Mitt Romney - The War in Afghanistan
Summary
Governor Romney supported the surge of troops into Afghanistan by President Obama, but was critical of the timeline attached to those troops. As part of his 2012 campaign, Governor Romney has stated that he would advocate for removing troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible, but only if the advisors on the ground agree.
New Hampshire Debate
In June of 2011, Governor Romney participated in the Presidential debate in New Hampshire. He stated that only Afghanistan can win independence for the people of Afghanistan.
JOHN BROWN, VOTER: Osama bin Laden is dead. We've been in Afghanistan for ten years. Isn't it time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan?
KING: Governor Romney, take the lead on that one.
ROMNEY: It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the word that comes to our generals that we can hand the country over to the Taliban military in a way that they're able to defend themselves. Excuse me, the Afghan military to defend themselves from the Taliban. That's an important distinction.
I want to say, first of all, thank you to you for the sacrifice of your family and your sons in defending the liberty that we have and our friends around the world. Thank you for what you've done.
KING: Congressman Paul?
ROMNEY: Let me -- let me continue. That is I think we've learned some important lessons in our experience in Afghanistan. I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals.
But I also think we've learned that our troops shouldn't go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan's independence from the Taliban. Thank you.
Iowa Debate
In August of 2011, Governor Romney participated in the Republican Presidential debate in Ames, Iowa. He is asked about previous statements on Afghanistan and notes that the Afghani people and troops need to take on their own security. He is critical of President Obama's decision to draw down troops without the support of the Generals.
BAIER: Governor Romney in June 2009 you argued that America's willingness to fight wars of liberation, quote, "nurture democracy and human rights all over the world," was what made America, quote, "the hope of the earth." Basically a full embrace of George W. Bush's freedom agenda.
Yet last debate about Afghanistan you said this, quote, "we've learned that our troops shouldn't go off and try to fight a war of independence for another nation."
Those two statements are dramatically different. Have your views changed?
ROMNEY: No, I have the same view. And it's this which is that we have helped the people of Afghanistan establish freedom from the Taliban. But now we are at a point where they are going to have to earn and keep that freedom themselves. This is not something we are going to do forever. We've been there 10 years. We've been training the Afghan troops.
Sometime within the next two years, we are going to draw down our troop strength and reach a point where the Afghan military is able to preserve the sovereignty of their own nation from the teary of the Taliban. That has to happen.
It's time for the troops of Afghanistan to take on that responsibility according to, as I said in that last debate, according to the time table established and communicated by the generals in the field.
And those generals recommended to President Obama that we should not start drawing our troops down until after the fighting season in 2012. He took a political decision to draw them down faster than that. That is wrong. We should follow the recommendation of the generals and we should now look for the people of Afghanistan to pick up their fight and preserve that liberty that has been so dearly won.
CBS Foreign Policy Debate
On November 11, 2011 Governor Romney participated in the CBS foreign policy debate. He was asked about the size of the force in Afghanistan and the possibility of negotiating with the Taliban.
Major Garrett: Governor Romney, a much smaller footprint in Afghanistan? Do you support that? And secondarily, sir, is it time or would it ever be time for the United States to negotiate with the Taliban?
Mitt Romney: We don't negotiate with terrorists. I do not negotiate with the Taliban. That's something for the Afghans to decide how they're gonna-- pursue their course in the future. With regards to our footprint in Afghanistan, the right course is for us to do our very best to secure the victories that have been so hard won by the soldiers, the men and women of-- of our-- fighting forces who have been in Afghanistan.
The commanders on the field feel that we can take out 30,000 to 40,000 troops sometime by the end of next year. The commander in chief, perhaps looking at the calendar of the election, decided to bring them home in September, instead, in the middle of the fighting season. Our commanders said that puts our troops at risk, at danger, "Please don't pull 'em out there," they said.
But he said, "No, I'm gonna get 'em out early." I think that was a mistake. Our surge troops should have been withdrawn by December of next year, not by December. And the timetable, by the end of 2014, is the right timetable for us to be completely withdrawn from Afghanistan, other than a small footprint of support forces.
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Scott Pelley: Governor Romney, would you send American troops across the border into Pakistan to clear out those save havens? American men and women are coming under fire from those locations every single day.
