President Obama is savvy. He knows that the military the world over and down through the pages of history, always want a little more for a little longer. Nevertheless there comes a time when however much and however long will make no difference, except with total war, when every life and shell counts.
Afghanistan is not a total war. It is a war, now without popular approval, without a clear objective, in support of a flawed analysis of U.S interests, to prop up a corrupt and incompetent government, waged against the natives of the country of which the U.S. and its allies are seen as friends by some, but by many as yet another foreign invader.
The idea that an elected (with a good deal of fraud) government needs a huge security force, continuously engaged in the field against its fellow countrymen is a contradiction which does not offer a prospect remotely democratic. Moreover whether the U.S and its allies withdraw some troops now and more later, or more now and fewer later will make absolutely no difference to the eventual outcome. The President has shown great perception in confronting the military. He now needs to show a good deal more to bring to a dignified conclusion a costly and mistaken adventure.
The Karzai government is rotten. It is financially fraudulent. It is incompetent. Sooner or later it will fall. There may be civil war. There may be a Taliban government. There may be fragmentation. Afghanistan is more of a tribal region than a single country. Whatever is resolved, it is and must be, up to the Afghans themselves.
Negotiations among the parties would ease bloodshed and may offer hope of some sort of peaceful transition. Talks are said to be secretly under way. They will get nowhere, nor will solutions last, without the participation of Afghanistan’s neighbour and mentor, Pakistan. Some fence mending here by the State Department, of tattered relations following the taking out of Bin Laden, might do a lot to ease those talks forward towards a constructive solution.