Matthew Yglesias asks if the next major offensive in Kandahar a misguided application of counterinsurgency:
The war in Afghanistan isn’t a major front in partisan political struggles, so it’s substantially slipped off the radar. But the U.S. military is already in the early phases of what will soon (exactly how soon is secret, of course) be a major new offensive in the Taliban stronghold province of Kandahar, and most indications are that it’s going to go badly. The problems with the planned operation are in some respects complicated, but they mostly boil down to the fact that the best evidence available — like an Army-commissioned poll reported on by Wired‘s Nathan Hodge on April 16 — indicates that the local population wants nothing to do with it. The Taliban is more trusted than the local government: 85 percent of Kandaharis describe them as “our Afghan brothers,” and 94 percent say it would make more sense to negotiate with the Taliban than to intensify fighting. Naturally, we’re going in guns blazing.
Or, to be fair, we probably won’t be. Instead, all indications are that in keeping with Gen. Stanley McChrystal‘s dictates, the operation will be undertaken with the utmost attention to local sentiment and counterinsurgency principles. The problem — which is a microcosm for our strategy in Afghanistan writ large — is that there seems to be much more interest in demonstrating the utility of counterinsurgency in action than in recognizing that COIN principles point to simply not launching the operation.