9th Grade History
Fall 2009
Bayard Faithfull
Beacon
LESSON PLAN ON AFGHANISTAN
Focus questions for unit
Does radical Islam cause the US military presence in Afghanistan?
Does the US military presence in the Afghanistan cause radical Islam?
Goals
Sub-questions/themes
Computer with internet connection and a projector.
Aim question: How and why has the Taliban grown in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) in recent years?
Procedures:
4. Read an account of the laws implemented by the Taliban. A good source is “Taliban Rules, Decrees, Laws and Prohibitions: Original List of Prohibitions and Decrees, Afghanistan, 1996,” which is available at
http://middleeast.about.com/od/afghanista1/a/me080907c.htm
Discuss why these laws might be attractive for some Muslims.
5. Conclusion: Draw together evidence that answers the aim question about why the Taliban has grown.
Homework: Students should consider the question: Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?
As a resource, I recommend an article by Peter Baker on this subject, accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/weekinreview/23baker.html?ref=todayspaper
Questions:
Resources: Computer and projector.
Aim question: How has the history of Afghanistan shaped the current war? Ask students to look at the war in Afghanistan through a number of lenses: (1) Is the Taliban an anti-colonial force (fighting against foreigners)? (2) Is the Taliban fighting an ethnic war of Pashtuns against other ethnic groups in Afghanistan? (3) Is the Taliban fighting an anti-globalization war (fighting against the powerful influences of capitalism and modern consumer culture)?
Questions for student worksheets include:
a. What are the four largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan? What does it mean that the Hazara are “Shia Muslim?”
b.When was Afghanistan united as a “nation?”
c. Note the countries that tried to invade Afghanistan in the 20th century.
d. Comment that the “mujahedin” included Islamic fighters from around the world, including Osama Bin Laden. The US started funding the “mujahedin” in the late 1970’s. Some historians believe that the radical Islam movement was created through this process of bringing fervent Muslims together from throughout the world.
e.Why did the United States invade Afghanistan in 2001?
f. What did the political structure of Afghanistan look like in 2002?
.
Distribute information on Afghanistan (the sidebar to this article, “Afghanistan Overview,” on page xx will help) Have students take notes on the Afghan population and timeline.
Homework: Students should read about the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. I recommend a summary provided by the National Security Archive of declassified documents about the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, "Pakistan: The Taliban's Godfather?,” accessible at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm Students should read the first 8 paragraphs, click on documents 17, 34 and 8, and write a brief summary about what they have learned. [note: The National Security Archive is an independent, non-governmental institute at George Washington University that collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.]
Resources needed: Computer and projector; laptops.
Homework: Read about the complex relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. An article on the topic is “Jihadistan,” by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, which is available on the Foreign Policy website http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/03/jihadistanThe first 11 paragraphs are worth reading. Students should answer.
Resources: Computer and projector.
2. Examine the difficult problems and policy options facing President Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A helpful resource is “Obama’s War (PBS Frontline 2009). accessible at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/view/. Have students take notes on the problems facing the Obama administration in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
3.Conclusion: Discuss what US and NATO policy should be toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Homework: Read about General McChrystal’s report on strategy in Afghanistan. I recommend “McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure: Top U.S. Commander For Afghan War Calls Next 12 Months Decisive” by Bob Woodward accessible at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002920.html. Students should answer:
Resources: Computer and projector.
Homework: Students read more about the Taliban’s supporters and havens in Pakistan. I recommend a review by Ahmed Rashid of books about Pakistan in the New York Review of Books, titled “The Afghanistan Impasse,” and available at www.nybooks.com/articles/23113
I edited the article for my students because of its length. Ask students to underline important passages and make margin comments throughout.
Resources: Student Handout
Procedures
It represents the second of the four positions that students are reviewing.
3. Conclusion: What are the advantages and potential problems of policy option #2?
Homework: For homework, students should read Students a viewpoint representing the third position, such as selected excerpts “Mirage of the Good War,” by Tariq Ali (New Left Review, March 2008), which is summarized on page xxx and available at http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2713 Students should expand the chart they constructed the previous day, identifying their position and the arguments and evidence that support it.
Resources: Student Handout
2. Examine the arguments in Bob Greenway’s “Rethinking Afghanistan accessible at
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/videos.php. Students should view three clips: Part 3 (The Cost of War) 1:58; Part 4 (Civilian Casualties) 3:08; Part 6 (Security) 11:14. Students should take notes on:
3. Students should read an article by George F. Will in the Washington Post (September 1, 2009), “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.” This represents the fourth of the four positions to be reviewed and is available at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083102912.html
Students should expand the chart they constructed the previous day, identifying their position and the arguments and evidence that support it.
