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| Afghanistan isn't Obama's Vietnam -- yet | ||
| 2009-09-07 | ||
* Support at home. The American public's support for the war has certainly declined, but eight years after 9/11, enthusiasm for its original goal of destroying Al Qaeda remains strong.
* Honest military assessments. In Vietnam, U.S. commanders sugarcoated their analysis for the folks back home. In Afghanistan, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, recently called the situation "serious and deteriorating." And Mullen, who began his career as a Navy officer in Vietnam, makes a point of promising no quick victory. "By no means do I think we can turn [Afghanistan] around in 12 to 18 months, but I think we can start," he told me last week. The war has been long, costly and unsuccessful, but Obama and his generals still have a chance to turn it around. Meanwhile, the Taliban, which came to power in 1996 because it promised to be incorruptible, has reportedly appointed ombudsmen -- ombudsmen! -- in the growing areas it controls. The more difficult question is whether the Afghan government can take advantage of whatever security the Americans give it. That's why the most important number to watch may not be Obama's troop increase but the "civilian surge" of advisors, aid workers, agricultural experts and anti-corruption investigators who are also moving into the country. That number is much smaller, and its impact is far less certain. Richard C. Holbrooke, the diplomatic heavyweight who's running the civilian effort, calls the approach "smart power." Holbrooke is trying to increase the number of U.S. civilian officials in Afghanistan from about 450 to about 900 by the end of the year, and says the program is on track. But that's unlikely to be nearly enough. With Karzai's central government discredited, the U.S. needs to bypass Kabul and instead funnel money and other assistance to local governments in Afghanistan's 34 provinces and 399 districts. And that could take a lot more than 900 people. "We need to stop talking about 'smart power' as if we had it," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a civilian scholar who has advised McChrystal. "We don't have the civilians in the field. The so-called civilian surge will not come close to the minimal requirements." The one option that won't work, Obama's advisors argue , is withdrawal. "There's no way to defeat Al Qaeda, which is the mission, with just that approach," Mullen said. "You can't do it remotely." To learn whether the war is even winnable, and to avoid seeing it turn into another Vietnam, Obama needs to do two things. He needs to rally public and congressional support behind another troop increase; that, oddly enough, will be the easy part. And he needs to find ways to make Afghanistan's government work, by ramping up the civilian surge and getting aid directly to local leaders who deliver services to their constituents -- even if, in some cases, they aren't as clean as we'd like. That will be the hard part. | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |