So last night, President Obama revealed the worst-kept secret in the world: The United States will be increasing its troop presence in Afghanistan by a margin of 30,000 additional troops. Unless you were delusionally hopeful that we would be leaving Afghanistan sometime next year, or just haven’t listened to any news source whatsoever in the last month and a half, this should have come as no surprise. Nor indeed should we have been surprised by the immediate nay-saying that struck this strategy all-around. On the one hand, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) vowed to vote against the funding of this escalation. (In fairness, Senator Feingold we could expect no less from you, this is why you’re in the Senate, not the White House.) On the other, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had no problem with the troop increase, only with the 18-month timetable for their withdrawal after deployment. (Escalation, it seems is just fine, so long as it is open-ended in nature.)
All snark aside, I recognize the merits in both Senator Feingold and Senator McCain’s arguments. On the one hand, there is the question as to whether or not any more troops can salvage anything from the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. On the other hand, there is the equally problematic question as to whether or not timetables do actually encourage one’s foes to “lay low” and wait for the eventual pullout. Of course, all of this is highly dependent on the ability to build up a sufficient native military force in the designated time frame, which, in light of the Afghan Governments noted allergy to deadlines, is a dubious hope at best.
In the end we are faced with a devil’s bargain. On the one hand, to embrace a full pullout, as Senator Feingold would seem to suggest, leaves more than Hamid Karzai and his corrupt regime twisting in the wind. Indeed, it stands to reason that in the face of a resurgent Taliban, the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan would suffer the most. But in retrospect, we haven’t been able to fully protect the rights of Afghan women even with the troops we currently have on the ground, so one wonders if this isn’t already a lost cause. On the other hand, from the perspective of grand strategy,a “final throw of the dice” would seem to be in order for Afghanistan, a war that suffered from considerable neglect while our nation blundered through our recent, ongoing misadventure in Iraq.
Yet wars are far more than grand strategy, on the most personal, visceral level, wars are death. They are American men and women coming home in flag-draped coffins to grieving loved ones and a nation already weary of war, after facing such scenes for more than a decade. For members of my parent’s generation, this situation is all-too-familiar, a nation-building adventure, half way across the planet in hostile territory goes ill, and more troops have to be sent off in search of ephemeral victory. The only difference this time is that this army is one of professionals, not draftees. The question is, after nearly nine years of war in Afghanistan, are we willing to pay what will inevitably be a rising butcher’s bill for uncertain returns?
Finally there is the question of victory. In a sense nauseatingly familiar to our other nation-building disasters throughout this past Century, clear-cut criteria for victory in Afghanistan seem sadly lacking. Those expecting western-style Democracy for the Afghans may wait until Christ comes, the 12th Imam reveals himself, or Cthulthu rises from Ry’leh to devour mankind, neither the institutions, nor the desire is there. Nor is the somewhat lesser goal of the creation of a “stable” Afghanistan all that much more realistic. This is a state that has always been a collection of squabbling nations, petty warlords and a relatively weak central authority, given more lip-service and homage than actual obedience by the local powers that be. The idea that millennia of such customs can simply be overridden by force and that a centralized state, even one organized along authoritarian lines, can be imposed on Afghanistan, seems unlikely. Hence the question is not “how do we win in Afghanistan”, but “at what stage in the conflict do we pull out?” President Obama, after much deliberation, has decided to stay in at least one more round. Despite my own misgivings, here’s hoping that his gamble pays off in dividends greater than the outlay of blood and treasure needed to finance it.