4. Conclusion: What are the advantages and potential problems of policy options #3 and #4?
Homework: For homework, read “Afghanistan by the Numbers” accessible at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/afghanistan-numbers. Students should read carefully and be able to use the statistics as part of a debate the next day.
Aim question: What is the best position for the US and NATO to take in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
1. Write the chart of all four positions on the board.
Homework: Students should be told that, in the next class, they will write a two-page essay answering the question What is the best position for the US and NATO to take in Afghanistan and Pakistan? For the essay, they should use a one-page outline (which will be checked by the teacher to make sure that they have done it thoroughly). In the outline, students should include their argument, and evidence from the position papers and from readings and films from earlier in the unit. They should offer at least six pieces of evidence from all sources. They will have 45 minutes to write the essay.
Resources: Student Handout
Day 9 Students write short essays outlining their strategies.
Bayard Faithfull is a history teacher at the Beacon School in New York City and has taught curriculum design at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Institute for Student Achievement. His email is bfaithfu@beaconschool.org. Some additional materials are available on his website at http://www.beaconschool.org/~bfaithfu/.
Student Handout
President Obama’s speech (August 17, 2009) (an excerpt)
But as we move forward, the Iraqi people must know that the United States will keep its commitments. And the American people must know that we will move forward with our strategy. We will begin removing our combat brigades from Iraq later this year. We will remove all our combat brigades by the end of next August. And we will remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. And for America, the Iraq war will end.
By moving forward in Iraq, we're able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March -- a strategy that recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base from the remote, tribal areas -- to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan. This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war -- that we also need diplomacy and development and good governance. And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.
In the months since, we have begun to put this comprehensive strategy into action. And in recent weeks, we've seen our troops do their part. They've gone into new areas -- taking the fight to the Taliban in villages and towns where residents have been terrorized for years. They're adapting new tactics, knowing that it's not enough to kill extremists and terrorists; we also need to protect the Afghan people and improve their daily lives. And today, our troops are helping to secure polling places for this week's election so that Afghans can choose the future that they want.
Now, these new efforts have not been without a price. The fighting has been fierce. More Americans have given their lives. And as always, the thoughts and prayers of every American are with those who make the ultimate sacrifice in our defense.
As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight and we won't defeat it overnight. This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a -- this is fundamental to the defense of our people.
And going forward, we will constantly adapt to new tactics to stay ahead of the enemy and give our troops the tools and equipment they need to succeed. And at every step of the way, we will assess our efforts to defeat al Qaed a and its extremist allies, and to help the Afghan and Pakistani people build the future that they seek.
Position #1: A Calculated Strategy for AfghanistanBy Trudy Rubin Rubin (Real Clear Politics, February 2009)
Obama inherited a scary mess from the Bush administration. Seven years after the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and successfully ousted the regime that had hosted Osama bin Laden, it's clear that our victory there was squandered.
While the Bush team focused on Iraq, the Taliban made a comeback in Afghanistan, and, along with al-Qaeda, established a haven across the border inside Pakistan. Perhaps 70 percent of the country has become off limits to Afghan security forces; NATO troops are too few, and too conflicted about their mission, to stop the Taliban's expansion.
So Obama is conducting a series of major strategy reviews aimed at producing a new approach to Afghanistan - and Pakistan - before a crucial NATO summit in early April. Kilcullen, who's now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, worked on one just-completed review under Petraeus.
Now to his main points:
(1.) Yes, we need to be in Afghanistan, even though Americans are rightly worried about the cost in lives and money. We can't afford to let Afghanistan become another Taliban-run sanctuary for al-Qaeda, which could lead to another 9/11.
(2.) Yes, the bigger problem is across the border in Pakistan's tribal areas, where al-Qaeda leaders are based. "We've focused on Afghanistan," Kilcullen says, "because we have troops there. But the real problem is in Pakistan; the real threat is the collapse of a state with 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army larger than the U.S. Army, and Osama bin Laden waiting in the wings" to get his hands on those nukes.
So any Afghanistan strategy must focus on the entire region. That includes diplomacy to try to strengthen Pakistan and turn its leaders' attention from India to the internal terrorist threat to its survival.
But in the meantime, something must be done to prevent more of Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban, which would increase its ability to threaten Pakistan next door.
(3.) Yes, the additional U.S. troop numbers are far from sufficient. So the use to which those new troops are put becomes even more crucial.