Mitt Romney: The right way to deal with-- Pakistan is to recognize that Pakistan is not a country like other countries, with a strong political center that you can go to and say, "Gee, can we come here? Will you take care of this problem?" This is, instead, a-- nation which is close to being a failed state. I hope it doesn't reach that point, but it's a very fragile nation.
It really has four centers of power: the ISI, which is their-- their intelligence services, the military, separate group. You have the political structure, and of course, the fundamentalists. And so we have to work with our friends in that country to get them to do some of the things we can't do ourselves.
Bringing our troops into Pakistan and announcing at a stage like this that, as president, we would throw American troops into Pakistan, could be highly incendiary in a setting like that. Right now, they're comfortable with our using drones to go after the people that are-- that are representing a gr-- the greatest threat.
Scott Pelley: We have time, governor. But are the Pakistanis--comfortable with our using drones?
Mitt Romney: We have agreement with the people that we need to have agreement with to be able to use drones to strike at the people that represent a threat. And one of the things we have to do with our foreign aid commitments, the ongoing foreign aid commitments, I agree with Governor Perry. You start everything at zero.
But one of the things we have to do is have understanding with the various power bases within the country that they're gonna have to allow us, or they themselves go after the Taliban and Haqqani net-- network to make sure they do not destabilize Afghanistan, particularly as we're pulling our troops out.
CNN National Security Debate
On November 22, 2011 Governor Romney participated in the national security debate on CNN. He was asked about the cost of keeping troops in Afghanistan and speaks about the need to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan
QUESTION: Israel Ortega (ph) with the Heritage Foundation.
Is the money that we've drawn back from U.S. troops in Afghanistan really worth the risk of allowing Taliban to expand territories, and Al Qaida to grow safe sanctuaries?
BLITZER: Governor Romney, $2 billion a week the United States is spending right now in Afghanistan, $2 billion, more than $100 billion a year. And U.S. troops are supposed to stay for another three years at least, till the end of 2014. Is that money well spent?
ROMNEY: We spent about $450 billion so far, 1,700 or so service men and women have lost their lives there, and many tens of thousands have been wounded. Our effort there is to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching point for terror against the United States. We can't just write off a major part of the world.
Pakistan is the sixth largest country in the world. We can't just say goodbye to all of -- of what's going on in that part of the world.
Instead, we want to draw them toward modernity. And for that to happen, we don't want to literally pull up stakes and run out of town after the extraordinary investment that we've made. And that means we should have a gradual transition of handing off to the Afghan security forces the responsibility for their own country.
And for the region, what happened in Indonesia back in the 1960s, where -- where we helped Indonesia move toward modernity with new leadership. We -- we brought them in the technology that allowed them to trade in the world.
We need to bring Pakistan into the 21st century -- or the 20th century, for that matter, so that they -- they can engage throughout the world with trade and with modernity.
Right now, American approval level in -- in Pakistan is 12 percent. We're not doing a very good job with this huge investment we make of $4.5 billion a year. We can do a lot better directing that to encourage people to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities the West and freedom represent for their people.
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BLITZER: Let me let Governor Romney respond.
ROMNEY: Well, let me respond.
Are you suggesting, Governor, that we just take all our troops out next week or what -- what's your proposal?
HUNTSMAN: Did you hear what I just said?
I said we should draw down from 100,000. We don't need 100,000 troops. We don't need 100,000 troops in Afghanistan...
(CROSSTALK)
HUNTSMAN: -- many of whom can't even cross the wire. We need a presence on the ground that is more akin to 10,000 or 15,000. That will serve our interests in terms of intelligence gathering and Special Forces response capability. And we need to prepare for a world, not just in South Asia, but, indeed, in every corner of the world in which counter-terror -- counter-terrorism is going to be in front of us for as far as the eye can see into the 21st century.
ROMNEY: And the -- and the commanders on the ground feel that we should bring down our surge troops by December of 2012 and bring down all of our troops, other than, perhaps, 10,000 or so, by the end of -- of 2014.
The decision to pull our troops out before that, they believe, would put at risk the extraordinary investment of treasure and blood which has been sacrificed by the American military.
I stand with the commanders in this regard and have no information that suggests that pulling our troops out faster than that would do anything but put at -- at great peril the extraordinary sacrifice that's been made. This is not time for America to cut and run. We have been in for 10 years. We are winding down. The Afghan troops are picking up the capacity to secure their country. And the mission is pretty straightforward, and that is to allow the Afghan people to have a sovereign nation not taken over by the Taliban.
