I have been meaning to write on Afghanistan for a while and today’s column by David Brooks has finally prompted me to write it. Brooks’ argument is simple. All the military experts are sure we can do this, but they are not sure that President Obama has the the resolve to do it.
They do not think it will be easy or quick. But they do have a bedrock conviction that the Taliban can be stymied and that the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be strengthened. But they do not know if Obama shares this gut conviction or possesses any gut conviction on this subject at all.
The experts I spoke with describe a vacuum at the heart of the war effort — a determination vacuum. And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama’s resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He’s cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.
Nor do the Pakistanis or the Iranians or the Russians know. They are maintaining ties with the Taliban elements that would represent their interests in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.
The determination vacuum affects the debate in this country, too. Every argument about troop levels is really a proxy argument for whether the U.S. should stay or go. The administration is so divided because the fundamental issue of commitment has not been settled.
The commanders may indeed have the convictions, as no doubt the commanders of the past eight years have, and the Soviet commanders before them, and indeed the British commanders before them. The latest US strategy is remarkably similar to the one that the Soviets settled on–protecting the major urban populations–and this is no accident. The major urban population are going to have the least affinity with the Taleban’s religious authoritarianism, and this goal should be more strategically manageable than securing every one of Afghanistan’s 647,000 square kilometres.
Things look quite different from a rural perspective, though. Consider this account of David Rhode while being held captive by the Taleban.
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