In other words, as in Iraq, it's the strategy, stupid (my words, not Kilcullen's). Despite the many differences from Iraq, there is a key similarity: We must focus on protecting the Afghan people from Taliban intimidation, while helping them develop their own security forces and improve their living standards.
Instead of doing that, says the Aussie, "we've been chasing the Taliban main force out in the countryside, while the Taliban underground cells intimidate the population where they live."
To use the new troops effectively, he continues, we need to change focus. "The key word for Afghanistan is triage," he explains. "We need to figure out where the bulk of the population lives and how to secure the major population centers, not just towns, but major villages."
U.S. forces should be out in the community, working alongside (and training more) Afghan army and police to support local officials and secure delivery of services. In areas where the Taliban threatens, but we can't send U.S. forces, we should "put special forces in partnership with local neighborhood watch groups."
He adds that Afghan tribal structure is far different and less hierarchical than in Iraq, and has been broken down through war, so we can't rely on tribes as militias. "We should use local forces," he says, "based on districts, not tribes, for village defense. Make the population self-defending in partnership with us and the government."
In other words, help Afghans help themselves. And, as in Iraq, protect "oil spots" of territory until the population feels secure. Then expand security outward from there.
(4.) Yes, there is no purely military solution to Afghanistan. Afghans need institutions that provide them with basic necessities of living, but a corrupt central government can't seem to provide them. So U.S. efforts at reconstruction should be local, local. "We're focused on building national institutions in Kabul, while the Taliban focuses on establishing control at the local level," says the strategist.
To sum up, Kilcullen says we should Prevent (Taliban take-over), Protect, Build, and ultimately Hand-off to the Afghans. Given his prescience on Iraq, his ideas on Afghanistan deserve attention.
Position #2 Where the Real Fight Is By Michael A. Cohen, Parag Khanna, (Foreign Policy, July 2009)
Why Pakistan, not Afghanistan, should be the focus of Obama's war on terror.
The conventional wisdom in Washington -- and the core of U.S. President Barack Obama's "Af-Pak" policy, which he announced in March -- is that Afghanistan is now the central front in the conflict formerly known as the war on terror. Pakistan is essential too, of course, and indeed, the thinking goes, you can't have a successful Afghanistan policy without a successful Pakistan policy. The problem with this conventional wisdom is that it gets the situation entirely backward: The real fight is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and a successful Af-Pak policy would be to minimize the "Af" part and maximize the "Pak."
Although Obama has committed an additional 20,000 troops to Afghanistan, as well as additional resources, some recent and far more discrete successes in Pakistan suggest that the United States might be putting its eggs in the wrong basket. With improved U.S.-Pakistani intelligence-sharing, U.S. drones killed more than 40 commanders loyal to Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban, in Waziristan last week. The U.S. ability to rout the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan is increasingly showing results while the counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan is wracked with uncertainty and dubious prospects for success.
Indeed, much of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is dedicated to stopping the Taliban from returning to power. But the group is deeply unpopular, and its prospects of taking over the country are remote. Even more dubious is the idea that such a return would mean a reprise of pre-9/11 days, when al Qaeda built a substantial terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's outfit has had no active presence in that country since 2002, and even if it were somehow able to regain one, the same pilotless drones wreaking havoc in Pakistan could do the same in Afghanistan. In effect, the United States is undertaking a $65-billion-a-year campaign in Afghanistan to defeat an enemy that is, for the most part, located across the border.
Further, the U.S. mission is moving away from the goal of fighting the enemy and toward nation-building and establishing the legitimacy of the Afghan government. Today's Army mission statement for Afghanistan says "killing the enemy is secondary" to the larger goal of "protecting the populace." Preventing a return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan is important, but a long, state-building mission in one of the world's most underdeveloped countries is the costliest and least effective way to accomplish that goal.
If, that is, it is accomplishable at all. Building up the Afghan government to serve as a credible presence throughout the country will be an extraordinarily difficult mission. Corruption is rampant, and the Afghan Army and police are unable to provide any significant assistance to the counterinsurgency mission. After eight years, the face of the war in Afghanistan is that of a U.S. soldier, and it will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the better approach -- and the United States can do it, as it did in Iraq -- is to work with local Afghan leaders to target insurgents while also enticing senior Taliban commanders to "flip" and even give up al Qaeda figures if they come over the border from Pakistan.
