America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Kristol doesn't think much of the withdrawal option:
But would this succeed in preventing the re-establishment of terror bases? This “comprehensively revised policy” doesn't sound much more engaged than U.S. Afghan policy in the 1990s. Will would have to explain why it would work better this time--or why the price of failure wouldn’t be higher than the price of continuing to prosecute the war with a revised counterinsugency strategy of the sort Gen. Stanley McChrystal has suggested.
And he notes as I have noted through two wars now, that not all troops have to be American to defeat an insurgency or terrorism campaign. (Just how did Sri Lanka defeat the Tamils, for one notable recent example, if that is the case?)
He also indicates that if Afghanistan is really the good war, then the time we've taken to win shouldn't be the stumbling block to winning.
The right question (and one I've asked since last year when it became clear we'd escalate) is what is our objective and what do we need to do to achieve that objective? I don't think that keeping Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary for al Qaeda requires us to pacify and modernize the entire country.
Yet we can't abandon Afghanistan as we did after helping drive the Soviets out. As Kristol explains, Afghanistan is as much a rear area for the Pakistan Taliban as Pakistan is for the Afghan Taliban. If we let Afghanistan serve as a rear area for the Taliban of Pakistan by relying on cruise missiles (and face it, special forces won't be plopped down in the middle of nowhere with no US conventional forces around for intelligence and muscle), Pakistan will lose what bare determination to defeat their own Taliban that they are displaying this year.
But our military mission remains mysterious in regard to our stated goal of keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. Yet more troops will likely pour into remote and landlocked Afghanistan to pursue the Iraq-proven counter-insurgency:
On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the Pentagon , the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO . Although the assessment didn't include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan .
Never mind the differences between the two places, we'll protect the population.
And American public resolve to fight is waning. And Congress will no doubt revolt next year over the war. And then we'll have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan relying on the will of President Obama to achieve victory when I still have no idea how our military achieves that victory.
The cost will exceed Iraq's war costs, even with fewer troops, since supplying one soldier in Afghanistan costs much more than supplying one in Iraq did. Everything has to be shipped into Afghanistan, which has little infrastructure to handle that flow of supplies.
Once, the anti-war side complained that we went into Iraq without proper planning. But at least we had an objective--overthrow Saddam and put a democratic government in place. We did that. It took longer and it was a higher price than I certainly expected, but we did it.
The anti-war side will have a target rich environment for the Afghan escalation. No plan and no clear objective--yet the troops are fighting and dying and waiting for more troops.
I'd like to offer my opinion on whether we can win in Afghanistan but I can't. I don't know what we fight for. The document the administration put out early on is just too vague for me to know what it means for our military strategy even if it generally sounds pretty reasonable--as long as speaking of supporting "Afghanistan" doesn't mean trying to build a strong central government but just "Afghanistan" collectively as a loose confederaton of provincial tribal-based governments and a weak central government able to resist jihadi influence.
I know that as long as we're willing to pay the blood and treasure to fight, our troops will continue to beat our enemies on the battlefield. But that's not war. That's just organized violence. And I know that the far Left will bail fast on that path. And with the casualties we'll likely endure with the escalation, more Americans will follow.
Adding troops to Afghanistan--even at the risk of fighting at the end of a shaky supply line--can be a help as long as it is for an achievable goal that in part buys time for the Afghans to be built up to take over the fight by atomizing the enemy inside Afghanistan and reducing the flow of men and supplies into Afghanistan. And that doesn't include bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century--the 18th century will do just fine.
Then we need to reduce our forces to make emergency air supply for the whole force feasible, with enough force present to bolster the Afghans in securing their confederation and keep it al Qaeda free.
The troops are rolling and fighting. Shouldn't we hurry up our debate here about what we want them to achieve?
