Must Read

As Obama prepares to deploy more troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, a great article on US interests in Afghanistan and the strategy of separating the Taliban from Al Queda.

Even so, in nearly eight years of war, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have maintained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan. The United States has imposed attrition on al Qaeda, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it. In the process, the United States used one of al Qaeda’s operational principles against it. To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, al Qaeda has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on al Qaeda, but it also makes it impossible for al Qaeda to replace its losses. Thus, in a long war of attrition, every loss imposed on al Qaeda has been irreplaceable, and over time, al Qaeda prime declined dramatically in effectiveness — meaning it has been years since it has carried out an effective operation.

The situation was very different with the Taliban. The Taliban, it is essential to recall, won the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal despite Russian and Iranian support for its opponents. That means the Taliban have a great deal of support and a strong infrastructure, and, above all, they are resilient. After the group withdrew from Afghanistan’s cities and lost formal power post-9/11, it still retained a great deal of informal influence — if not control — over large regions of Afghanistan and in areas across the border in Pakistan. Over the years since the U.S. invasion, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and increased their operations in Afghanistan. And the conflict with the Taliban has now become a conventional guerrilla war.

The article argues we cannot beat the Taliban in Afghanistan because they enjoy the support of the people (and funds due to poppy cultivation).

I would add that while the Taliban are awful folks, they did not attack the US, have not attacked their neighbors and do not in-and-of-themselves pose a threat to the outside world. We fight them to the extent they protect and harbor Al Queda. To justify sending more troops to Afghanistan, Obama should explain why the current strategy isn't working and why more troops will improve the current strategy.

It seems foolish of the press and the rest of America to be willing to give Obama carte blanche on this issue when he could be sending American troops into a death trap. At least with Bush's surge, there was a huge debate that helped sharpen the argument in favor of the surge - reasons that ultimately proved correct. It's not clear to me anymore the strategy is Afghanistan is failing. What are the goals in Afghanistan? Can they be achieved? Framed as it is in the above paragraph, it's not at all clear we aren't winning a war of attrition against Al Queda central.