Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars defending the war in Afghanistan as a "war of necessity" but also sought to reassure skeptics that our goals in Afghanistan are limited and attainable--namely they are to "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies." Michael Cohen sees mission creep from five months ago--Spencer Ackerman disagrees, but argues that the conflation of the Taliban with al-Qaeda is deceptive, since the Taliban "will never reach across the planet to attack the U.S., and have no reason to fight U.S. troops if we weren't in Afghanistan."
In response to the president's speech, Juan Cole writes that al-Qaeda has already been effectively disrupted, and that the larger threat comes from cells located in Western nations rather than "safe havens" -- remember that the 9/11 attacks were largely planned in Germany. If the plan is to prevent a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Cole writes, then the U.S. strategy could succeed. Whether that's ultimately germane to the fight against al-Qaeda however, seems to be an entirely separate question.
In the meantime, violence appears to be escalating in Afghanistan in advance of the elections, particularly in Kabul, where a car bomb killed several NATO troops and the presidential palace came under fire by mortars. The prospects for a large, election legitimizing turnout seem to be ever dwindling -- the Wall Street Journal reports that 40% of polling stations in Kandahar are controlled by the Taliban. Brian Katulis, reporting from Kabul, has written a helpful guide to the upcoming election -- while the Taliban has been working hard to intimidate voters, the election has drawn great interest. Katulis writes that more than 10 million Afghans watched the televised presidential debate last week -- not bad for a country where radio tends to be the more accessible medium.
-- A. Serwer