The even better course of action is to shift the weight of U.S. political and military efforts to Pakistan. There, the United States should continue its policy of waging drone attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. With better intelligence from the Pakistani side -- as demonstrated recently -- the U.S. Army can improve the accuracy of its strikes. And though drone strikes are controversial, targeting al Qaeda's leadership is the best military strategy -- and the best way to protect Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis from terrorism. And that fight is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
What's more, though nation-building in Afghanistan is an unlikely proposition even in the long term, nation-building in Pakistan is essential -- and achievable. Pakistan's military, including its Frontier Corps and police, needs U.S. assistance to build its capability to "clear, hold, and build" in the country's tribal areas. The impending Pakistani military operation into North Waziristan, on the heels of its offensive in the Swat Valley, is a difficult challenge in harsh terrain. And U.S. military assistance should go hand in hand with greater U.S. coordination between both Afghanistan and Pakistan to prevent the movement of al Qaeda and Taliban operatives back and forth across the border.
To be sure, Pakistani nation-building will not succeed without Pakistani support and ownership. Until the country's political and military establishments commit more resources to meeting this objective, any short-term security gains -- both in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- will quickly be erased. The Pakistani tribal areas, for example, don't need the stillborn pipe dream of U.S.-backed "reconstruction opportunity zones." They need provincial reconstruction teams of their own, such as those that have jump-started local governance reform and economic activity in parts of Afghanistan.
Ultimately, the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will cost significantly more in U.S. blood and treasure, and it has at best a marginal chance of success. Far better would be a more limited strategy that eschews the goal of nation-building in Afghanistan and embraces that goal in Pakistan. It is there, not in Afghanistan, that the United States can deal al Qaeda a devastating blow and foster regional stability. The sooner the United States realizes that the better.
Position #3 Mirage of the Good War by Tariq Ali (New Left Review, March 2008)
Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Support for the war was universal in the chanceries of the West, even before its aims and parameters had been declared. nato governments rushed to assert themselves ‘all for one’…
Three years later, as the chaos in Iraq deepened, Afghanistan became the ‘good war’ by comparison. It had been legitimized by the un—even if the resolution was not passed until after the bombs had finished falling—and backed by nato. If tactical differences had sharpened over Iraq, they could be resolved in Afghanistan. First Zapatero, then Prodi, then Rudd, compensated for pulling troops out of Iraq by dispatching them to Kabul. [2] France and Germany could extol their peace-keeping or civilizing roles there. As suicide bombings increased in Baghdad, Afghanistan was now—for American Democrats keen to prove their ‘security’ credentials—the ‘real front’ of the war on terror, supported by every us presidential candidate in the run-up to the 2008 elections, with Senator Obama pressuring the White House to violate Pakistani sovereignty whenever necessary. With varying degrees of firmness, the occupation of Afghanistan was also supported by China, Iran and Russia; though in the case of the latter, there was always a strong element of Schadenfreude. Soviet veterans of the Afghan war were amazed to see their mistakes now being repeated by the United States in a war even more inhumane than its predecessor.
Meanwhile, the number of Afghan civilians killed has exceeded many tens of times over the 2,746 who died in Manhattan. Unemployment is around 60 per cent and maternal, infant and child mortality levels are now among the highest in the world. Opium harvests have soared, and the ‘Neo-Taliban’ is growing stronger year by year. By common consent, Karzai’s government does not even control its own capital, let alone provide an example of ‘good governance’. Reconstruction funds vanish into cronies’ pockets or go to pay short-contract Western consultants. Police are predators rather than protectors. The social crisis is deepening. Increasingly, Western commentators have evoked the spectre of failure—usually in order to spur encore un effort. A Guardian leader summarizes: ‘Defeat looks possible, with all the terrible consequences that will bring.’
An Afghan surge?
The argument that more nato troops are the solution is equally unsustainable. All the evidence suggests that the brutality of the occupying forces has been one of the main sources of recruits for the Taliban. American air power, lovingly referred to as ‘Big Daddy’ by frightened us soldiers on unwelcome terrain, is far from paternal when it comes to targeting Pashtun villages. There is widespread fury among Afghans at the number of civilian casualties, many of them children. There have been numerous incidents of rape and rough treatment of women by isaf soldiers, as well as indiscriminate bombing of villages and house-to-house search-and-arrest missions. The behaviour of the foreign mercenaries backing up the nato forces is just as bad. Even sympathetic observers admit that ‘their alcohol consumption and patronage of a growing number of brothels in Kabul . . . is arousing public anger and resentment.’ [18] To this could be added the deaths by torture at the us-run Bagram prison and the resuscitation of a Soviet-era security law under which detainees are being sentenced to 20-year jail terms on the basis of summary allegations by us military authorities. All this creates a thirst for dignity that can only be assuaged by genuine independence.
