Biden, Modified: The Best Course of Action in Afghanistan

[Gwereeya]

A "hearts and minds" counterinsurgency, coupled with a delegitimized Karzai government in Kabul, is, to my mind, the perfect screenplay for Vietnam: The Sequel, and, no matter what the chickenhawks at The Weekly Substandard might crow as they rattle their armchair sabers, simply giving McChrystal the 45,000 additional troops and a hearty "Go get 'em, Stan!" is not the answer.

What to do then? Well, Abdullah Abdullah almost certainly received more legitimate votes in the recent election than did Karzai, so perhaps we could forcibly remove the president and install the former foreign minister as his replacement. After all, that move has worked out so very well for us around the world in the past!

Or, we could simply yank 'em all out and bring 'em all home! Great Party politics, that, but national security policy? Ah, not so much.

What I would suggest is the Biden Approach with an addendum: Drastically scale back the number of our combat forces, shifting to focus to a counterintelligence strategy concomitant with Special Ops military action in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Then, more removed from the fog of the battle, the Administration will be in a much better position to see the entire, long-term forest, unobstructed by the immediacy of the trees, and decide if, when, and how to reinsert our conventional military into the theater, with the focused resolve that comes from clear, definitive and, most importantly, achievable goals.

[timeforpeace]

1. We can call it "Defeat Lite".

[Gwereeya]

2. How so?

That scenario should have been adopted as soon as we'd confirmed that bin Laden---thanks to Bush & Cheney---had escaped Tora Bora.