We need to stay until the Afghan Army is capable of doing its own policing. Just keep doing what we’re doing. Keep the Talibs at the margins. Keep training Afghan units. Keep teaming up with them in the field until they get it.
Essentially, its the same strategy that worked in Iraq. It will take longer, because there is less to work with. No point in getting in a big hurry.
This part of Asia is bandit country; it will always be bandit country. There will always have to be some kind of militarized police force up in the hills chasing bandits. We “won” when we chased the bandits into the hills. Now we have to do the day to day maintenance work of keeping them there, and building the force that will keep them there when we’ve gone on to the next crisis.
Excellent summary.
Indeed our problem in Afghanistan is NOT that “we’re locked in an unwinnable war”. We’re locked into unwinnable ROE.
Our troops may not shoot back if there is a ghost of a chance of a civilian being killed.
Our troops find it impossible to get arty or air support whenever there’s a ghost of a chance of a civilian being killed.
And the enemy are dressed as civilians, and routinely use real non-combatants as human shields.
I don’t think FReepers will have any trouble spotting the problem here.
There is more good sense about Afghanistan in this thread than in anything that is likely to emerge from the National Security Council.
I'll add my two bits.
I agree with agere_contra's view that we shouldn't be looking for another Iraq. In Afghanistan, that's neither feasible nor necessary. "Sorta O.K." is a good way to describe it -- a semi-liberalized center of the country, with a bearable level of corruption, the countryside with a moderate level of banditry -- and a domestic security force capable of limiting both. All in all, that would be a modest -- and meaningful -- step forward for the country.
But there should be another equally strategic objective: ruthlessly exterminate the Taliban. Presently, we're fighting a disparate collection of factions and bandits. Fact is, while they might think they've got a beef against us, we don't really have a beef against them.
It is said that Afghan tribesmen can't be bought; but they can be rented.
Accordingly, I'd favor a plan that recruited (i.e., paid) the bandits to help us root out and ruthlessly exterminate the Taliban -- the guys we were originally after when he entered Afghanistan.
The benefit of such a policy would be that everybody would then be aware of what happens to crazies who dare to attack us. We will come halfway around the world to kill every one of them.
It makes a powerful point.
The MSM has a short memory. Iraq was in dire straits, until the surge. After than, when the Iraqi people realized we weren't going to pull out, and abandon them to the terrorists, they started helping our military root out the bad guys. Then they started working harder to improve themselves and their neighborhoods, knowing that they would be less vulnerable to those same bad guys.
Afghanistan was in a lull, because most of the attention was on Iraq. Those bad guys who were run out of Iraq, went to Afghanistan, and so the violence is up there. If we do a surge in Afghanistan, I believe the Afghani people will do as the Iraqis did.
At this point, especially with this feckless President of ours, why would they stick their necks out to try to make the country a better place? They have no idea whether we're going to stay or go, and they don't want to put their families in danger if they can't count on us as back-up.