Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Huffington Post headline: "Taliban Insurgents Behead 17 Afghans As Punishment For Attending Party, Dancing"

Uzbekistanism

Dov Zakeim, writing in the former Nixon Center's National Interest, warns that if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan too hastily a dangerous civil war might commence between India's and Pakistan's proxies. He writes:

It was precisely such an alignment of forces that led to the Taliban’s triumph in the late 1990s, followed by its sponsorship of al-Qaeda and the trauma of 9/11.

Indeed, [Afghan] President Karzai’s seemingly erratic relations with the United States can best be understood in terms of his concern about the future cohesion of his country once American forces depart. Should anything remotely like this civil-war scenario manifest itself again, America’s decade-long war will have been for naught.

The difference between then and now is that any president would make clear through words and action that the hint of renewed Taliban-al-Qaeda collaboration, or any threat to the homeland emanating from Afghanistan, would be intolerable. As for the regional interests Zakheim mentions, especially the possibility that Pakistan itself, a nuclear power, could fracture, they're obviously important. But before Sept. 11, none would've justified U.S. and NATO intervention in Afghanistan.

To some extent the U.S. deserves to be held accountable for whatever it's done to alter the regional landscape, including by raising hopes in some circles that, having stayed ten years, we might stay 20. But the Obama administration's critics should remember that there was no mystery about the limited and highly focused motive for our intervention. The American people supported the war because the Afghan government was a Sept. 11 conspirator, not because we were concerned about Pakistan, Uzbekistan, or Tajikistan. The president will always be responsible for making sure it doesn't happen again. Polls and common sense make clear he or she will have to do so without having troops on the ground.

Come Home, America

As the AP's Anne Gearan reports, President Obama said yesterday that public support for the Afghanistan war is waning "because we've been there ten years, and people get weary." She continues:

Just as he patterned his troop "surge" in Afghanistan on a successful military strategy in Iraq, now Obama is patterning his withdrawal from Afghanistan on the Iraq template as well.

The flaw in the pattern is that while George W. Bush's Iraq surge is viewed as a success, the increased U.S. commitment that Obama announced in late 2009 isn't. Gearan:

By the time the U.S. forces switched to the advisory role in Iraq, the back of the Sunni insurgency had been broken. The same cannot be said for the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, which causes most of the U.S. casualties and functions as the main enemy even if Obama's preferred opponent is the al-Qaida terror network the Taliban once harbored.

As a candidate, Obama didn't see the vital U.S. interest in Iraq, and he naturally opposed the Bush surge. In Afghanistan, he did see one, so he surged. A for effort? Only if you agree, as I didn't, that the best solution was more troops for stabilization and nation-building instead of using intelligence, special forces, and other covert means to keep Afghanistan from becoming a laboratory for terrorism again. If we had known Sept. 11 was in the offing, the U.S. almost certainly could have neutralized the Taliban and al-Qaeda just based on what we saw from afar. We'll now be a hundred times more vigilant, and especially so Obama, since he knows that any attack emanating from Afghanistan would be blamed on his decision to withdraw.

Friends also tell me that a continued U.S. presence contributes to Pakistan's stability and security. And yet according to the Institute for the Study of War, our policy has been undermined by national security-conscious Pakistani officials who support our enemy the Taliban because they also happen to be Pakistan's anti-India proxies. Who need to be caught in the middle of that chess game?

Three Bad Months, No Easy Choices

The AP sums up the situation following the savage attack on Afghan civilians by a lone U.S. serviceman on Saturday night and Sunday:

Even before the shootings, anti-Americanism was already boiling in Afghanistan over U.S. troops burning Muslim holy books, including Qurans, last month on an American base. The burnings came to light soon after a video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses was posted on the Internet in January.

Now, another wave of anti-foreigner hatred could threaten the entire future of the U.S.-led coalition's mission in Afghanistan. The recent events have not only infuriated Afghanistan's people and leaders, but have also raised doubts among U.S. political figures that the long and costly war is worth the sacrifice in lives and money.

