The Afghan imperative

By DAVID BROOKS

Posted: September 27, 2009 at 8:16 a.m.

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NEW YORK — Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now gripsmany Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon's Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping yourtroops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.

There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.

The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands - that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.

To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.

These are the realistic choices for America's Afghanistan policy - all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building. And we might as well acknowledge that it's not an easy call.

The costs and rewards are tightly balanced. But in the end, President Barack Obama was right: "You don't muddle through the central front on terror. : You don't muddle through stamping out the Taliban."

Since 1979, we have been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. We've fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and we shouldn't pretend we understand how this conflict will evolve. But we should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it's in our long-term interests to push back - and that eventually, if we do so, extremism will wither.

Afghanistan is central to this effort part ly because it could again become a safe haven to terrorists, but mostly because of its effects on the stability of Pakistan. As Stephen Biddle noted in a recent essay in The American Interest, the Taliban is a transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is part of a complex insurgency trying to topple the Pakistani regime.

Pakistan has a fragile government with an estimated 50 or more nuclear weapons ATaliban conquest in Afghanistan would endanger the Pakistani regime at best, cre ate a regional crisis for certain and lead to nuclear-armed al-Qaida at worst.

Amidst all the problems, the NATO coalition has a few things going for it. First, American forces have become quite good at counterinsurgency. They have a battletested strategy, experienced troops and a superb new leadership team. According to the political scientists Andrew J. Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli, since World War II, counterinsurgency efforts that put population protection at their core have succeeded nearly 70 percent of the time.

Second, the enemy is wildly hated. Only 6 percent of Afghans want a Taliban return while NATO is viewed with surprising favor.This is not Vietnam or even Iraq.

Third, while many Afghan institutions are now dysfunctional, there is a base on which to build. The Afghan Army is a

Opinion, Pages 15 on 09/27/2009

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