Troop escalation is not a welcome event. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has decided to send even more soldiers to Afghanistan. The dozens of presidential meetings, diplomatic conferences, and passionate speeches culminated in Obama’s official speech on Dec. 1, 2009 to the public explaining his decision to send 30 thousand additional troops into Afghanistan.

As impressive as Obama’s speech was, the logic behind it seemed less than convincing. He insisted that we had to prevent Afghanistan from succumbing to a Taliban resurgence, stating that “the common security of the world” would be at risk, and even invoking an image of the extremist group with nuclear weapons.

Quite frankly, a situation involving the Taliban waging a nuclear war is highly unlikely, and the cost of the deployment - both in lives and in dollars - is far too high. The fact is, we need to shift perspectives on the war. Instead of focusing on the Taliban for fear of compromising our national security, we should enlist the help of and seek to empower the Afghan people, whose national security (or lack thereof) speaks for itself.

Empowering the people of Afghanistan will be a win-win situation: a more stable country, both politically and financially, will result in a people who can successfully battle the Taliban on their own with minimal help from other countries. Of course, winning over a country’s people will require a lot more work than merely deploying more troops. It would mean constructing schools, navigating a diplomatic minefield, and learning from those who have already successfully managed to acheive  substantial results in Afghanistan.

Ironically, the results of such a strategy are in front of us: the Taliban is already pursuing a similar approach, and have consistently been gaining the trust of the Iraqi citizens. We will have to work fast to undo the damage; we have already seen what American unpopularity can do in the Vietnam War.

We have focused our resources on expanding brute force for too long with minimal results. We cannot afford to spend 30 billion dollars on a strategy that doesn’t work. President Obama should seriously reconsider sending out 30 thousand more troops when 300 diplomats might work better.