From being shot at by Taliban forces in the Middle East to reporting live from the Pentagon as it was attacked on Sept. 11, former Boston Globe correspondent Charlie Sennott and NBC's chief Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski have been eye witnesses to various aspects of the United States' occupation of Afghanistan. Miklaszewski and Sennott mixed personal experiences with political insight to discuss the future of the war in Afghanistan in the final installment of the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth's summer lecture series, "The Perilous Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran."
Neither Sennott nor Miklaszewski said they expected U.S. military forces to remain in Afghanistan nine years after the initial invasion, adding that the diversion of attention and resources away from Afghanistan to Iraq under former President George W. Bush's administration allowed the Taliban to reassert themselves.
"The Taliban, on the eighth anniversary of the war, exert more influence over areas of Afghanistan than they did before 9/11 because they were not interested in controlling the entire country prior to 2001," he said. "Once the U.S. invaded, they wanted to control the entire country."
Sennott said journalists, including himself, failed to do their job and ask critical questions when the Bush administration began moving troops from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003.
"I think American journalists feel like we are the middle kid in a family because the middle kid always asks the hard questions," he said. "But even in a family you feel like you sometimes shouldn't ask the hard questions and that was our failing we didn't ask the hard questions."
Miklaszewski said that he believes that the United States is not trying to establish a democracy in Afghanistan.
"The United States is not trying to instill its own sort of democracy over Afghanistan and it is not trying to exert dominance over Afghanistan," he said. "[The U.S.] is only seeking to provide enough security for Afghani governance to take over."
Miklaszewski said that the two biggest obstacles that the United States faces in Afghanistan are the failure of the Afghani government to put together a viable security force and the pervasive political corruption throughout the country.
"The corruption in Afghanistan is just unbelievable," Miklaszewski said. "You have to pay a new person off every 50 feet."
Intensifying the problem is Afghan president Hamid Karzai's administration, which often behaves like "a rival gang" to the Taliban, according to Sennott.
The U.S. military leaders, however, have no other option but to work with the current Afghani government moving forward, Miklaszewski added.
"There are no swans in the sewers," he said. "You have to deal with the worst types of people in these situations to effect the change that you desire."
Both Sennott and Miklaszewski said they were impressed with the military leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces, and viewed him as the key figure in determining the ultimate success or failure of the military operation in Afghanistan.
"I don't think there is a character more pivotal in the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11 than Petraeus," Sennott said.
Following the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal from command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama nominated Petraeus to take over American and Afghani forces in what Sennott described as a "selfless act." Miklaszewski said Obama's decision to name Petraeus was a "stroke of genius" for U.S. military strategy.
Sennott said that the "completely different climate" Petraeus created in Afghanistan stems from his "Ph.D mentality."
Petreaus's Afghan counter-insurgency strategy has succeeded because U.S. forces have allowed local tribes to have some autonomy over their own affairs, Miklaszewski said.
"Instead of trying to change the culture, we have embraced what is seen as the positive aspects of their culture their ability to govern under the rule of law and establish a basic fairness doctrine," he said.
Although U.S. forces have stopped the momentum of the Taliban in Afghanistan in recent years, Miklaszewski said a Pentagon official told him the enemy force was "far, far from defeated."
"Taliban have a saying, You have the watches, we have the time,'" Sennott said. "They will wait out an empire as long as it takes to exert their culture, their tribal structures and authority."
