Foreign Policy has the administration's metrics for measuring progress in Afghanistan, which Katherine Tiedemann comments on here.
The first objective on the list is to "[d]isrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks." This is the "safe haven" argument, the idea that if we withdraw from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda will have a launching pad for further attacks on the United States. There's a reason this is objective number one: It's probably the only truly compelling reason for us to be there. But in his op-ed for the Washington Post, Paul R. Pillar questions the premise of a safe haven to begin with, making a familiar point that the 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany and Spain, nations that, as Brian Katulis pointed out to me in a conversation earlier, we have no intention of invading. The real "safe haven" Pillar argues, is the Internet:
In the past couple of decades, international terrorist groups have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened their dependence on physical havens.
By utilizing networks such as the Internet, terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters. A significant jihadist terrorist threat to the United States persists, but that does not mean it will consist of attacks instigated and commanded from a South Asian haven, or that it will require a haven at all. Al-Qaeda's role in that threat is now less one of commander than of ideological lodestar, and for that role a haven is almost meaningless.
Pillar concludes that, while a safe haven might be of use to terrorists, "the issue is whether preventing such a haven would reduce the terrorist threat to the United States enough from what it otherwise would be to offset the required expenditure of blood and treasure and the barriers to success in Afghanistan, including an ineffective regime and sagging support from the population."
This is the question that bothers me the most: No one in the administration has credibly explained how a counterinsurgency can work in a nation where the government the U.S. supports is viewed as illegitimate, and if the "safe haven" argument no longer applies the way it did 10 years ago, the strongest argument for us remaining in Afghanistan is undermined. As John Kerry noted in the quote in Tim's post below, "no clever metrics will matter if the mission is ill conceived." Neither will more troops.
-- A. Serwer
