... US strategy - protecting the population - is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined US involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
The US strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that US forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country - "control" is an elastic concept - and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." ...
Is the War in Afghanistan Worth Fighting? - Washington Post opinions.
On Monday the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan called for a new strategy to fight the Taliban. The Post asked experts whether the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. Below are contributions from John Nagl, Andrew J. Bacevich, Erin M. Simpson, Thomas H. Johnson and Danielle Pletka.
Comments
cross posting a comment i made elsewhere:
I am going to stick my neck out and make some predictions (as an amateur with nothing to lose):
1. Af-pak is a cash cow for the Pak army, the insurgents, the afghan govt and assorted warlords. They have been in this trade so long, they are really really good at it. They will keep the temperature warm enough to keep things flowing, but not hot enough to scald. There is also a lot of US prestige and credibility at stake (such things do exist). Then there is the bureaucratic inertia of the US establishment. Maybe we should factor in some actual corruption (in the sense of US officers whose direct financial interests are tied with this policy). Finally, India and China and Russia and Iran do NOT want a jihadi takeover of Afghanistan, but are OK with seeing the US bleed a little in the process (well, maybe not India, not the bleeding part; they are probably the closest thing to a genuine ally in this endeavor, but they are also the most rickety state on that list, so they count for less). SO, the prediction is that all these forces will conspire (sometimes literally, mostly indirectly) to keep the US in Afghanistan doing recognizably similar things to what it is doing right now, for at least 2 more years.
2. The really mad cow jihadis are enough of a headache for pakistan that they will need to be fought. The army will try to convince some to go to Kashmir and others to join the "good taliban" (aka Haqqani network??) but there are true believers in that party and they are the wild card. They can upset the best laid plans of mice and men. 0ne really big attack in India or the US and all bets are off. No prediction.
3. I think the US is not impossibly far from a workable afghan govt but if the current Karzai setup is the best they can do, then it doesnt look like it will work. On the other hand, maybe the embassy is not clueless and they have a cunning plan. Prediction: I am unable to decide so I tossed a coin (literally) and came up with this: Miracle Max will deliver. The US will stabilize a near-workable Afghan govt enough to make a legitimate drawdown in 5 years (not a Saigon embassy helicopter scene). A jihadist insurgency will continue, just as it does in Iraq, and in time India and china and Pakistan and iran will have more to do with it than the US does, but it wont be a defeat. It will cost a hell of a lot of money and will finance many mansions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, England, and back in the US itself, where blackwater investors will be joined by discerning warlords and Pak army generals (who will buy ranches to escape the disorder back home).
Wishful thinking?
Comments?