Ken Berwitz

From Bill Gertz of the Washington Times:

Afghanistan debate

The Obama administration has conducted a vigorous internal debate over its new strategy for Afghanistan, expected to be unveiled by the president in a speech Friday.

According to two U.S. government sources close to the issue, senior policymakers were divided over how comprehensive to make the strategy, involving an initial boost of 17,000 U.S. troops.

On the one side were Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, who argued in closed-door meetings for a minimal strategy of stabilizing Afghanistan that one source described as a "lowest common denominator" approach.

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The goal of these advocates was to limit civilian and other nonmilitary efforts in Afghanistan and focus on a main military objective of denying safe haven to the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.

The other side of the debate was led by Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy for the region, who along with U.S. Central Command leader Gen. David H. Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for a major nation-building effort.

The Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton faction, according to the sources, prevailed. The result is expected to be a major, long-term military and civilian program to reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed nations to a relatively prosperous democratic state.

According to one defense official close to the debate, the key to success in Afghanistan remains eliminating terrorist safe havens and training camps, which are no longer in Afghanistan but in Pakistan.

The key to any strategy remains Pakistan and its border regions, which remain terror safe havens, said the official, who, like the other sources, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Additionally, Gen. Petraeus made sure the Afghan strategy sought to borrow from the successful counterinsurgency strategy and tactics used in Iraq. According to one official in Afghanistan, many of the Afghans are not "hateful against the West."

A White House spokesman and an aide to Mr. Holbrooke declined to comment on the strategy or the debate over it.

So let me get this straight: 

-We are going to increase our troops in Afghanistan with the expectation that we can extend what would pass for democracy there beyond its capital of Kabul and a few other "cities"?   

-We're going to do this in a country with virtually no assets, virtually no infrastructure, and an undeducated, hostile population, most of which considers the west a bunch of infidels who should be either converted to Islam or dead? 

-We're going to do this in a country comprised mostly of impossibly desolate, destitute, lawless terrain, where no government structure of any kind, democratic or otherwise, has any chance whatsoever of functioning?

This is the great Obama plan for Afghanistan? 

And what happens if (when) it doesn't work?  Are we going to send more troops in?  Keep adding to the troop count? 

Where will we get the troops from?  Iraq? 

We were able to achieve success in Iraq because it actually operates as a country.  It has infrastructure, it has a reasonably educated population, it has real cities, real industry and, of course, its almighty oil reserves.  Are we going to jeopardize that success for an impossible, losing situation in Afghanistan?

President Bush knew better than to do this.  He understood that, beyond Kabul, Kandahar and a couple of other "population centers", there was nothing that the US or anyone else could do there. 

Mr. Bush's objectives were to remove the taliban government and to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a vast training center for bin laden and his al qaeda murderers.  He accomplished both.  But neither Bush nor anyone else could ever have removed all taliban and al qaeda entirely.  They are too entrenched in too many places where no one rules except the local warlord.  Despite this fact, Bush was villified daily by the lunatic left for not making them both disappear, as if it were some simple, doable task. 

Now here is Barack Obama acting as if he, in fact, can.  How does he think this will happen?  What will he do, make a great speech to them? 

If you liked the land war in Vietnam, you're going to love his Afghanistan policy.