The U.S. has two vital interests in Afghanistan: Preventing its use as a base for terrorist attacks and forestalling the destabilization of Pakistan, a nuclear power that could could provoke a catastrophic war with India. No one should think that there are easy answers for the Obama administration. These monthly PR disasters, culminating in this weekend's despicable, inexplicable attack, suggest that our forces are increasingly wearied by Afghanistan's historic implacable resistance to change and control imposed from without. The incidents have further strengthened and emboldened the Taliban and other regressive forces eager to get back into power and reassert their spirit-killing, women-hating medievalist policies.

If we can't do any more good, then it's time to bring most of our brave volunteers home. But it's vital to remember that Afghanistan isn't the same as Iraq, the war Barack Obama opposed. It began in near-unanimous national consensus. Afghanistan's leaders harbored and encouraged the Sept. 11 murderers. Even Bruce Springsteen supported President Bush's decision to depose them. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, Afghanistan is neither Bush nor Obama's war; it's America's war. Obama is ultimately responsible for the actions of the troops under his command, a burden he no doubt felt acutely when he got the news from Kandahar on Sunday. But as he well knows, he'll also be held responsible for what may happen after we leave, because whenever and however our exit occurs, those two vital U.S. interests will remain.

Back To 1996

The Economist on the Obama administration's newly announced plan to be home from Afghanistan in 2013:

Accelerating the pace of the transition and cutting the numbers of the Afghan forces inevitably risks eroding the real security gains that have been made in the south (particularly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces) since America’s “surge” in 2010. It also places in jeopardy the aim of a concentrated effort to peg back the insurgency in the still-violent east during the next two fighting seasons. Before [Defense secretary Leon] Panetta’s announcement, General [John] Allen’s job looked difficult but doable. Now it just looks difficult.

What makes all this so unfortunate is that there has recently been some progress in coaxing the leadership of the Taliban towards the negotiating table—a tribute of sorts to the potential success of the previous (as it must now be regarded) transition plan. However, a secret NATO report, leaked this week, called “The State of the Taliban”, based on interrogations with more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees, painted a picture of an insurgency that is resilient and likely to remain so for as long as Pakistan believes it is in its strategic interests to give it material and moral support. The confidence undoubtedly owed something to the bravado of some of the interviewees. The Taliban’s senior leadership, better informed, may well be less optimistic about their prospects—although most Afghans yearn for peace, few want to see the return of the Taliban to Kabul. But Mr Panetta’s words, intended primarily to pander to opinion at home, can only have given them encouragement and stiffened their resolve.

So 2,000 U.S. deaths (so far), and the Taliban, who live to assassinate the spirits of girls and women, will be back in power? The mind boggles.

Pauline Faultline

In the middle of the first century, within about 20 years of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great apostle Paul of Tarsus wrote these words to a community of Christians living in Rome [Rom. 12:14-21, NRSV]:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I remember how overcome by evil I felt that morning, and those weeks, and all those months. Almost all of us remember. The smoke and fire. The faces of the missing, lost, and fallen. The anxiety about what might come next. Many people felt a parchedness of the spirit, even the temptation to perceive God’s silence, indifference, or absence.

Then there was the rage. Do you remember feeling the rage?

Imagine St. Paul coming to town in the weeks after Sept. 11, preaching his bold sermons about blessing those who persecute us. A considerable number would have stood up in church and assured Paul that that vengeance wouldn’t be God’s anywhere near as soon as it would be ours.

If we feel more secure on this anniversary than we did five years ago or nine years ago, it’s because of the methodical, bloody work undertaken by United States military and intelligence services against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They haven’t eliminated the threat, but they’ve reduced it.

We may not call this vengeance. We may call it a just and proportionate response to the evil our enemies have done.

Yet I will tell you – I’m not proud, but it’s true -- that my heart leaped with satisfaction at the news, which came not long after the joy of Easter, that Osama bin Laden had been killed by an American who pulled the trigger in that compound in Abbottabad and shouted, “For God and country.”

We pause to thank all the men and women who protect us – those who by their diligence and valor have purchased the blessing we enjoy this afternoon of remembering and reflecting in freedom and in relative security.

Yet we Christians still have to contend with St. Paul. Pacifism may be your witness. Perhaps it should be mine, but it isn’t.

But how do the faithful do violence?

Can we love and kill our enemies at the same time?

Are we too prone to mistaking our neighbor for our enemy?

What risks do we run by insisting that we are wise and holy enough ever to extend the arm of God’s own justice?