BLITZER: Let me bring the speaker in. What do you say...
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ROMNEY: Look, I've got a good -- he gets a response, I get a response.
BLITZER: All right.
ROMNEY: Of course the commander-in-chief makes -- make the final decision.
PAUL: How about the rest of us?
ROMNEY: Of course the final -- look...
PAUL: How about us who haven't had a response?
BLITZER: (INAUDIBLE) got a chance.
ROMNEY: Of course the commander-in-chiefs makes the -- makes the final decision. But the commander-in-chief makes that decision based upon the input of people closest to the ground. And -- and we -- we've both been to Afghanistan. I've been to Afghanistan. The people I speak with there say we have a very good prospect of the people in Afghanistan being able to secure the peace and their sovereignty from the Taliban, but that if we pull out on a precipitous basis, as Governor Huntsman suggests, that we could well see that nation and Pakistan get pulled into terror and become another launching point to go after America. That's a mistake. That's why you listen and then make your decision.
Foreign Policy White Paper
In November of 2011, Governor Romney's Presidential campaign released a white paper on foreign policy. Afghanistan and Pakistan were two countries that were focused on in that paper.
Afghanistan and Pakistan
Enjoying the sanctuary of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, al Qaeda set in motion the conspiracy that killed so many Americans on September 11, 2001. We learned many bitter lessons that day, including that we are not safe from enemies who plot freely against us from the other side of the world. That is why so many of our best and bravest young men and women are risking their lives in Afghanistan. Our mission in Afghanistan is to eliminate al Qaeda from the region and degrade the Taliban and other insurgent groups to the point where they are not existential threats to the Afghan government and do not destabilize Pakistan, with its stock of nuclear weapons. Our objective is to ensure that Afghanistan will never again become a launching pad for terror and to send a message to any other nation that would harbor terrorists with designs on the American homeland.
Much of the mission has been accomplished through the courage and dedication of our troops. The killing of Osama bin Laden was a landmark in the struggle for which President Obama deserves credit. Much more, however, remains to be done. Unfortunately, President Obama has repeatedly frustrated and imperiled the American mission through a series of unwise decisions. After a protracted deliberation process, President Obama in December 2009 announced he would support a “surge” that would entail introducing an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. But in the very same speech announcing the surge, he put forward a timetable for withdrawal. The mixed message left our Afghan allies in doubt about our resolve and encouraged the Taliban to believe that they could wait us out. This past June, President Obama disregarded the counsel of his top military commanders, including General David Petraeus, and announced a full withdrawal of those 30,000 surge troops by September 2012. That date falls short of the commanders’ reported recommendation that the troops remain through the end of 2012 and the Afghan “fighting season” to solidify our gains. That date also happens to be just weeks before a U.S. presidential election.
There is no military rationale for it. It raises questions about whether the timing is politically inspired. Whatever the motivation behind the decision, it means that our military will be compelled to begin moving troops and equipment out of Afghanistan in the middle of the fighting season, taking away forces and resources it needs to combat the enemy.
Mitt Romney will never make national-security decisions based upon electoral politics. Upon taking office, he will review our transition to the Afghan military by holding discussions with our commanders in the field. He will order a full interagency assessment of our military and assistance presence in Afghanistan to determine the level required to secure our gains and to train Afghan forces to the point where they can protect the sovereignty of Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban. Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders.
Ensure Buy-In from Afghan and Pakistani Governments: To defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, the United States will need the cooperation of both the Afghan and Pakistani governments. It is in the interests of all three nations to see that Afghanistan and the Afghanistan- Pakistan border region are rid of the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Mitt Romney will work with both the Afghan government and Pakistan to ensure that those nations are fully contributing to success in Afghanistan. But we will only persuade Afghanistan and Pakistan to be resolute if they are convinced that the United States will itself be resolute. Only an America that appears fully committed to success will eliminate the incentives for them to hedge their bets by aligning with opposing forces.
The United States must be clear in what we require of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai should understand that our commitment must be met with reciprocal efforts to crack down on corruption in his government, respect free and fair elections as required by the Afghan constitution, and coordinate with the United States on fighting the narcotics trade that fuels the insurgency. Pakistan should understand that any connection between insurgent forces and Pakistan’s security and intelligence forces must be severed. The United States enjoys significant leverage over both of these nations. We should not be shy about using it.