Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009

Hard decisions loom ahead in Afghanistan

There are times when less is more and more is the wrong answer.

There are a lot of theories and proposals flying around as President Barack Obama and his national security advisers debate what our military and civilian arms of the government can do with the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander on the ground, wants an additional 40,000 to 45,000 American troops thrown into the fight to reinforce the 68,000 in country by late November.

Without those reinforcements — even though no one knows where we would get them in a military already stretched paper-thin and with troops as badly worn and tired by war as their equipment — the general says our long and costly effort in that distant tribal land cannot possibly succeed.

Interestingly, McChrystal offers no prediction of success or anything remotely resembling success if he does get the additional troops that would, in any event, not get to the battlefield until late next year in any case.

Sure as death and taxes, though, I would expect the general to be back early next spring calling urgently for yet an additional 50,000 American troops to be thrown into the battle. That would bring our troop strength to nearly 160,000 — more than the late Soviet Union threw into their lost war in Afghanistan.

Our current objectives in Afghanistan, according to McChrystal’s report to his bosses, include:

“(U.S. and NATO forces) in support of the Afghan Government conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency, support the growth … of the Afghan National Security Forces and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development, in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population.”

Oh yes. The primary benefit of success in Afghanistan would be to prevent a Taliban return to power, and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida immediately returning to their old sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

Let’s review the bidding now.

First, we are going to prop up the totally corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai, which is largely sustained by the money it siphons off American aid projects and the money earned from narco-trafficking.

Next we are going to double or triple the size of the Afghan Army and National Police and make them a force that protects the people instead of robbing them; a force capable of meeting and defeating the Taliban insurgents who are already the government in more than half of the country.

Finally, we will pump in billions of dollars — hoping against hope that somehow the kleptocratic government we installed will stop stealing 60 cents of every dollar we send — to build a happy, fair, industrious nation in a place where none of those things has ever existed in 2,000 years of recorded history.

And one more thing: There are no al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan today, so far as we know. Our strategic assumption is that they will return if the Taliban win this war, and thus pose an even greater threat to the United States than they do from their current locations in the Pakistan border areas, Somalia, a Hong Kong hotel room, Hamburg and Detroit.

Our modest suggestion, among so many others, is that President Obama tell Gen. McChrystal that our strategy has changed and he isn’t going to need all those additional troops and additional dollars. That, in fact, he needs to begin planning a slow but steady drawdown from 68,000 Americans to a more sustainable and useful 15,000.

The choices before the president are hard ones.

We can march ahead with an endless war we can’t afford in pursuit of objectives we can’t possibly achieve. Or we can lower our sights and our investment in lives and national treasure in pursuit of more modest objectives over the long term.

There is no point in doubling down if you hold a losing hand.

Joseph L. Galloway, military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, TX 78340.