Talk of ‘victory’ sounds increasingly hollow to Afghan ears. Many who detest the Taliban are so angered by the failures of nato and the behaviour of its troops that they are pleased there is some opposition. What was initially viewed by some locals as a necessary police action against al-Qaeda following the 9.11 attacks is now perceived by a growing majority in the region as a fully fledged imperial occupation. Successive recent reports have suggested that the unpopularity of the government and the ‘disrespectful’ behaviour of the occupying troops have had the effect of creating nostalgia for the time when the Taliban were in power. The repression leaves people with no option but to back those trying to resist, especially in a part of the world where the culture of revenge is strong. When a whole community feels threatened it reinforces solidarity, regardless of the character or weakness of those who fight back. This does not just apply to the countryside. The mass protests in Kabul, when civilians were killed by an American military vehicle, signalled the obvious targets:
Rioters chanted slogans against the United States and President Karzai and attacked the Parliament building, the offices of media outlets and nongovernmental organizations, diplomatic residences, brothels, and hotels and restaurants that purportedly served alcohol. The police, many of whom disappeared, proved incompetent, and the vulnerability of the government to mass violence became clear. [19]
As the British and Russians discovered to their cost in the preceding two centuries, Afghans do not like being occupied. If a second-generation Taliban is now growing and creating new alliances it is not because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but because it is the only available umbrella for national liberation. Initially, the middle-cadre Taliban who fled across the border in November 2001 and started low-level guerrilla activity the following year attracted only a trickle of new recruits from madrasas and refugee camps. From 2004 onwards, increasing numbers of young Waziris were radicalized by Pakistani military and police incursions in the tribal areas, as well as devastating attacks on villages by unmanned us ‘drones’. At the same time, the movement was starting to win active support from village mullahs in Zabul, Helmand, Ghazni, Paktika and Kandahar provinces, and then in the towns. By 2006 there were reports of Kabul mullahs who had previously supported Karzai’s allies but were now railing against the foreigners and the government; calls for jihad against the occupiers were heard in the north-east border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
The largest pool for new Taliban recruits, according to a well-informed recent estimate, has been ‘communities antagonized by the local authorities and security forces’. In Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan, Karzai’s cronies—district and provincial governors, security bosses, police chiefs—are quite prepared to tip off us troops against their local rivals, as well as subjecting the latter to harassment and extortion. In these circumstances, the Taliban are the only available defence. (According to the same report, the Taliban themselves have claimed that families driven into refugee camps by indiscriminate us airpower attacks on their villages have been their major source of recruits.) By 2006 the movement was winning the support of traders and businessmen in Kandahar, and led a mini ‘Tet offensive’ there that year. One reason suggested for their increasing support in towns is that the new-model Taliban have relaxed their religious strictures, for males at least—no longer demanding beards or banning music—and improved their propaganda: producing cassette tapes and cds of popular singers, and dvds of us and Israeli atrocities in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
The alternative would require a withdrawal of all us forces, either preceded or followed by a regional pact to guarantee Afghan stability for the next ten years. Pakistan, Iran, India, Russia and, possibly, China could guarantee and support a functioning national government, pledged to preserve the ethnic and religious diversity of Afghanistan and create a space in which all its citizens can breathe, think and eat every day. It would need a serious social and economic plan to rebuild the country and provide the basic necessities for its people. This would not only be in the interests of Afghanistan, it would be seen as such by its people—physically, politically and morally exhausted by decades of war and two occupations. Violence, arbitrary or deliberate, has been their fate for too long. They want the nightmare to end and not be replaced with horrors of a different kind. Religious extremists would get short shrift from the people if they disrupted an agreed peace and began a jihad to recreate the Taliban Emirate of Mullah Omar.
The us occupation has not made this task easy. Its predictable failures have revived the Taliban, and increasingly the Pashtuns are uniting behind them. But though the Taliban have been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda in the Western media, most of their supporters are driven by local concerns; their political evolution would be more likely to parallel that of Pakistan’s domesticated Islamists if the invaders were to leave. A nato withdrawal could facilitate a serious peace process. It might also benefit Pakistan, provided its military leaders abandoned foolish notions of ‘strategic depth’ and viewed India not as an enemy but as a possible partner in creating a cohesive regional framework within which many contentious issues could be resolved. Are Pakistan’s military leaders and politicians capable of grasping the nettle and moving their country forward? Will Washington let them? The solution is political, not military. And it lies in the region, not in Washington or Brussels.
Position #4: Time to Get Out of Afghanistan By George F. Will (Washington Post, September 1, 2009)
"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' " Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."
Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?
U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.
So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.