Afghanistan: what's the exit strategy?

Do most people in the United States realize the morass our government is leading us deeper into in Afghanistan? Probably not. As Peter Rothberg recently pointed out in the Nation,

... recent estimates of coverage by major news outlets report that a scant 0.6 percent of reporting has been devoted to Afghanistan.

Several significant perspectives have become available recently.

Douglas Macgregor, a former U.S. Army colonel, recently laid out a scary picutre in Defense News. He sees the United States repeating mistakes that will seem all too familiar to those of us who lived through the war in Vietnam.

In 1965, we misconstrued a region of temporary, tactical importance as being of enduring strategic value. President Lyndon Johnson's advisers had unfounded, naïve and unrealistic expectations of Vietnam's near-term potential to evolve into a modern social democratic constitutional republic if the United States put the "right people" in charge and provided a pile of cash and some "military assistance."

... Politicians frequently substitute a fascination with direct action in the form of air strikes or special operations killings for strategy. They see such action as a "cleaner" approach with its own logic, as well as tactics with less risk of U.S. casualties. But in the absence of a viable strategy with attainable objectives, direct action is problematic.

The whole article is worth reading. Robert Gates playing the part of Robert MacNamara, perhaps?

Meanwhile, a NATO ally, Germany, has had a military base at Kunduz in Afghanistan for several years -- and sure doesn't seem to be making any "progress" according to reporting by the German paper Spiegel. We don't read many U.S. reporters being this forthright about failure.

When the deputy director of Aqtash High School talks of the government, he isn't referring to Hamid Karzai's central government in Kabul. Nor does he refer to the provincial administration in Kunduz. "The Taliban are our government," Bashir says. "They have taken over our region, their commanders give the orders here."

... At least 10 girls' sections of schools located near Kunduz have been closed down in the last three weeks after receiving threats from the Taliban. Parents simply stopped sending their children to school because of the danger. ... Neither the German army, the Bundeswehr, nor the local police force are effective against the Islamist extremists. At the most, they can temporarily dislodge the Taliban, but they then move on to terrorize other areas where there are no German soldiers.

Most of all, though, the closures threaten one of the few successes that the Germans have had in Afghanistan. It is an achievement that has been repeatedly trumpeted by those in favor of continued engagement; hardly a German politician has refrained from mentioning how encouraging it is to visit a girls' school in Afghanistan. Now, though, the schools -- just like in the south where recent acid attacks against schoolgirls have hit the headlines -- have become a potent propaganda tool for the Taliban. Western troops, so goes the message, can't do anything to stop the Islamist fighters.

Pressure in the U.S. for an exit from Iraq built up gradually as people realized first that the war had been based on a lie and second that continued U.S. deaths served no useful purpose. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will keep its promise of full withdrawal; no one should be surprised if the Iraqi civil war, on hold for the moment, breaks out again as the U.S. draws down.

Now in Afghanistan, a military occupation with no clear U.S. objective is being challenged by a resistance that can be tamped down momentarily but not eradicated. At present, in fact, the "bad guys" are winning if we are to believe numerous accounts including this German one. And the war has leaked into Pakistan. The U.S. is now building an Iraq-style super embassy(outpost) in Islamabad.

How long will it take for people in the United States realize our troops have once again been committed to a long, expensive, unwinnable war with no plan? President Obama, what's the aim? What's the exit strategy?