In Rome during the Emperor Claudius’s time, when Paul wrote his letter, observant Jews were arguing with Christians. Jewish Christians were arguing with non-Jewish Christians. Rome was persecuting both Jews and Christians.

Can you imagine what it was like back in the day -- the fear and mutual suspicion, the scapegoating and the name-calling?

As a matter of fact, you probably can – if you remember the aftermath of Sept. 11.

If we are to achieve justice without vengeance – if we are to act as God would have us act so far as it depends on us – then the call of the gospel is to a relentless discipline of humility and forgiveness. Angry and hurt as we may be, whether in our national life or our daily lives, these virtues are supposed be our default settings.

Paul went so far as to imagine an improbable Roman paradise in which Jews, Christians, and pagans set aside their enmity for the sake of their humanity – a paradise he understood would be populated one proud, reluctant soul at a time.

Today, Paul might well promote harmony among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all believers – even harmony between Democrats and Republicans.

My wife, Kathy, and I have attorney friends named Harry Waizer and Karen Walsh. Harry grew up in Brooklyn as an orthodox Jew. Karen grew up Roman Catholic in Westchester County. Many of their family members boycotted their wedding. Their Jewish and Catholic mothers shunned one another.

Harry worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and was burned by jet fuel over most of his body after the terrorists attacked. He was in a coma for weeks. Doctors gave him a 5% chance, but he beat those odds, and he’s back at work.

A few weeks ago, Karen told us about the night in late September 2001 when she arrived at the hospital after a long day of working and caring for their children. Walking down the darkened hall toward Harry’s room, she saw two small figures walking ahead, hand in hand.

If you knew instinctively that the two figures were Harry and Karen’s mothers, then you already have a profound understanding of the glory of which humanity is capable, the fellowship, joy, and peace to which we are all called by our Creator.

Karen said that she worried that if Harry had awakened as his two mothers leaned over him, their worried faces looming side by side, he would have assumed that he was dead.

Harry didn’t have to wait that long. Neither do we.

I made these remarks at an interfaith service at St. John's Episcopal Church and School in Rancho Santa Margarita on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 11.

Afghanistan Heroes, Afghanistan Doubts

Everyone, probably, is reading too much into Richard Hobrooke's last words, which were about ending the war in Afghanistan. And yet Tim Fernholz, a critic of the war, poses the question that's been in the back of my mind since last year, when President Obama began his agonizing reappraisal and then announced a major escalation of the war. Why exactly are we still there?:

There is the fear of giving terrorist groups unchecked space to prepare their next moves, but there are many safe havens and more effective interdictions of these efforts, including rebalanced investments in intelligence and security at home. There is also fear of seeing Pakistan's stability threatened by militant Islamists, but the current strategy doesn't seem to advance that end, especially as elements in the Islamabad government continue to maintain close relations with the Taliban.

Last week, St. John's School hosted some Marines and their families from Camp Pendleton, in northern San Diego county. For seven years, we've had a close relationship with the "3/5," the Darkhorse regiment. They've lost 19 young men since early October, and two just last week, while fighting in the Sangin River valley, which is thick with Taliban insurgents.

During an all-school chapel service, I told our students -- few if any of whom remember Sept. 11 -- that our volunteers are doing better than the British and Russians did fighting in the toughest place in the world. Preaching about war during Advent, in a building built in the holy name of the Prince of Peace? Not that hard, actually. Jesus understood that his people lived in a broken world.

Besides, no one hates war more than these soldiers and their families, who are giving and sacrificing so that every day can be Christmas for the rest of us. I know the president also hates war, and this war. If he insists our interests are at stake, I'm inclined to believe him. Friends have also reminded me of the American tendency to make abundant promises in the course of an intervention only to leave, and leave behind chaos, once exhaustion or a new flirtation with realism overtakes us. And yet when knowledgeable observers say or write that we'll be in Afghanistan "forever," I cringe. Doesn't everyone? After chapel last week, I said a blessing on this baby, Austin, and his twin brother (children #2 and 2.1 of the couple above) and called them future Marines. I prayed to myself that all wars should cease before they get the idea of following in their father's footsteps. If they do it anyway, I'd really prefer they stayed away from Sangin.

