Defining success in Afghanistan
Frederick and Kimberly Kagan state their view on what victory looks like:
Success in Afghanistan is the establishment of a political order, security situation, and indigenous security force that is stable, viable, enduring, and able--with greatly reduced international support--to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists.
This kind of thing sounds clear enough, but it really falls apart upon closer inspection. What does it mean to not be a "safe haven" for international terrorists? It can't mean that a country can't contain any terrorists - that's an absurd standard. It can't mean that the country can't have any terrorists capable of launching attacks beyond its borders, since that would mean there are literally dozens of terrorist safe havens around the world, including in Norway and the United States, which have produced individuals who traveled abroad to commit acts of terrorism or targeted their home countries for slaughter. Perhaps the authors mean that Afghanistan can't have any terrorist training camps - but given the low-tech approach shown by al-Qaeda of late, it's not clear that they need jungle gym training anymore. But if al-Qaeda is training for larger-scale operations, isn't it more likely that they'd do so in Pakistan or Yemen, where they are safer from large-scale reprisals from American air power?
In other words, this definition of success is not just vague and amorphous but untenable in an age when terrorists are a global menace lured into jihad via the Internet. You can make the case that U.S. policy in Afghanistan should be to train Afghan forces to fight the Taliban so we don't have to (a not unreasonable position), but if we're framing Afghanistan as part of a larger effort against jihadism then the investment in Afghanistan and its governing institutions is disproportionate.
(AP Photo)
