's national-security adviser, said last year that America cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. But as it stands now, what constitutes losing has yet to be decided.