In The Beginning, There Was Evil

Paul Pillar is a former high-ranking CIA analyst who believes "the more that religion is infused into public life, the more that mankind suffers." Newly provoked by the State of Kentucky's financial support for a Bible-based theme park and the latest trendsetting comments by Sarah Palin, Pillar, blogging at "The National Interest," writes:

Religious beliefs inherently contain the seeds of intolerance, and thus of conflict and extremism, in ways that most secular belief systems do not. If one believes one's dogma comes from divine will and providence, it can less readily be compromised in good conscience than beliefs of more mundane origin. And those on the other side of a conflict can be seen not just as in opposition but as evil.

Religious belief, because it deals with the unknown and unknowable, must quite literally be a matter of faith. And questions of faith, because they cannot be resolved through public debate, appropriately dwell in the realm of the personal and the private. Once injected into the public realm and more specifically into matters of state, then they become one more form of the tyranny over the mind of man against which the deist Thomas Jefferson swore eternal hostility upon the altar of God.

Well, except for the secular belief systems of communism and National Socialism, which mass-produced intolerance and extremism in a magnitude of which al-Qaeda and the Taliban can only dream. Closer to home, just this week, the secular left seems pretty intolerant of President Obama's idea that rich people should be allowed to keep a little more of their own money so they can goose the economy for the next two years. Their rage is palpable, and while I don't hear them saying those who disagree with them are necessarily evil, I sometimes hear them coming pretty close.

It seems to me that intolerance and extremism are inescapable expressions of human nature, the natural byproducts of pain, fear, pride, or, usually, some mixture of the three. Far from being the root cause of these inclinations, faith practice at its best helps people notice and control them. If instead religion reinforces or encourages what is worst about people, it means that religious leaders and institutions aren't doing their jobs. They've let their own pride and certitude (or fear and pain) prevent them from appreciating the awe and humility with which any sane person approaches the altar of the Almighty.

Around the world, there are all too many such religionists. That religion must do better is an axiom that many of its practitioners readily accept. But the idea that humanity is safe when it ignores the Creator's judgement perished in the death camps and gulag, in Cambodia and Rwanda. Of course that prideful idea has perished many times in the many thousands of years of human history that preceded all those modern savageries, but the idea keeps being resurrected. Even when people betray God by wreaking havoc and pretending it's for his glory instead of their own, there's a certain deviousness involved in saying that the crime was committed by God or even by religion, when the blame really belongs to the human creature acting as it has since before anyone could even mouth God's name.

My my my my Shariah

As a young Afghan couple is stoned to death for eloping in Afghanistan, are we witnessing additional evidence of a clash of civilizations between conservative Islamic values and, well, you know, civilized values, or just a crabby week on the Ulema Council? You decide:

“We’ve seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women,” [a human rights commissioner] said.

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulema Council in Kunduz Province, Mawlawi Abdul Yaqub, interviewed by telephone, said Monday that stoning to death was the appropriate punishment for an illegal sexual relationship, although he declined to give his view on this particular case. An Ulema Council is a body of Islamic clerics with religious authority in a region.

And less than a week earlier, the national Ulema Council brought together 350 religious scholars in a meeting with government religious officials, who issued a joint statement on Aug. 10 calling for more punishment under Shariah law, apparently referring to stoning, amputations and lashings.

Failure to carry out such “Islamic provisions,” the council statement said, was hindering the peace process and encouraging crime.

That's a use of the word "mainstream" that only The Onion could fully appreciate. I sympathize with reporters who have to pretend to write this kind of story with a straight face. "Encouraging crime"? The criminals are the ignorant, woman-hating men who murder and maim in the name of a primitive code designed to bolster their power and egos. Maybe it can't be helped. Maybe we've done the best we can. But leaving Afghanistan, when its women and girls are at the mercy of these savages, would amount to a failure of Vietnam-like proportions.

30,000 More Troops To Afghanistan

Writing at the "Daily Beast," veteran foreign affairs watcher Leslie Gelb says he has the inside track on the Afghanistan moves President Obama will announce on Tuesday. Gen. Stanley McCrystal will get at least 30,000 more U.S. troops with an option for 10,000 more in a year if Obama is satisfied with our progress. Our goal will shift from destroying to "dismantling and degrading" al-Qaeda, with a diplomatic component of working more closely with all the nations in the region so that terrorists will have nowhere to hide and rebuild.

