Is America Winning or Losing the War in Afghanistan - Research Paper Example

Is America Winning the War? Introduction Is America winning or losing the war? What is the measurement of success? Have the benefits outweighed the costs? These are the questions that are going to be studied and analyzed in the paper. People should want to know about this research topic because basically it is one of this nation's greatest problems. We are spending billions of dollars as a nation to fight a war in a country we know little to nothing about. We are putting our grandchildren under mountains of debt. We are fighting a game we do not know how to win. With all of its tactical difficulties and strategical problems, the war in Afghanistan is a war that we should not be willing to lose, but it is going to probably happen that we will lose anyway since for the most part we really don't know what we're doing over there. According to Tanner (2002), “The ranks of the Taliban grew in direct proportion to the society’s desperate desire for order” (p. 279). It has been proven that it would be fruitless for American troops to go into the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. The place is a dead zone. Actually, there are many places in Afghanistan that are like that. Outposts are in the middle of places where there are no people. Much of the problem with Afghanistan is the fact that the targets that we have are very vague. Outposts are at-times in the middle of nowhere. Attacks can come from anywhere. This is what makes fighting there so scary. One minute, everything might be fine. The next minute, one might be under attack. Essentially, nothing is for certain in Afghanistan. The place is crawling with mujahideen. Another problem is IED’s. They are everywhere and a constant danger. Another consideration is the climate. In the winter, it is cold and unforgiving in Afghanistan to the nth degree. In the summer, it is brutally hot. Many times it gets over 100 degrees Fahrenheit easily and this is a cause for concern. Mainly, the problem with it being so hot is that troops will not be able to fulfill their duties well. If they become dehydrated, they could easily become heat stroke victims. Basically, the war that is being fought is probably fruitless, but without research we will not know if the war being fought is actually being effective according to peoples' opinions. That is what the point of this research is: to find out how relevant the war really is today. I. Subjects for Study According to Hersh (2004), “A report for the United Nations Development Program...stated that the nation was in danger of once again becoming 'a terrorist breeding ground' [if they did not receive more development aid]” (p. 145). This paper will basically focus upon 30 individuals. The number thirty is chosen because that is a statistically significant number. The subjects which are most likely to be chosen will probably be a mixture. People will be from different ethnic backgrounds. People to be surveyed will be from different races. They will be, most likely, from the city and the suburbs. People to be surveyed will be married, single, and divorced. Ages of survey participants will range from 18 years to 80 years, on average. No one younger than 18 will be surveyed due to ethical considerations, which will be discussed more in the next section. Additionally, it is probably highly likely that no one over age 80 will be surveyed due to the fact that there might not that many older people to survey. Basically, people are going to be asked those three questions. A survey will be given. The results will be tallied. The research will be presented in the form of graphs. II. Ethical Considerations The ethical considerations of the research are many. The interviewer will have to make sure that it is okay with the people being interviewed to be asked these opinions. Additionally, people might feel frustrated with the war. According to Schroen (2005), “The debate continued over the fate of Kabul and how to deal with the Northern Alliance. The lack of focus in [the main] bombing campaign was of concern, because…efforts to date seemed to be having little impact on the Taliban forces and their willingness and ability to fight” (p. 302). Many people felt the war in Iraq was unnecessary and they may feel similar feelings about this war. This is especially because these campaigns in Afghanistan were uncoordinated. The way the Taliban came to power is a complex issue. According to Rashid (2000), “…between 1994 and the capture of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban’s decision-making process was to change and become highly centralized, secretive, dictatorial, and inaccessible…Moreover after 1996, the Taliban made known their desire to become the sole rulers of Afghanistan without the participation of other groups” (p. 95). The war in Afghanistan is complex. Many people are angry about how much money is being spent there. According to Fiscus (2004), “America’s greatest problem was finding targets in Afghanistan. The Soviets had destroyed the countryside. The mujahideen civil war had destroyed the cities. The United States could [destroy] the Taliban. But there was little in Afghanistan worth attacking” (p. 2002-2003). Without a doubt, this war is very ennervating. People are nervous about their job security at home in the United States. Meanwhile, while the economy is failing in the U.S., terrorists are making profits off of international diamond, drug, and gun sales which are being dealt between African countries, China, and Afghanistan. Of course, this is all very controversial. These topics cannot be discussed with just anyone, therefore. Children 18 and under should not be asked this survey. Thus, the people doing this survey must be sensitive to the fact that most Americans are not in favor of the war in Afghanistan. As much as our troops may need to be there, much of it is wasted time. It must be taken into consideration that this, however, is not everyone’s sentiment regarding the war. There may be people who truly feel that we must be over in Afghanistan in order to control the grips of the Taliban. This would not be a wrong sentiment, necessarily. Nor would it be considered anti-American if the person believed that