The National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan is not optimistic:
As President Obama prepares to release a review of American strategy in Afghanistan that will claim progress in the nine-year-old war there, two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.
The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.
The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The findings were described by a number of American officials who read the reports’ executive summaries.
I won't object to the facts they appear to set forth, based on the article. But I will object to the conclusions being drawn by the Left, also from the article, which will try to get us to retreat from a war that they say can't be won. The outlook is simply not "grim" in Afghanistan, as CBS asserts.
We do have a path to an imperfect path to victory, as both articles note (this is from the first one):
American commanders say their plan in the next few years is to kill large numbers of insurgents in the border region — the military refers to it as “degrading the Taliban” — and at the same time build up the Afghan National Army to the point that the Afghans can at least contain an insurgency still supported by Pakistan. (American officials say Pakistan supports the insurgents as a proxy force in Afghanistan, preparing for the day the Americans leave.)
“That is not the optimal solution, obviously,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who led a White House review of Afghan strategy last year that resulted in Mr. Obama sending the additional forces. “But we have to deal with the world we have, not the world we’d like. We can’t make Pakistan stop being naughty.”
None of this is shocking if you've paid attention the last several years. I set out an outline two years ago that I think holds up pretty well to what we have actually done (with my notable failure to anticipate that our drone strikes would accelerate; and too much optimism in how fast we could knock down the Taliban with our troops).
The intelligence estimates report problems that we've always known. To use them to argue for retreat without considering how we can win within the limits that the problems currently imposed on us would be a severe mistake.
Remember, it is ridiculous to argue that the Afghanistan Taliban are not a problem and that we can risk the Taliban retaking power because supposedly the Taliban are only a local jihadi force with no interest in attacking us. It is folly to argue we can safely ignore Afghanistan in order to pursue Osama bin Laden presumably hiding somewhere in Pakistan. Eleven years ago, in Foreign Affairs (Nov.-Dec. 1999), Ahmed Rashid warned:
As political fragmentation, economic meltdown, ethnic and sectarian warfare, and Islamic fundamentalism tighten their grip on Pakistan and much of the rest of the region, the dangerous behavior of Afghanistan's new leaders is no longer a local affair. ...Those new leaders hosted bin Laden who attacked us on 9/11, needless to say. We're keeping them busy now, but with local power, their sights will rise again to bigger objectives if we turn away from the fight to defeat them, notwithstanding the challenge of the Black Sheep Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Washington's sole response so far has been its single-minded obsession with bringing to justice the Saudi-born terrorist Usama bin Ladin--hardly a comprehensive policy for dealing with this increasingly volatile part of the world.
Remember, Pakistan is clearly a flawed ally that plays both sides of the fight. But on balance they help us in the war. If you think this is false, think about how we could fight the war if Pakistan switched to completely support the Taliban and stopped helping us at all. That's the reality of the Pakistan he have and not the Pakistan we'd like.
Remember, Afghanistan (and Iraq, too) are not wars--they are campaigns in a bigger war to defeat Islamo-fascism and create the world we'd like.
That's the world we have right now.
UPDATE: Same facts. More understanding of war. Less gloom.
UPDATE: More sense: It is important to win so suck it up, endure enemy efforts to win, fight to win, and fight long enough to win.
UPDATE: Mullen thinks Pakistan can do enough to shut down the sanctuaries in Pakistan:
A day after President Barack Obama released a review of the U.S. war strategy, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Kabul that fixing the problem is critical to making progress in the war. But he said he's encouraged by what Pakistan has already done to go after insurgents on its side of the border.
"I certainly think it is very possible that the Pakistani military will achieve the goal," he said.
They've done some heavy lifting already and success on our side of the border will encourage Pakistan to get with the program.
And on the wider war, we've managed to start the ink spot strategy of helping Islam purge itself of radicals here at home:
After 2001, Moslems in the West, particularly the United States, knew that they were responsible for the terrorist activity of Moslems they worshiped together with. They could usually recognize another migrant who might be up to something dangerous. Action could be taken to stop it, or drive the troublemaker away (or turn him in to the cops). But the new converts were harder to read. Thus the growing tendency to scrutinize those seeking instruction to become a convert.
Even before September 11, 2001, al Qaeda warned its agents to not hang out with American Moslems, who were known to turn in suspected radicals. Now American Moslems are letting the FBI know about suspicious new guys seeking to convert. That has led to the arrest of some active terrorists.
As I've written before, just seeing Moslem women driving mini vans around town while wearing a head covering is a weapon aimed at the heart of the radical jihadi ideology. Islam provides fertile ground for jihadis, but Islam itself doesn't need to be our enemy. Indeed, it is counter-productive since many Moslems want help in purging the fanatics from their ranks. Help Islam become the religion of peace in practice, and we will be closer to having the world we want.
