General Stanley McChrystal says the 21,000 additional troops dispatched to Afghanistan this year are not enough. He wants 40,000 more. President Barack Obama is conducting an overall review of Afghan policy. He wants clarification on what the mission is, what victory would look like, what the prospects truly are and what level of forces might be needed to accomplish whatever the mission is finally determined to be. Congress will shortly vote on another funding bill for Afghanistan. They are expected to pass it even though they are not sure how many troops they are funding nor what the mission or exit strategy might be. To say we appear confused about Afghanistan is an understatement. It's time for some clear thinking.
Let us consider the mission. What are we trying to accomplish there? Let's zero in on what is essential, and that is the defeat of the al Qaeda organization. Though there are many other considerations that seem to have gotten in the way and clouded the issue, that is the only plausible reason for us to be there. They are the organization that attacked us on 9/11, has spread mayhem on numerous other peoples around the world since and remain unalterably our implacable enemies.
No other mission there is worth more years, lives and resources. Whether the corrupt Karzai regime or one of the other figures or warlords runs Kabul is of little long term difference to us. The "no cut and run" argument is simply bullheaded, chest-thumping foolishness. Such thinking kept us in Vietnam five years and 35,000 American deaths longer than necessary, to no purpose. Even the prevention of a Taliban reinstatement is not necessarily a real concern of ours. As repugnant as they are with their subordination of women and close-minded intolerance as evidenced by their destruction of the Buddhist relics, they have never come after us outside their country. Humanitarian relief? Give me a break. To commit 60,000 and now a proposed 100,000 troops at $50-$100 billion a year for another eight or ten years so that we can invest $5 billion a year in development aid to a backward foreign country in civil war is beyond lunacy.
What is key to understand is whether they would invite or permit al Qaeda back into Afghanistan should we leave and the Taliban retake control. That is what our intelligence needs to discern. In Iraq, the resistance, including especially al Qaeda elements that entered Iraq after our invasion there, flourished as long as the Sunni tribes tolerated them and allowed them to operate in their tribal areas. Once the locals turned on them for their vicious excesses, their defeat was rapid and complete. In Afghanistan, which is much more cohesively tribal and localized than Iraq, this would be even more strongly the case.
Adding to this is the presence of nearby Pakistan. It is clear that al Qaeda is principally based across the border in Pakistan now. If the Pakistanis continue to prove reluctant or unable to eradicate al Qaeda on their side of the border (and it has been eight years, after all) it makes little difference what we do in Afghanistan. They will simply continue to base wherever they can operate. We can make things annoying for them by launching the occasional Predator strike against what we think is one of their safe houses, but that kind of campaign can never eliminate an entire movement, and to the extent we inevitably get some attacks wrong and kill innocents we merely play into their hands.
So it comes back to the Taliban's intentions. Have they, like the Iraqi resistance, come to the view that al Qaeda is a threat to their own power and a destabilizing factor that will bring undue Western wrath down on them if they are associated together? If so, we can begin leaving Afghanistan as soon as we can make the arrangements. If they have not, perhaps it is time to quietly begin letting them know our views on this, and quietly spreading some money around as we did to get the "Sunni awakening" underway in Iraq. Otherwise, we may be stuck in Afghanistan for a very, very long time in a classic exercise in futility.
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