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In policy terms, this has been enormous mission creep far beyond our national interests. The current U.S. counterinsurgency strategy appears likely to fail. Washington and its allies will not defeat the Taliban militarily. President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt government is unlikely to improve significantly. The Afghan National Army cannot take over combat missions from the U.S. in southern and eastern Afghanistan in any realistic time frame. And the Pakistan army will not move against Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.
De facto Afghan partition offers the Obama administration the best alternative to strategic defeat. The administration should stop setting withdrawal deadlines and instead commit the United States to a long- term combat role in Afghanistan, with roughly 35,000 to 50,000 troops, for the next seven to 10 years.
Washington should also accept that the Taliban are likely to control most of the Pashtun south and east. The price of forestalling that is far too high for Americans to continue paying. Washington and its partners should let the local correlation of forces take its course in the Pashtun homeland — while deploying U.S. air power and Special Forces to ensure that the north and west of Afghanistan do not succumb to the Taliban.
In Libya, the president has gotten us militarily into the middle of a civil war in a country of little importance to the United States. And he offers no clear strategy to reach his ambitious objectives. The administration’s inconsistent, even incoherent, statements on the Libya war wrestle each other for dominance in the daily news cycle, while NATO predictably founders without robust U.S. leadership. The U.S. should quickly end its military role in the Libyan civil war. We should leave that to the European allies — if they want to take it up — and return to issues of far greater importance to our country, like our fiscal problems.
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