Is Afghanistan the Place?

Back to the question of Afghanistan and our (US) engagement therein.

Here is a synopsis of a paper out of CSIS on the issue of winning in Afghanistan.

According to the paper, the US

has not provided the money, the mentors and training personnel, or the kind of partners in the field necessary to create the scale and quality of the Afghan forces required. If the next President and Administration do not act quickly and decisively to reverse this situation, Afghanistan, NATO/ISAF, and the US may well lose the war.

As some third party commentator has said in the last couple of days,

While it sums up our actions to date, it never asks the obvious strategic question. Is it worth the cost?

Hundreds of billions of dollars (at least), 100s of lives at least, distortion of our relations with India and Pakistan, and low probability of success. And, even success means we move Afghanistan to the status of Chad. That is to say, a land locked, authoritarian, desperately poor country. Oh yes, and we will continue the heavy strain on US Army and Marine Corps for another decade.

Why haven't we evaluated the opportunity cost to determine if we should be doing this before we focus on figuring out how to do it?

Well, actually, how to do it is part of the opportunity cost calculation. Strategy is matching objectives, threats and opportunities in a resource constrained environment.

The questions raised by our "third party" are internal to Afghanistan. There is also our access to Afghanistan, our Lines of Communication. The easy way to resupply Afghanistan is from the south, which means through or over Pakistan and Iran. The other approach is best done through Russia or China and then maybe into one of the "'stans." We could bypass Russia and go from Turkey into Georgia and then across a inland sea and more countries to Afghanistan.

But, forget the logistics, there is the question of India and Pakistan. They are currently in crisis mode. What does our activity in Afghanistan and against the Taliban do to that imbroglio? And, if we accept that our long term interest is to align with India, the largest democracy in the world, how do our current actions play?

Then there is the whole question of what we owe the women of Afghanistan, having raised their expectations of what life beyond strict Shari law might be. Do we just step away and let the Taliban roll back in, closing schools to girls and banning things associated, by them, with the West?

There are no easy answers, but after the 20th of January, all those who think President Bush has made a hash of it need to step forward and say how they would change things.

For all of us this is an important question. With all the things going on in the world (include Mexico in the mix), is Afghanistan someplace we want to spend our treasure and manpower? Even if we want to, can we afford to?

My vote is to continue in Afghanistan, but in the parliament of my own mind it was a close vote and required a three line whip.

Regards -- Cliff