What to do in Afghanistan

With President Obama‘s decision to rule out troop reductions in Afghanistan (see our post), the New York Times is reporting that the president’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakiston.  Commentators from across the political spectrum are arguing about the proper course. 

Conservative voices are making the case that the president should back the plans of General McChrystal and commit more troops to the country.  Reps. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) have written an open letter demanding the president take action and not compromise on his commitment to winning the war.  The Washington Times warns that Afghanistan is burning during the president’s indecision, urging that he exchanges his copy of a new McGeorge Bundy biography for “A Better War” to steel his resolve.  Peter Beinart argues that this is a winnable conflict because the Afghans, unlike the Vietnamese, share a unique national identity and do not hold their Taliban aggressors up as liberators. The Financial Times believes that Obama needs to commit more forces because he made this conflict his own, but the paper sees this as the last time he will make a gamble like this in Afghanistan.

Contrasting these calls, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first elected president in Iran after the 1979 revolution, claims that what is needed in Afghanistan is a new interpretation of Islam that embraces the “Tawhid” unity of existence, rejects the submission to authority through force, and focuses first on women’s rights.  Patrick Cockburn argues that the conflict will not end in a year and so Obama has time to decide on the right course of action. In the meantime, he should support stability through increases in military and police salaries.  Sam Sedaei believes the U.S. has a moral responsibility to stay the course in Afghanistan because we allowed the Taliban to rise and we must prevent the violence the inevitably follow a U.S. withdrawal.  While James Campion sees both the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts as unwinnable quagmires from which the U.S. must pull out immediately.  Jason Zengerle, playing off of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s article, makes the point that the philosophy of counterinsurgency, seated in the idea of winning hearts and minds, is attractive to people generally opposed to military action.  Jon Taplin argues that the U.S. has failed in Afghanistan because we have lost our understanding of modern conflict, trading social advances to become the “world’s unpaid cop.”

Looking at the American administration, David Ignatius attempts to define Obama’s doctrine for international engagement based on “rights and responsibilities”, contending that the U.S. has taken on an obligation to rebuild Afghanistan that the president cannot break.  Norman Kurz examines Vice President Biden’s souring relationship with President Hamid Karzai and asks whether the U.S. “put the cart before the horse” in first seeking to establish a strong presidential figure.

Lastly, Matthew Yglesias writes a piece suggesting that the Western conception that Afghanistan’s equilibrium state is a stable, centralized government may be misplaced. In fact, Afghanistan tends to ”be run by rival gangs of warlords configured in a complicated panorama of shifting alliances. Any “winning” coalition is likely to collapse under the weight of victory.