Cash for Catastrophes

The war in Afghanistan, or why we can't have nice things.

While health-care reform dominates the news, the Obama administration continues to escalate our involvement in Afghanistan, under the impression that The Surge Works™ strategy from Iraq can be replicated like a tall glass of synthehol on the Star Trek starship's Ten Forward.

The administration's plan to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan has caused barely a peep from a political class obsessed with the solitary outburst of a single Republican legislator. All things being equal, there should be more heckling and less obsequious clapping during presidential addresses — maybe next time someone from either side of the aisle can ask Obama what exactly his Afghanistan exit strategy might be.

The surge — what else to call it? — will bring U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 68,000. Even optimistic assessments suggest that this investment might take longer to pay off than the loans Americans have taken out to cash in their clunkers for Hyundai Elantras and Ford Focuses.

The troop escalation is happening as violence in Afghanistan explodes. With 2009 the deadliest year in Afghanistan yet for forces of the occupation, policymakers are starting to look worriedly at the history of Afghanistan on Wikipedia. Old copies of Rambo III (which was dedicated to the brave Mujahadeen of Afghanistan) are being dusted off and studied for counterinsurgency strategies. Liberals are starting to regret all that lazy, self-destructive rhetoric about how we should have been focusing on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, which they never really meant anyway.

For better or worse, Bush's critics got what they wanted — as American troops leave Iraq, it will be all Afghanistan, all the time. Get ready for more lousy film adaptations of Khaled Hosseini novels and more halfhearted concern for Afghan women (to be abandoned at the first opportunity).

America has a considerable obligation to the country, but if Obama isn't careful, the war will drain the vitality from his potentially transformative presidency. And unlike the health-care debate, Obama won't be able to defeat the insurgency with a well-delivered prime-time address.

What might help is to radically alter current Beltway thinking about Afghanistan, which is dominated by a foreign policy elite that benefits from long-term, expensive American involvement overseas (after all, what would they do at the Brookings Institution if we weren't at war somewhere?) and seems content with a decade-long commitment in search of a rationale.

Step one would involve asking whether American interests were well-served by anything beyond the toppling of the Taliban in 2001 and how much our delusions of omnipotence might cost us in the long term. Step two would be a proper assessment of what exactly is going wrong. A few more troops aren't going to fix Afghanistan, which suffers from structural problems bigger than any U.S. strategy.

One major contributing factor to instability in Afghanistan is the cultivation and sale of opium. Unfortunately, the Western-led approach is the same daft set of failed policies that have wrecked governments in Latin America for decades.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Why not instead buy the crops at market prices and use them to bring down the prices of prescription painkillers? There's no such thing as a Percocet plant — they call them opiates for a reason. People in pain all over the world need them and can't afford them, and yet we spend billions every year burning saleable assets, wrecking lives and destabilizing governments instead of doing the sensible thing.

And instead of the further militarization of the situation, it is time to start thinking about negotiated solutions and compromise positions. Many on the left hoped this was Obama's secret position all along, but it seems not to be.

Reappraising our policies in Afghanistan isn't about defeatism, but about a pragmatic realization that U.S. and coalition resources are increasingly limited and public patience is rapidly diminishing. The U.S. military is already stretched thin after eight years of endless Bush administration warfare and can hardly afford another decade of drip-drop killing in the mountains of Afghanistan, especially when the economy continues to totter on the precipice of disaster. It will destroy us, no matter how heroic our efforts.

The bottom line is this — if you're looking around thinking how crummy it is to be wasting trillions of dollars fighting two wars with hazy goals and unclear departure dates, while your pension fund is being raided, your taxes raised, your hopes for health care dashed and your progressive mayor talking about a "doomsday budget," you might want to like, I don't know, remember how that makes you feel the next time you decide to elect people who enjoy invading other countries.

Like the late, great barbecued turkey leg at Citizens Bank Park, wars are way easier to start than they are to finish. And whatever his other virtues, Obama is not going to end this war without sustained pressure from the left, which the left should think about how best to apply.

(editorial@citypaper.net)