Gelb likes what he hears, though he has one big concern:

It’s unclear at the moment just how tough Obama will be with Pakistan. In effect, Islamabad has provided a safe haven for Afghan Taliban for more than a decade as a hedge against Indian encroachments into Afghanistan. As a result, Pakistan urges the United States to stay and fight in Afghanistan to keep the Indians out, but provides succor to the Taliban to hedge against an American withdrawal. So, the Pakistanis want us to stay in Afghanistan and help the Taliban to kill our troops. It’s hard to see how Obama’s new strategy can work unless Pakistan’s leaders are brought to see for themselves the terrible consequences (the strengthening of the Pakistani Taliban extremists) of pursuing this duplicitous course.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 30

Afghanistan doves have argued that the threat to fundamental U.S. interests there is de minimis because the country's al-Qaeda cohort has shrunk to almost nothing. Au contraire, writes Peter Berger. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are now essentially one in the same:

Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism--and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.

Responds Matthew Yglesias:

To my mind, Bergen’s account of the situation largely begged the question—he says we’re fighting the Taliban because the Taliban is working so closely with al-Qaeda, but arguably the Taliban is working closely with al-Qaeda largely because we’re fighting them.

In general in these foreign occupation scenarios it’s difficult to disentangle cause and effect. If 70,000 Taliban fighters showed up in the United States for any purpose whatsoever, I take it that Americans would all band together to fight them off. But our unity of purpose and anti-Taliban resolve in the face of foreign invasion wouldn’t tell you very much about our post-invasion behavior.

Afghanistan: It's About The Safe-Haven

Pondering our challenge and President Obama's decision in Afghanistan, a blogger is blessed to have a world-class expert as conversation partner. I wrote:

What has changed about our ability to discern terrorist preparations from afar other than (one assumes) our pre-Sept. 11 tentativeness about acting on what we learn?

He replied:

[H]ere's my response to the gravanem of your question: It's about the safe-haven. You like what we're getting out of the tribal areas? Multiply that by twenty-fold.

Your speculative counter-factual is worth pondering, but there won't be a satisfactory answer. You could answer, "yes, if Clinton had acted," we might have prevented 9/11. Not, however, that there is anything we could have done that would have comprehensively eliminated all real and nascent terror camps in Afghanistan. But a focused and devastating strike against Al-Qa'ida may have resulted in preventing their strategic target shift from the "near enemy" (Saudi, Egypt, Jordan) to the choice they were concocting, the "far enemy" (the U.S., the perceived backer of the "near enemy"). Certainly a sustained campaign against Al-Qa'ida could have had a deterrent effect. This is Clinton's most spectacular foreign policy failure.

However, I recommend you read, sometime, Omar Nasiri's Inside the Jihad, a breathtaking (and well-written) account of that cat's experiences in the late 1990s terror camps of Afghanistan, before AQ took organizational control. If you are sympathetic to the notion that AQ has morphed into a franchise-holder, more than a tightly-controlled global organization (along the lines of Marc Sageman's Leaderless Jihad analysis -- nb: truth in argument, Sagemen supports the small-footprint model), than you have to recognize that chasing AQ will not be the only game in town, and the most undermining factor for our ongoing CT fight is safe-haven.

If we could get the Taliban, AQ and the other terrorist groups to sign a credible agreement that they will no longer go after us (Taliban would likely sign), then we could abandon Afghanistan, despite the moral hazard (which, as is pretty clear by now, I find repellent). But, lacking that, ignoring the safe-haven problem is, in many ways, similar to Clinton's greatest failure. Except now we have less of an excuse.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 26

Robert A. Pape writes about Afghanistan in the New York Times. If this proposition is true, then we should begin to bring our troops home:

[T]he United States does not need to station large ground forces in Afghanistan to keep it from being a significant safe haven for Al Qaeda or any other anti-American terrorists. This can be achieved by a strategy that relies on over-the-horizon air, naval and rapidly deployable ground forces, combined with training and equipping local groups to oppose the Taliban. No matter what happens in Afghanistan, the United States is going to maintain a strong air and naval presence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean for many years, and these forces are well suited to attacking terrorist leaders and camps in conjunction with local militias — just as they did against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001.

