Adam Schiff: “even as jubilant Berliners chipped away at the Berlin Wall 15 years ago, many Americans saw the end of the Cold War as…”

“even as jubilant Berliners chipped away at the Berlin Wall 15 years ago, many Americans saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity for the United States to cut its military forces, reduce the number of American troops deployed overseas and divert the monies saved, the so-called peace dividend, to address priorities here at home. In the wake of the heady days of November 1989, few American policymakers were concerned about the civil war that was raging in Afghanistan, which the Soviet Army had quit 9 months earlier. As the Soviet armor rumbled north across the Afghan border, we closed the book on our deep involvement in the landlocked South Asian state. Humanitarian and demining aid still flowed to Kabul, but the United States effectively left the heavily armed warring factions to battle each other, setting the stage for the rise of the Taliban. Eleven years later, on September 11, we paid dearly for our reluctance to get involved in helping to bring peace to Afghanistan and to stabilize and disarm the warring factors in the aftermath of the Soviet departure from the country. Much of this failure can be attributed to an aversion to the kind of post-conflict nation-building operation that might have created a different Afghanistan in the 1990s. These operations are expensive, they are dangerous, they require an extended commitment of our national resources and our attention, and they impose a heavy burden on the military.”