George F. Will, the columnist, recently said as much. So did Rory Stewart, the British scholar-diplomat who has spent years in the region. Vice President Biden is said to favor such a choice.
The exact shape of a scaled-down commitment is not clear, but it goes something like this: American Special Forces units, aided by Predator drones, can keep Al Qaeda off-balance, while American soldiers stay on to train the Afghan Army and the police.
It’s an attractive argument, of course: it offers the hope that the United States can achieve the same thing — American security — at a much-reduced cost. (The fate of the Afghan people themselves is basically left out of this equation.)
Last month, I visited Richard Haass, one of the idea’s chief proponents, at his office in New York, where he is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Before that, through June 2003, Haass was director of policy planning at the State Department under President George W. Bush.)
Haass is particularly persuasive, in part because he does not pretend to have easy answers. After eight years of mismanagement and neglect, Haass says, every choice the United States faces in Afghanistan is dreadful. The weight of the evidence, he says, suggests that curtailing our ambitions is the option least dreadful.
“It’s not self-evident that doing more will accomplish more,” Haass told me. “And I’m skeptical about how central Afghanistan is anymore to the global effort against terror. I’m not persuaded that you can transform the situation there.”
The bulk of Al Qaeda’s leadership, Haass pointed out, is now in Pakistan. That’s where the United States should really be focused — in Pakistan, with a population six times larger than Afghanistan’s and with at least 60 nuclear warheads. “No one wants Afghanistan to become a sponge that absorbs a disproportionate share of our country’s resources,” he said.
General McChrystal and most of the rest of the Pentagon say that Haass’s argument is essentially an illusion. If the United States drew down substantially in Afghanistan, they say, much of the country would quickly be overrun by the Taliban, rendering the other things — training and counterterrorism — impossible. Al Qaeda would return, possibly to the place it had before the 9/11 attacks, and Pakistan would be likely to follow.
When I pitched McChrystal’s counterargument to Haass, he said he was glad that he wasn’t in Obama’s shoes. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “We’re not going to find some wonderful thing that’s going to deliver large positive results at modest costs. It’s not going to happen.”
Haass went on to say: “I keep going back to Yogi Berra. You know: ‘When you reach a fork in the road, take it.’ I bet there are days when Obama wakes up and sees the fork in the road and decides he’s not going to take it. Because both choices are so bad.”
October 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am
The bulk of Al Qaeda’s leadership, Haass pointed out, is now in Pakistan. That’s where the United States should really be focused — in Pakistan, with a population six times larger than Afghanistan’s and with at least 60 nuclear warheads.”
That’s hard to argue with. So let’s see, what would be the best way to focus on Pakistan? Gee, if only there were a country where we had airports, military bases, ground troops, full air superiority, and a shared border with the worst of the Pakistani extremists.
Maybe Obama can have Biden figure out which country fits the bill?
October 15th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
“Maybe Obama can have Biden figure out which country fits the bill?”
Pfft! Everyone knows Murtha has the answer to that already! Okinawa! We can just park that island right off the coast of Pakistan any time we want, donchu know?
October 15th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Oh, forgot to say…
Damn you and thanks, Jules.
Damn you for reminding us that there are good reporters out there, even in that disgusting puss pit of a NYT. So, what do you want? You want us to have to go all nuance nancy when we’re ranting about reporters, dont you? Admit it.
And thanks. Thanks for reminding us that not all reporters are journalists writing their own little diaries of their own little thoughts and wish it were’s, illusions and delusions, dreams and ignorance. Some are actually capable of doing their job.
Of course, that’ll make it just that much more heart rending on the day when the ropes, pitchforks and hot tar buckets get brought out. Y’all really should start working on figuring out how to clean up your industry before the gen public decides it has to do it for all y’all.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I really enjoyed that profile. It was a gripping read, and his style of showing rather than telling is a nice change from the general air of news reporting.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
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