Our Obligation To Afghanistan

A thoughtful word from a knowledgeable friend. I wrote:

I'm having difficulty discovering my sense of our moral obligation to the Afghan people above and beyond the obligation all wealthy, powerful peoples have toward those who aren't. We're at war because Afghanistan's Taliban government nurtured and empowered a terrorist movement that mounted a devastating attack against the United States. President Bush's 2001 intervention was for our sake, not Afghanistan's. If we had focused more single-mindedly on the Taliban rather than going to war in Iraq as well, the situation might be better today, or perhaps not. Afghans are famously resistant to foreign influence and manipulation.

He replied:

Don't you think we have an additional obligation to countries we used as proxies in our (successful) global conflict against Soviet communism? Particularly when we conducted said proxy war so poorly (allowing Pakistan to dictate the distribution of arms and aid to fundamentalist forces, in order to keep any subsequent Afghan government weak, while the more pro-U.S. forces, which I have reason to believe RN favored, where left in the cold). Particularly when, having won a Soviet defeat that was a major contribution to the collapse of the USSR, we walked away from devastated Afghanistan, where, in the wake of our dishonorable disengagement, the Taliban rose (again, through Pakistan's nefarious influence).

By the way, those two Pakistan references should highlight the canard in that line about "Afghans are famously resistant to foreign influence and manipulation." Except when they aren't, which is, historically, when Afghanistan is weak, which occurs when it is divided, as it is now, awaiting yet another American absquatulation and the inevitable interference of neighbors, which will likely not be in America's interests. Please abandon that tired line about Afghan resistance, which belongs in the rhetorical junkpile of conservative doozies such as "they've been fighting for thousands of years," invariably intoned whenever a foreign conflict gets complicated and the isolationist delusion rises.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 18

It's an Afghanistan trial balloon a day from the Obama administration. Today's is the lead of a comprehensive glimpse of the President's mind, courtesy the AP:

President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more U.S. troops to send to the war based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.

Back in the day, that would've been Henry Kissinger whispering to the reporter in the parking garage. Today, whoever the senior leaker is, it probably means no Afghanistan surge as requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It means that the Vice President, who favors maintaining current troops strengths while relying increasingly on counter-terrorism efforts to track down al-Qaeda and its enablers, may have the edge in the agonized reappraisal now so flamboyantly underway in the White House. It means we're probably coming home from Afghanistan over the next few years.

And it means Obama really is the new Nixon.

In January 1969, President Nixon took office with over half a million Americans fighting in Vietnam. The antiwar movement, an increasingly antiwar Democratic Congress, and voters' growing skepticism about the war convinced him that the U.S. would have to withdraw its troops and that South Vietnam would have to resist communist aggression by itself, albeit with continued U.S. aid and materiel. Interestingly, military historian Bob Sorley's account of how Mr. Nixon and his McChrystal, Gen. Creighton Abrams, prepared South Vietnamese forces to fight on their own is making the rounds at the Pentagon. Its principal teaching for Obama: Withdraw U.S. forces if you must, but train our allies well, and never, never, never let them run out of bullets as the Watergate Congress did South Vietnam in 1973-75.

Although the contention within the agonizing administration don't reflect well on the President Formerly Known As No-Drama, it probably couldn't be helped given the immensity of the policy shift he appears to be contemplating. Ever the wonk, he seemingly doesn't want to be confined by any prior assumption or statement, such as:

We're there, so we have to stay. I said this was the good war during the campaign, so we have to stay. I'll look weak if we go, so we have to stay. My critics say it's the front line in the battle against terrorism, even th0ugh I don't think it is, so we have to stay.

With the lives of so many Americans and Afghans in the balance, Obama should be commended and supported in his search for the right, as opposed to the easy, policy. It's as if he's learning in a few weeks of earnest confabs (beginning, I'm convinced, with the White House-sanctioned leak 18 days ago of the essentially pessimistic McChrystal report) what it took us from 1961-69 to learn from our experience in South Vietnam: It's ultimately up to the people of Afghanistan to determine, with appropriate support from their friends in the event of foreign interference, who their leaders are.

