Leaks from a National Intelligence Estimate set to be released after the election point to a rather dismal conclusion: we're not winning, in part because of leadership failures here in the U.S. and in part because of the corruption and poor management of the Hamid Karzai government. U.S. officials are reviewing how best to adjust their approach to Afghanistan to have more effect. Hopefully that review will include a hard look at what our objectives in Afghanistan are, because they are overdue an update. The next president will have to decide what the actual goal of our occupation of Afghanistan is: Nation building? Counterterrorism? Counterinsurgency?
These three goals aren't mutually exclusive and the mechanisms to reach them can work hand-in-hand, but it's not at all clear to me that that is happening now. We don't have the economic or military resources in Afghanistan now to pursue full-fledged nation building and counterinsurgency, even if succeeding in those two areas would contribute to effective counterterrorism policy. If the U.S. does commit the needed resources -- which both presidential candidates seem intent on doing -- then it will have to be clear with the public that this is as long a project as Iraq. If, instead, we focus on counterterrorism as our priority, it's not entirely clear that we need to be committing ourselves to nation-building, especially if our real concern is al-Qaeda in Waziristan. My basic point is this: Our Afghanistan policy needs to be rethought in light of what we have learned about our Iraq policy, not simply changed to into our Iraq policy. The good news is that those conversations are happening.
--Tim Fernholz
