Ed Webb's List: Afghanistan1209

• Al-Qaeda is not really active in Afghanistan anymore, and it is not equivalent with the Taliban (either the Afghan or Pakistani variants).  Al-Qaeda Central still matters, but the decentralized network and ideological narrative around the world no longer depends on it.   Nothing the U.S. does or does not do in Afghanistan will defeat al-Qaeda -- the failure of that movement will happen for its own reasons, if it happens (as it already largely has in the Arab world).
   
   The moment where Obama recognized this reality was both reassuring and terrifying:  when he mentioned Somalia and Yemen.  He understands that Afghanistan is not the only, or even the primary, location where those motivated by al-Qaeda's ideas can operate.  But  if the next move is to bring  governance and stability, and counter-terrorism and COIN, to every ungoverned space on Earth -- or even every Muslim-majority ungoverned space on Earth -- then we are truly facing bankruptcy.  Intellectually, financially, militarily, and politically.   We can't afford to do this in Afghanistan. We certainly can't afford to do it in Somalia and Yemen... even if we should, which I strongly doubt.
• I haven't heard anybody yet say that they believed that Obama would really start drawing down in June 2011, no matter what he says.  And yet the strategy depends upon that commitment being credible, because that is what is supposed to generate the urgency for local actors to change.
• the best way for skeptics such as myself to help this strategy to succeed is to keep a sharp focus on the proposed mechanisms of change, demanding evidence that they are actually happening, and to hold the administration to its pledges to maintaining a clear time horizon and to avoiding the iron logic of serial escalations of a failing enterprise.
• Generating domestic pressure to make his commitments on a time horizon and this not becoming an endless series of futile escalations credible will be one of the most important things which Obama's skeptical supporters can do over the next year.

2 more annotations...

• a Taliban spokesman told Al Jazeera that they were pleased with the decision to send more US soldiers.

   

  "More troops just means a larger target for us to hit ... by increasing its forces in Afghanistan, Obama is just giving more power to the Mujahideen to recruit and receive the support of the civilian population."
• "This wasn't a counter-insurgency speech; it was a counter-terrorism speech, a very different mission from the one General Stanley McCrystal has been preparing himself for. 

  "He only mentions the Taliban twice in the whole speech. He started talking about 9/11, he ended with talking about 9/11 and all the references in between were to al-Qaeda."

• Seasoned observers find preposterous the prospect that a crash training program could double the size of both the police and the army and turn them into effective, upright and independent security forces in the space of two years or so. (Obama wants to begin drawing back down U.S. forces in only 18 months.) Nor would mere basic training address the problems of illiteracy, drug use, corruption, desertion and ethnic grievances.
• Obama is in danger of being misled by the inside-the-Beltway think tank consensus on what happened in Iraq, and of applying those "lessons" to Afghanistan. Even if the two actually resembled one another, the Washington story about Iraq is full of holes. But they are very different countries, societies and situations. Bush caught a break with his surge, inasmuch as it coincided with a massive shift in the local power balance. Obama will have to be very lucky indeed to catch a similar break in Afghanistan.