Beware a too narrow AFPAK agenda

ARTICLE: Obama Says He Is Sharpening Focus of War in Afghanistan, By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, March 30, 2009; Page A06

I always get a bit worried when I hear we're just going to focus on reducing Al Qaeda's operational capacity in a country, because that insinuates the usual cockroach-spraying technique that simply sees them move to another location. We already did the minimal effort in Afghanistan and AQ moved to the FATA in Pakistan, leaving us with a weak Afghanistan and now an unstable Pakistan. Just rinsing-and-repeating on that in Pakistan would seem to leave me with a pair of weak statelets (Afghanistan/FATA) with a new one brought into the mix (Baluchistan, by all indications, becomes the next apartment over).

In short, the "narrow" agenda smacks of Powell Doctrine to me: "I go, I shoot, I don't fix up but at least I drive out the bad guy and then I leave, and then I wonder why the situation never gets any better and X years later this situation still sucks and still creates bad outputs I need to deal with."

If you adopt the narrow agenda, on some level then, I don't know why you even bother making the effort, because it simply wears you down and costs money, it ruins more places, and AQ simply continues doing what AQ does best--move when the apartment is sprayed.

Comments

[David Brooks]

I agree that the question that needs to be asked is, "What does defeating AQ and the Taliban ultimately mean?" Or maybe more importantly, "How do we defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban?" As Marines move into Helmand and Kandahar, Baluchistan will probably become the next FATA. Predator drones won't be enough once that develops.

[Louis Heberlein]

What we say is often IW. What we do is sometimes subtle SysAdmin. Hard to get candid picture.

AQ received Saudi, Taliban and even US passive support until 9/11. Taliban received support to get Russia out, then deal with chaos that followed. We are just getting back to good Taliban, versus bad Taliban stage.

There is also the regional pitch, versus the Central Asian pitch with Russia and China spins. Oh My!

[David Sutton]

I suspect that what we’re seeing here, disheartening as it is, is just Beltway SOP. Give the pundits what they want to hear, short term solutions that have a measure of feasible success, in terms of quick answers to long term problems.

Myopic yes, but not entirely unexpected. My hope is that Obama, and those advising him, can see that it is the long term solution, however unpalatable that may be to the general public, and annoyingly hard for the media to condense into 30 seconds reportage, that is the best opportunity we have to not just strengthen the region but by proxy the general security of the US and those is us along for the ride.