Thomas P.M. Barnett

Karen DeYoung piece in WAPO underscores the bum's rush mentality at work in the Obama administration:

The Obama administration's campaign to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan's second-largest city is a go-for-broke move that even its authors are unsure will succeed.

The bet is that the Kandahar operation, backed by thousands of U.S. troops and billions of dollars, will break the mystique and morale of the insurgents, turn the tide of the war and validate the administration's Afghanistan strategy.

There is no Plan B.

The deadline for results is short: Administration officials anticipate that the operation will form the centerpiece of a major strategy assessment due in December and will justify the first withdrawals of U.S. troops from elsewhere in Afghanistan in July 2011. Although operations initiated last winter in southwestern Helmand province will continue, and new troop deployments are scheduled this year for northern and eastern Afghanistan, little else will matter if the news from Kandahar is not good.

The urgency and the difficulty of the task were illustrated Saturday when the Taliban launched an unprecedented rocket and ground attack against the Kandahar air field, NATO's largest installation in southern Afghanistan and the headquarters of the upcoming offensive. Several coalition troops and civilian employees were wounded when rockets sailed over perimeter fortifications, but gunmen who tried to fire their way inside through a gate were unsuccessful, the U.S. military said.

Officials have described the offensive's blend of civilian and military operations as the first true test of the counterinsurgency doctrine adopted five years ago on the eve of the 2007 surge in Iraq, but since only imperfectly applied. As troops battle insurgent forces entrenched among the population on the outskirts of the city, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, U.S.-mentored Afghan police will establish a presence in the relatively secure center.

Scary to think this rush job is being described as the "first true test of the counterinsurgency doctrine." Last time I checked, the doctrine didn't say, "Do a half-assed job for the first seven years and then cram a serious effort into a window of several months, making a do-or-die show of force in a single city."

We all hope it works, but this is not a seriously patient test of anything other than Obama's intense desire to quit the place amidst a good showing.

There has been no significant regionalization of the solution set. Instead, we get this showpiece showdown.

Tell me that doesn't strike you like magical thinking? "If we can make it work in Kandahar, then the Afghans themselves will make it work throughout the rest of the country!"

I have a bad feeling.

Even more so when I hear Obama saying his new national security strategy will create a new "international order" based on diplomacy and engagement. An unimpressive showing in Afghanistan will render that vision DOA--no matter what pretty words are attached.