The US, IMHO, does not have a viable winning strategy in Afghanistan because it does not have a clear opium/poppy policy (that I’ve seen). We may just be muddling along.

The Washington Post article does not say much about the poppy cultivation problem. Many analysts see that much of the Taliban funding comes from the illegal poppy trade and assume that part of the US mission in Afghanistan is to eradicate poppy cultivation. I’ve not seen that spelled out and it is not that simple. There is a dilemma, as I see it. We are going to try to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. And the strategy of our troops living with the people described in the Post article is the way to do it. But how far can we get winning hearts and minds if we take the most profitable crop away from Afghan farmers. Opium/ poppies are about 60% of Afghanistan’s GDP. Recently, the NY Times reported that the value of the poppy crops was down and the value of wheat, the alternative for cultivation, was up. That helps. But much more will be needed.

I previously wrote on my own blog (here) that “We cannot both “win” in Afghanistan and eradicate the poppy/opium trade there. That would be expecting too much. Too much of the economy is dependent upon the opium trade.”

I’m willing to reconsider that assessment. But only if I see a realistic plan on how to do it. The Post article is not encouraging.

The military approach to Helmund will work in Helmund. The Taliban will be chased out and reduced to an irritation while the troops are there. The problem is what happens when we leave and we can't stay forever.

Afghan society is too often primitive and tribal and the government corrupt. How long can the U.S. afford to pour men and money into the country? We have been there for seven years with little to show for it. If Bush-Cheney had not made the unnecessary and disastorous mis-tour to Iraq, we might have been making headway by now. At some point we will have to make some really hard decisions. If Al Qaeda didn't exist there we might be able to walk away and let the Afghans destroy each other again. The presence of Al Qaeda makes it our war. Perhaps a deal?

I'm sorta with Johyn Calhoun and mlw here. It looks like a solid tactic going from the ground up, and to John's concern, the Afghanis have some success in the Afghan Army, but the civil service and the police have a long way to go.

Then you hope that guys like Karzai's brother (reputedly the goverment's main interface with the drug dealers)can be held out of the game long enough for actaul reformers to gain power at the grassroots.

Long odds though.........

"The Vietnam analogy is exactly wrong. The problem in Vietnam was that we didn't focus on the population."

Actually, the Vietnam analogy is exactly right because we have inexplicably been repeating all the same mistakes in Afghanistan & Iraq which were made early in Vietnam. The so-called 2007 "surge" in Iraq was more than just more troops (which ALL military experts had advocated for from the beginning), it was a change in tactics that FINALLY adopted the information learned in Vietnam (by everyone except the top tier of the Bush administration). Now we're finally adopting those lessons of Vietnam to Afghanistan, hopefully not too late.

Think about this--the invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001, nearly eight years ago. That's first grade through eighth grade or fourth grade through graduation in the US high school system. Imagine if we had actually been defending schools and educating the entire generation that has grown up in Afghanistan in the last eight years? The wasted opportunities are legion. Hopefully the Obama administration will take the need to stabilize and develop Afghanistan once and for all more seriously than did Dumbass Rumsfeld, who could only lament there was so little there left to bomb.

In addition, IMHO, to the lack of a viable opium/poppy strategy, two additional operational issues concern me:

(1) That the reconstruction effort will not be big enough. It is not reassuring to read in the Washington Post article that “The Marines have also been vexed by … a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel…..”

“Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived….” Not reassuring.

(2) That our Marines (and other personnel) may not have the Afghan language skills to live effectively among the people and to win their hearts and minds. Culture classes and interpreters can only do so much. So, how many of the 4,000 Marines will speak the language of the village they are stationed in? As the Post put it: “Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population.”

There is an Oregon connection. The recent session of the legislature failed to invigorate the learning of foreign languages in Oregon’s K-12 education system. HB 2719 could have begun sending high school students to study abroad for academic years to learn these strategic foreign languages. HB 2605 would have specifically targeted additional study abroad funds for high school students willing to learn “critically needed” foreign languages, such as Pashto, Dari and the other languages of Afghanistan. Both bills died in committee.

Writes John Calhoun, "The problem is what happens when we leave and we can't stay forever."

However, the generals are planning a 15-20 year time horizon. And the problem J.C. identifies will still be there.

Nothing is being done that will change "the reasons" why "we" "can't leave now." This is sometimes called "no exit strategy," but that doesn't really cover it.

This quote from former Oregonian Norman Solomon, though referring to D.C., applies to much of what's written here:

"The political rhetoric in Washington is close to 100 percent humanitarian, while the new supplemental infusion of U.S. spending for Afghanistan is 90 percent military."

Afghanistan wasn't the graveyard of the British Empire, that would be Belgium & NW France, ca. 1916, but it was where British South Asian imperial expansion was halted.

And empire of course is the bigger question. We shouldn't have one. We have military bases in 140 countries. In its heyday the British empire's naval policy was that their navy should be twice as big as any other. The U.S. navy today is bigger than the next 15 combined.

We are bleeding ourselves with military spending, above all in the occupation wars where the costs are not just unproductive opportunity costs, but loss of life, wounding an maiming, traumatic brain injury and PTSD, and our weapons are not just unproductive materiél but go to wreaking havoc, death and destruction on huge numbers of people. But it is not just in those wars of empire. It is the whole military budget. Our military is not designed for self-defense, but for domination and aggression. And it is part of what is driving our economy down, along with the favoring of finance over real goods and services.

We do not need to be discussing marginal advantages in an unwinnable war. We need to be discussing how to end the policy of empire. IMO.

Bohica,

Thanks for the Burroughs reference.....