Afghanistan: Waiting for the 'Exit Strategy'

It's Afghanistan week, with President Obama's Afghanistan review
complete and the new strategy for the war set to be released any day
now. In his 60 Minutes
interview, Obama suggested that he's leaning toward the "minimalist"
theory that the war in Afghanistan has to focus on Al Qaeda and that
the United States needs "an exit strategy." From the transcript:

"What we can't do is think that just a military
approach in Afghanistan is gonna be able to solve our problems. So what
we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an
exit strategy. There's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual
drift."

Asked what America's mission in Afghanistan is, Obama replied:

"Making sure that Al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S.
homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one
priority. And in service of that priority there may be a whole host of
things that we need to do. We may need to build up economic capacity in
Afghanistan. We may need to improve our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan.

"We may need to bring a more regional diplomatic approach to bear.
We may need to coordinate more effectively with our allies. But we
can't lose sight of what our central mission is. The same mission that
we had when we went in after 9/11. And that is these folks can project
violence against the United States' citizens. And that is something
that we cannot tolerate."

But Obama has is sending 17,000 more US troops to the war that can't be
won militarily, and he's talking about "building up economic capacity
in Afghanistan," which could take many years. Are we prepared to stay
for years? Is Obama prepared to spend his entire presidency fighting
the Afghan war? That's the question asked by Jackson Diehl in a Washington Post op-ed today, in which Diehl answers in the affirmative. Citing General David McKiernan, who's demanding a further buildup, Diehl writes:

McKiernan believes the Afghan army, now at 80,000
members, will have to grow to 240,000 before it can defend the country
on its own -- and that raising it to that level will take until 2016.
Would Obama be willing, or politically able, to devote the entirety of
his presidency to a war that has already lasted seven years? The
thousands of American soldiers and civilians pouring into the country
deserve that strategic patience; without it, the sacrifices we will
soon hear of will be wasted.

That doesn't sound like an exit strategy to me.

The indefatigable Walter Pincus, writing the Post on Sunday,
describes the huge buildup of US-funded military infrastructure in
Afghanistan, which makes it look even more like we're settling in for
the long haul:

At Bagram air base, for example, the Army Corps of
Engineers is managing about $650 million in construction. ... The [U.S.
Army] Corps of Engineers has become the largest employer of Afghans
after the national government. Corps contractors ... will spend about
$4 billion in Afghanistan this year and employ between 45 percent and
60 percent of the overall construction industry in that country. The
U.S. Agency for International Development spends, he said, $1 billion
to $1.5 billion a year in Afghanistan.

The corps has about 720 miles of roads under construction in
Afghanistan, with another 250 to 350 planned for next year. [The U.S.
will spend] about $4 billion this year and $4 billion to $6 billion in
2010 to more road contracts.

Does that sound an "exit strategy"? No.

As the New York Times reported last week, current plans for
expanding the Afghan security forces to 400,000 -- including raising
the size of Afghanistan's army from 80,000 to 260,000 -- will cost up
to $20 billion over 6-7 years. And that's just the cost of training and
equipping the forces. Sustaining them will cost, I've heard, as much as
$4 billion a year ever year after that. (Afghanistan's entire national
budget is only $1.1 billion a year.)

Various reports leaking out about
Obama's Afghan strategy suggest that Vice President Biden and Bruce
Riedel, the former CIA officer in charge of the review, are leaning
toward the "minimalist" view -- that the US cannot rebuild the whole
country and repair its shattered society, and that as long as Al Qaeda
is defanged, we've "won." On the other hand, General Petraeus, Centcom
commander, and Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy, want a much bigger
strategy. According to Jim Hoagland of the Post, there is a developing "synthesis that moves everybody toward a middle ground," whatever that means.

Last week, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, in an op-ed
entitled "Our Must Win War: The 'Minimalist' Path Is Wrong for
Afghanistan", attacked attacked the idea of limited goals, saying
instead that there is no "shortcut to success," no "middle way":

As the administration finalizes its policy review, we
are troubled by calls in some quarters for the president to adopt a
"minimalist" approach toward Afghanistan.

[Tonight's] news conference by Obama will be a big deal, and not
only because he'll be defending his secretary of the treasury and the
bailout plan. He'll also have to convince Americans that he knows what
he'd doing in Afghanistan. The US public is increasingly skeptical of
the war. According to Gallup:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds growing concern about
the war in Afghanistan at the same time that Americans' optimism about
Iraq is growing or holding steady.

Forty-two percent of Americans now say the United States made a
mistake in sending troops to Afghanistan, up from 30% earlier this year
and establishing a new high.