Surging in Afghanistan

The New York Times reports on how President Obama came to his decision to send the extra troops in support of (a modified version of) General McChrystal's new strategy. Early on, the president came to the conclusion that the consequences of failure in the region are unacceptable. After that, it was primarily about finding an approach that has a chance to work in a reasonably short period of time so that the Western role in the country, at least the leading part of it, can be temporary. We're looking to turn things around in Afghanistan, a little like we helped turn things around in Iraq after 2006, so that there will be a chance for a more favorable development--for ourselves and for the people there. The former won't happen without the latter. That's all we can do, really: give ourselves and the people there a chance. There are too many uncertain factors, too much burdensome history in both places, to use words like "winning," or "resolution." At the same time, Iraq since 2006 has shown that apparently unstoppable downward slides also can be halted and partly reversed. What this NYT article is lacking is significant detail on how the president and his advisers defined the consequences of failure (presumably the result of a decision now to pull out of Afghanistan)--which doesn't mean that such a definition, such a discussion doesn't exist in the White House (or that the Times didn't do an article on this earlier). When I try to imagine the possible consequences of taking the advice of the many proponents of giving up on Afghanistan, I don't feel reassured at all that a withdrawal now would not make things worse for everyone except the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Elaboration: What I forgot to highlight from the Times article is how it reports on Obama's dismay about the cost of all this: human and financial, and how conscious everyone around the table was of earlier cases of "escalating" a foreign war (Vietnam under Johnson being the classic case). Anyone who knows anything about, for example, the Vietnam case will understand how this is different, and how the term "escalation" is hardly appropriate here. Maybe I'll elaborate more on this last point later. In the meantime, the Times piece is worth reading in its entirety.