The boss writes at the Washington Post's Post Partisan blog:
George Will is dismayed by American casualties in Afghanistan, unhappy about the length of our effort there, dismissive of the contributions of our NATO allies, contemptuous of the Afghan central government, and struck by the country's backwardness.
I share many of these sentiments. But they are sentiments. It would be better to base a major change in our national security strategy on arguments--especially if you're advocating a change from a policy that's been supported for eight years by a bipartisan consensus, and that involves the area that was the staging ground for Sept. 11.
Will does seem to allow that we have a core national interest in Afghanistan--"to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases" there. He then makes a recommendation that would presumably achieve that goal--that "forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan."
But would this succeed in preventing the re-establishment of terror bases? This "comprehensively revised policy" doesn't sound much more engaged than U.S. Afghan policy in the 1990s. Will would have to explain why it would work better this time--or why the price of failure wouldn't be higher than the price of continuing to prosecute the war with a revised counterinsugency strategy of the sort Gen. Stanley McChrystal has suggested.
