After reading Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shactman's pieces going into detail about the administration's strategy for Afghanistan, I'm feeling slightly less bleak about the decision that was made -- mostly because of the timeline.
The idea is that a short-term troop surge will knock the Taliban on their back, giving the Afghan government and the coalition some breathing room to institute development. Some folks I've spoken to have expressed the concern that the Taliban might just lay low, with sporadic attacks just to remind everyone they're around. Well, good. If that's the case, they'll at least lose some momentum, and they'll be providing part of the respite the new troops are meant to create.
Here's what I generally find reassuring about it: The strategy seems to recognize that for the U.S., this war is not winnable. At an event for the Center for American Progress a few weeks ago, The Carr Center's Michael Semple said that the Taliban's narrative of fighting a foreign occupation was crucial to its whatever draw it has among Afghans. By escalating and then drawing down, the U.S. may take away the primary reason for the Taliban's appeal after having prepared the Afghan army to take over the fight for itself. Without a larger foreign enemy, the Taliban isn't likely to be popular among Afghans and won't receive much support in a civil war.
There are obviously risks here: The escalation could backfire and strengthen the Taliban. The Afghan government could fall apart without the U.S. to chaperon. As of yet, it's not clear to me how the corruption problem will be solved. The Taliban are hated for their brutality, but Karzai's government is filled with people with dubious human rights records as well. The Afghan army might not ever be up to the job. I'm still not really sure how any of this really affects the goal of destroying and dismantling al Qaeda, since they remain in Pakistan, where the government has shown little interest in going after the Taliban who aren't directly threatening them. But I think the timeline is actually a better decision than it might initially appear. At the same time, no one seems to really believe we're going to start pulling out troops in 2011 -- and Marc Lynch explains that the timeliness success "depends upon that commitment being credible, because that is what is supposed to generate the urgency for local actors to change."
--A. Serwer