If a Taliban government, or one in which the Taliban share power, doesn't threaten our interests, then it's not a vital concern of ours -- though our heart must weep for Afghan women who may again be subject to Taliban-style Islamic apartheid. If Afghanistan does threaten our interests, then we have to be prepared to go back. After the Vietnamese communists began violating the Paris Peace Accords in the spring of 1973, President Nixon might well have resumed a significant U.S. role, via massive air strikes at least, but Watergate made it impossible. If Obama gets out of Afghanistan on his terms, as a popular President making a rational, careful call rather than a politically imperative one, it will be easier for us to return if necessary. The risk is that our re-intervention would end up being the result of a terrorist strike emanating from Afghanistan. Should we indeed deescalate the good war, the key question will be how vigilant and ruthless a counter-terrorist the President would be willing to be.

Goodnight Kabul

George Will on Afghanistan:

[B]efore launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, 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, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan...

Which of course would leave the Afghan people largely to themselves once again, even if the Taliban regain control of the national government. And that probably can't be helped.

In the 1990s there was a seminal article in the "New Yorker" about the ruling fundamentalist Muslim Taliban's savage policies, especially toward women. I remember thinking that it was too bad the U.S. couldn't do something, which, of course, it couldn't. American foreign policy can't be based on eliminating odious regimes. If it were, we would probably have to begin with our trading partners and bondholders in Beijing.

After Sept. 11, U.S. forces made seeming quick work of the Taliban. The successor regime, while hardly ideal when it came to women's rights, was a considerable improvement. If we hadn't undertaken the massive effort in Iraq, perhaps President Bush could have made Afghanistan into a model of modern nation-building while also doing a more thorough job of rooting out Taliban fighters and reducing their destabilizing effect on Pakistan. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Afghanistan is the rock on which great powers stub their toes in wearying succession. If there's one lesson of the last 150 years, it's don't get embroiled in a war there. As Will suggests, find other ways to battle al-Qaeda. But get our troops out.

To accomplish a deescalation, President Obama will need cover from like-minded Republicans who refuse and even pledge to forgo using it as a political issue. If that doesn't seem possible in this toxic political environment, perhaps everyone could think about how toxic it is for the men and women who have been sent to Afghanistan to do the near-impossible. And if anyone is thinking of making a Vietnam comparison, please don't. South Vietnam was Switzerland in comparison.

Prayer (And Policy Change) Opportunities

CBS radio's Cami McCormick has been injured in Afghanistan. August is the bloodiest month for U.S. service personnel since the war began eight years ago.

Before Sept. 11, no President would've dared mount a war to unseat the Taliban, notwithstanding their oppressive policies, especially toward women. After the attacks, which the regime enabled, defeating them became a vital national interest. As recently as 2008, Barack Obama could portray Afghanistan as the good (or at least the better) war, arguing persuasively that President Bush's obsession with Iraq had prevented him from finishing the job against the Taliban.

Have politics and the perils of best intentions now drawn Obama into the same treacherous straits that wrecked the British and Soviets? The question for the U.S. must be whether there's a way to protect ourselves and our friends from terrorist attacks mounted in Afghanistan without being drawn any deeper into a war that looks as though it could rage for another eight years.

Beating Children, But Not Extremely

The Secretary of State says the U.S. is open to reconciliation with non-extremist elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan. After watching a portion of this video, obtained by the British Guardian, I'm wondering who that would be. The video shows a teenage girl being flogged. Here's why, according to an official Taliban spokesman:

"She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said. He defended the Taliban's right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law.

Would the person who spoke those words be an extremist or Secretary Clinton's new conversation partner? If the latter, what would be their common frame of reference as negotiations begin, besides the shared experience of walking upright?

Given her devotion to the rights of women and children, it's an especially sad irony that Clinton should be the one to extend the hand of peace to those who beat children in the name of God. I've often wondered how history might've been different if, as First Lady, she had exerted pressure (or more pressure; who knows what passes between a couple?) on Bill Clinton to adopt a more aggressive position against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as the world learned of the regime's savage atrocities against women. President Nixon's former aide Bruce Herschensohn called for the Taliban's ouster in 1999 -- a lonely voice at the time, perhaps a prophetic one after Sept. 11. In any event, if we talk to the Taliban now, it should be about a lot more than al-Qaeda.

Read David Stokes' views on the subject here.