The United States military can win this fight and if the politicians keep their noses out of it, they will win this fight.
Like you, I hope that Washington does not get involved in day-to-day military tactics. Washington should not dictate targets or military methods, though there is some risk that a combination of stalemate and failure to reduce civilian casualties might lead to such an outcome down the road.
However, when it comes to strategy, Washington should ask the difficult questions that need to be asked including:
1) Why did the earlier strategies fail?
2) Why were early forecasts so far off the mark?
3) Why did the earlier strategies not consider the rise of situations that confronted the British and Soviets in Afghanistan?
4) How would disproportionate reliance on the Karzai government in a country based on local/dispersed power be better than building a bottom-up strategy based around local tribal leaders?
5) What contingencies are considered in the proposed strategy?
6) Why should Washington have confidence that the proposed strategy has a high probability of success given the experience with the past strategies, including the earlier troop surge?
7) Can the military planners articulate the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict in Afghanistan?
To be sure, some of those questions, particularly the last one, would cause the military leaders to bristle. But to be blunt, they now bear the burden of demonstrating that they understand the military requirements in Afghanistan and can offer a viable strategy necessary to meet U.S. objectives. The failures to date to build a stable and secure Afghanistan require nothing less than their addressing difficult questions.
Too much is at stake geopolitically for the U.S. to suffer a stalemate or worse in Afghanistan. In the wake of how things have evolved, it is facts and outcomes alone, not the personal sensitivies of the military leaders, that matter.
If the strategy that will soon be unveiled does not materially improve conditions in Afghanistan over the next 1-2 years, domestic support for the conflict will erode. Once that happens, Congressional support to sustain the conflict will also erode and pressure for dramatic decisions will grow as the 2012 elections approach (2010 will still be within a grace period so to speak). Without sufficient domestic support, the objectives will likely shift from the creation of a more stable Afghanistan to loss minimization. In that context, U.S. geopolitical interests will have been damaged.
In the meantime, what is happening in Afghanistan matters deeply for U.S. interests. North Korea and Iran are watching developments closely in Afghanistan. Neither of those hostile regimes is impressed with U.S. power. Both increasingly calculate that the U.S. does not possess the credible means to roll back their nuclear programs. Not surprisingly, they have retained an intransigent policy course.
