The Mission in Afghanistan

Via Judah Grunstein, Sam Roggeveen raises an important question about whether the rationales for staying in Afghanistan would pass muster as a cause for going to war initially:

I wonder how convincing such arguments would be if we weren't in Afghanistan already. Would we now advocate an invasion and long-term occupation of Afghanistan to stabilise the Indian Ocean region, reduce the chances of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, disrupt drug supplies, protect energy sources, substitute for the lack of a regional security framework and discourage Pakistani cooperation with the Taliban? More to the point, have any of these problems been reduced or made more manageable by the Western presence in Afghanistan? How?

Grunstein adds:

So to take Sam's thought experiment one step further, imagine that if instead of invading Afghanistan in 2001, we'd managed to destroy al-Qaida's base structure and safe haven there through precision air and missile strikes, with the same result of displacing AQ to the Pakistani FATA. What about the current situation in Afghanistan would argue for the introduction of a massive U.S. and allied military presence there, as opposed to military assistance to Afghan opposition forces of the sort that effectively defeated the brutal Soviet occupation in the 1980s?

And if the answer to that question is that we could accomplish whatever is realistically possible in Afghanistan indirectly through Afghan proxies, what about that answer is inconsistent with beginning a responsibly paced drawdown now?

Good questions.

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