Tuesday's Wall Street Journal features a very important piece on Afghanistan by Kim and Fred Kagan. The Kagans show how irresponsible it would be for the president to announce the withdrawal of a substantial number of troops in July, as some political advisers in the White House are advocating. They also point out how irresponsible it would be to establish a "bookend" of announcing the planned withdrawal of all the surge troops in 2012. The surge over the last year and a half has created the conditions for success in Afghanistan. The Kagans explain that if we see the fight through in the south and the east for the next two years, a real drawdown will then be possible in 2013, consistent with the NATO goal of transferring security control to the Afghans in 2014.
It would be terrible, indeed shocking, if President Obama undercut all the efforts and sacrifices of the last year, efforts and sacrifices carried out pursuant to his orders, by choosing now to begin to cut and run — especially since the decision to cut and run would be driven entirely by domestic political considerations.
I might add, for what it's worth, that I don't think the White House operatives even get the political considerations right: surely the president will be better off next year to be succeeding in Afghanistan with 95,000 troops, even if the war remains somewhat difficult and unpopular, than to be failing with 65,000 troops, having invited failure by ignoring the recommendations of his generals in the summer of 2011?
In any case, the president's decision in the next few weeks could mean the difference between a good chance of success and the likelihood of defeat — a dishonorable and unnecessary defeat — in Afghanistan.
"The fight is approaching its peak, progress remains fragile and under assault, and we need every soldier we have — U.S., coalition and Afghan — to maintain momentum. The risks of a small withdrawal (say, 5,000 troops) are probably manageable. But any such withdrawal would be driven by politics rather than strategy.
Progress in the fight is undeniable. Coalition forces have driven the Taliban from their major safe havens in southern Afghanistan and are continuing to press into lesser enemy strongholds. The Taliban have launched operations to retake the ground they have lost, but so far to no avail....
There is every reason to believe that coalition forces and their increasingly effective Afghan partners can hold the gains in the south through this fighting season (that is, until November). This would allow them to create meaningful security zones around all of the major population centers in the south for the first time since 2001, but only if they have the resources and the time to do it....
A successful fighting season this year would permit decisive operations in eastern Afghanistan in 2012....This timeline would also likely permit the beginning of substantial reductions in forces in 2013, assuming that progress continues in the south as we defeat enemy counterattacks in the east....
If Mr. Obama announces the withdrawal of all surge forces from Afghanistan in 2012, the war will likely be lost. Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other global terrorist groups will almost certainly re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan."
UPDATE: Today's Washington Post reports that "The number of Americans who say the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting has increased for the first time since President Obama announced at the end of 2009 that he would boost troop levels, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The finding may give Obama slightly more political breathing room as he decides how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in July, the deadline he set 18 months ago to begin bringing home the additional U.S. forces."
Harvard Law School professor William Stuntz passed away on Monday at the age of 52. He was widely admired by faculty and students, but readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD would know him better as an author of essays.
The New York Times doesn't come right out and say the surge is working--actually a Taliban commander tells the Times that the surge is working in Kandahar:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, famously said in 2007 that “in Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” That strategic view was supposed to change when Barack Obama was elected president. It was candidate Obama, after all, who argued that the war in Iraq was the wrong war to be fighting, and a significant distraction from the far more important conflict in Afghanistan.
President Obama sure did cover a lot of ground last week in his address to the nation announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq. At times the speech resembled one of those late-night, beer-fueled freshman dorm bull sessions, where you start off discussing Led Zeppelin and end up ten hours later debating the ontological principle.
Though he'll regretably be remembered most for his turn in Rolling Stone, we should not forget Gen. Stanley McChrystal's contributions to his country, the Army, and the conflict in Afghanistan.
At McChrystal's Fort McNair retirement ceremony Friday, Robert Gates said of the general, "Over the past decade, arguably no single American has inflicted more fear, more loss of freedom and more loss of life on our country's most vicious and violent enemies than Stan McChrystal."
It was only a few short years ago when the war in Iraq was perceived as a lost cause and an unmitigated disaster. Tides of pessimism washed over our body politic, well reflected in books like Thomas Ricks’s Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003-2005.
In light of Erin Sheley's appreciation of William Stuntz in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, readers might be interested in the (if I may say so, terrific) articles Stuntz has published in this magazine. They all have intrinsic merit, but the first two were also of some historic importance—they were passed around at the White House, were read (we’re told) by President Bush, and helped make the case for the surge in Iraq.
I simply do not believe that we can establish a lasting westernized democracy in a society that has been based on tribal cultural ties for centuries. Furthermore, the mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, as well as the porous and uncontrolled border region with Northern Pakistan, makes control of this area exceedingly difficult. Iraq's terrain and culture were and are much more suited to these types of operations. I still believe that there was much strategic value to establishing a friendly Iraqi government in a critical region of the world that includes Iran, Syria, Israel, and others. While I acknowledge the significance of Pakistan’s possession of, by some estimates, as many as 100 nuclear weapons, I just don't believe that control of Afghanistan has the same strategic value.
I'm hoping to speak to Campbell later today and will report back then.
