A generally pro-Obama think tank's report thinks that despair is the wrong way to approach Afghanistan:
The report disputes critics who consider the Afghan war a “lost cause,” but acknowledges that the U.S. mission has achieved only partial results and has been plagued by Afghan corruption, a fickle ally in Pakistan and a resilient enemy in the Taliban.
The United States “has wound up with a reasonable ‘Plan B’ for achieving its core objective of preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” it says. “This plan is not guaranteed to work, of course.”
Despite ongoing challenges, the report says that reasonable success can be achieved if progress continues in building a proficient Afghan military.
As long as we don't get caught up in declaring the tide of war as receding--the way we did in Iraq--we can defend what we've achieved.
Come on, my goals for Afghanistan were never that great:
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).
Hopefully our military surge recedes by the end of 2011 and we can get down to a single combat brigade plus air power that function as a fire brigade and a hammer for the central government should a local difficulty exceed Afghan military capabilities.
My timeline was off. One, we had a second surge after I wrote this about the first surge. So it took longer to build up the forces and also takes longer to draw down. And to be fair, our last major offensive was in 2011 with the 2012 Regional Command East offensive cancelled.
Of course, given the worry that even a think tank associated with the Obama administration has about walking away from Afghanistan, this was of course prescient:
Oh, and of course the anti-war side will stop seeing Afghanistan as the "good war." The Left will start advocating defeat there, too.
Afghanistan was easy for a long time because al Qaeda chose to confront us in Iraq. After we beat them in Iraq, al Qaeda shifted back to Afghanistan, which led to our surges there.
Now al Qaeda is stronger in Iraq after we walked away from Iraq prematurely. Iraq has always been more important than Afghanistan. But I'd like to defend a win somewhere these days.