keeping troops in Afghanistan were the wrong choice. Basically, this is a personal opinion. Opinions can vary widely, and usually people have good rationale for their opinions. III. Measurement The way this data will be measured is by collecting authentic sample sizes from random sectors of the population. Surveys will be taken either at a table in a shopping mall or out on the street corner. IV. Data Collection Methods The data will be collected probably at some sort of table that will be set up where we can ask survey participants the questions. Either that, or survey participants will be asked out on the street. Another possibility, which is highly likely, is screening participants who will participate in the survey. That way, there is more reliability in the survey once we can get people from several different walks of life to take the survey. One con about screening survey participants is people might not want to participate if they have to give away their ethnic or racial background or age, other personal information. We do want people to participate and take the survey. Thus, it could be very frustrating for us as the people who offer the survey to try to carve out a mix of people whom we think would be socially acceptable candidates in terms of providing us with a nice spread of people who agree or disagree. It is very important to consider who is taking the survey as well as how many people are taking the survey, therefore. Taking surveys on the street might not be seen as very serious. Therefore, setting up a table where people can stop and answer these three simple short questions might be a more appealing idea to more people. Not only would this get people interested in the topic. It would also be a short enough survey that anyone could do in one minute. This is appealing for many reasons. One issue is time. People these days don’t want to spend a lot of time doing things they don’t absolutely have to do. Thus, taking some random survey should ideally take a minute or less than a minute if we expect to get any results. We should probably forget screening people. This is unless we have more of a budget for putting an ad in the paper, being a paid survey, and so forth. However, since this research is on a shoestring budget for right now until we get some funding, we are just going to have to assume that the budget will be low. Ideally, little to no cost for conducting this survey would be ideal. How could the costs be kept down? There are a few ways this could be done. One main way to keep costs down include eliminating paper surveys. People could just be asked the questions orally. Not only would this save paper. It would also be a major time-saver. People could just give their opinions and keep walking. This would also help the people conducting the surveys to get immediate results they could tally. However, one con of this method is that people probably wouldn’t be screened in any way. We wouldn’t know the age, sex, or race of the survey respondent (unless it was annotated somehow on a sheet of paper by the person conducting the survey). So far, it has not been determined yet which method would be used in order to collect the data. This writer is strongly leaning, however, towards the idea that perhaps we should collect data at a table which is set-up, and then we give out paper surveys that will help us know some details, if not many details, about our survey respondents. On the one hand, we don’t want to invade the privacy of our survey respondents. On the other hand, we do want to know some information about our survey respondents so we can make sure the survey is fairly devised and applied. Data collection methods are very important for the survey, as a bad data collection method can spoil the survey entirely. Thus, it will behoove this writer and this writer’s helpers to know how we can best collect the data. V. Analysis Once we have the answers to the three questions, next our agenda will be analyzing the data. Obviously, we are going to graph the answers to the questions on a scale of 1 to 10, one being closest to “No,” and ten being closest to “Yes.” There is a web site called createagraph dot com which is very useful in helping create your own graphs. This is the premier web site that will be used to help develop the graphs that will be used within this survey. This survey will give us insight into how Americans feel that the war in Afghanistan is progressing. That is, if the word “progressing” can be used to describe what is going on there—as we very well might be regressing. After tallying the results, these results will be analyzed. It’s possible that, for the purposes of this survey, we might make a survey with 10 different questions and then weight those questions. We would then see how the weighted questions were answered. Then we would tally the results accordingly. A survey with weighted questions might come back with different analysis. That is why it is important to decide whether there should be just three questions, or ten questions, and if there are ten if they should be weighted or not. In either case, the results will be tallied and show on graphs. VI. Conclusion All three of the questions asked in the beginning will be asked in our survey: “Is America winning or losing the war? What is the measurement of success? Have the benefits outweighed the costs?” All of these are perfectly relevant questions to ask as we struggle to find truth in the midst of a war that is unforgiving and seemingly frustrating. Hopefully these questions can be answered in the midst of our searching. REFERENCES Fiscus, J.W. (2004). America’s war in Afghanistan. USA: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Hersh, S. (2004). Chain of command: the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. USA: HarperCollins. Rashid, A. (2000). Taliban: militant Islam, oil, and fundamentalism in central Asia, 2nd Ed. UK: I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd. Schroen, G. (2005). First in: an insider’s account of how the CIA spearheaded the war on terror. New York: The Random House, Inc. Tanner, S. (2002). Afghanistan: a military history from Alexander the great to the war against the Taliban. USA: Da Capo Press. 
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