The Afghan decision | Marc Lynch - 0 views
lynch.foreignpolicy.com/...the_afghan_decision
Afghanistan obama USA strategy diplomacy IR opinion analysis Lynch Pakistan
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Al-Qaeda is not really active in Afghanistan anymore, and it is not equivalent with the Taliban (either the Afghan or Pakistani variants). Al-Qaeda Central still matters, but the decentralized network and ideological narrative around the world no longer depends on it. Nothing the U.S. does or does not do in Afghanistan will defeat al-Qaeda -- the failure of that movement will happen for its own reasons, if it happens (as it already largely has in the Arab world). The moment where Obama recognized this reality was both reassuring and terrifying: when he mentioned Somalia and Yemen. He understands that Afghanistan is not the only, or even the primary, location where those motivated by al-Qaeda's ideas can operate. But if the next move is to bring governance and stability, and counter-terrorism and COIN, to every ungoverned space on Earth -- or even every Muslim-majority ungoverned space on Earth -- then we are truly facing bankruptcy. Intellectually, financially, militarily, and politically. We can't afford to do this in Afghanistan. We certainly can't afford to do it in Somalia and Yemen... even if we should, which I strongly doubt.
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I haven't heard anybody yet say that they believed that Obama would really start drawing down in June 2011, no matter what he says. And yet the strategy depends upon that commitment being credible, because that is what is supposed to generate the urgency for local actors to change.
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the best way for skeptics such as myself to help this strategy to succeed is to keep a sharp focus on the proposed mechanisms of change, demanding evidence that they are actually happening, and to hold the administration to its pledges to maintaining a clear time horizon and to avoiding the iron logic of serial escalations of a failing enterprise.
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Generating domestic pressure to make his commitments on a time horizon and this not becoming an endless series of futile escalations credible will be one of the most important things which Obama's skeptical supporters can do over the next year.