In keeping with the PSA’s charter, we’re seeing bipartisan consensus emerging around U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The bad news? There are actually two bipartisan consensuses.

Technically, that is impossible. Consensus means “general agreement” or “a view reached by a group as a whole” so there can’t really be more than one.

And that is the problem. So long as the right is fighting the right, and others on the left are fighting the left, policymakers will be inclined to focus on other policy issues, content to let Afghan policy drift, and hope for a miraculous turnaround (e.g. Karzai becomes less corrupt and more competent; the Afghan economy begins to produce something other than opium; the Pashtuns decide to make common cause with the Tajiks, Turkmen and Hazara; Afghan men decide that Afghan women should have rights, etc). Our men and women in uniform, engaged increasingly in armed social work are caught in the middle while the pointy-heads pull on their respective chins.

Certain leading voices on the right agree with others on the left that we must redefine our ends in Afghanistan, and begin exploring ways to draw down the military presence there. My colleagues Malou Innocent and Ted Galen Carpenter have just completed a comprehensive study making this case (you can get a preview here), and will present it for the first time at Cato on Monday, September 14th.

A familiar group of hawks and neocons dismiss such sentiments as defeatist bordering on treasonous. Others suggest that talk of withdrawal is simply premature.

The debate got a jolt this week when George Will’s Tuesday column in the Washington Post declared that it was “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.”

News of the Will column broke late Monday night. Bill Kristol — tipped off, no doubt, by the Post’s editors who agree with him — had his response ready by 9 am.

The salient question: Would the GOP follow Will or Bill? By 4 pm, we had our answer when Michael Steele and the RNC weighed in…on Kristol’s side.

There is a debate on the left as well. George Will’s position echoes a stance adopted by Sen. Russ Feingold last month, and repeated this morning on NPR (with Rep. Jim McGovern). But scholars at the left-leaning Center for New American Security and the Brookings Institution have joined forces with those from AEI and CSIS in recent weeks to make the case for increasing the commitment to Afghanistan, and explicitly discouraging any talk of withdrawal any time soon. (See, for example, this account by The Nation’s Bob Dreyfuss.)

The public favors withdrawal. A CBS News poll found that 41 percent of Americans want “troops to start coming home, up from 33 percent in April and just 24 percent in February. Support for increasing the number of troops dropped from 39 percent in April to just 25 percent now.” A Washington Post/ABC News poll taken last month found that for the first time since they began asking the question, a majority of Americans no longer think the war in Afghanistan has been worth the costs.

As noted, however, a vociferous — and bipartisan — group dismisses public sentiment, or else blames Obama for not expending sufficient political capital to rally public support. This faction says our objectives in Afghanistan are, if anything, insufficiently bold, and that we need more resources, and much more time, in order to achieve them.

The most outspoken of these is Max Boot, who weighed in on the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. After repeating a litany of claims that victory is within our grasp, and threats of dire consequences were we to narrow our objectives, Boot concludes:

Until now international forces and their Afghan partners have lacked the will and resources to implement a classic counterinsurgency plan designed to secure the populace. But that is precisely what Gen. Stanley McChrystal will undertake—assuming he gets the resources he needs from Washington.

In the end, the debate over what the public will support is based on unknowable factors. Polls are a snap-shot, and public opinion changes, sometimes quite dramatically.

Boot believes that the public will rally to the cause in Afghanistan, a mission to create a functioning democracy in a land trapped somewhere between the 12th and 14th century, if the message is delivered by a credible leader, and supported by a wise and far-sighted bipartisan coalition in Congress (think McCain-Lieberman).

I am skeptical.

There is only one way to know who is right.

The president should go before the American people and honestly explain: the likely costs of our current strategy; the likelihood of victory; and the likely consequences that would ensue if we were to adopt alternative strategies, including the small footprint advocated by George Will on Tuesday.

But President Obama must be honest. The costs of our current strategy will be very high. More troops, more money, more casualties. The likelihood of victory is 50-50, at best (most nation-building missions fail, so I’m being charitable here). We will have to be there for many years; honest analysts admit that the commitment would likely extend for decades. We might like allies to help us, but they aren’t much interested.

I’m hungry for this debate. The policy in Afghanistan might ultimately prove the decisive factor in rectifying the gap between what the public wants and what the policymakers are giving them. As noted at the outset, my only regret is that our men and women in uniform are paying the price in the meantime, while the policymakers and pundits dither.

But we cannot postpone this debate any longer. To pursue a chronically under-resourced strategy is worse than counterproductive — it is immoral. To pursue such a strategy because the leaders fear that they cannot be honest with the American people is repugnant.

Related posts:

1. Afghanistan: I don’t believe in miracles
2. Afghanistan Debate Tonight
3. Now is the time for a national debate
4. Not time to do Afghanistan on the cheap
5. Possible bipartisan principles on Afghanistan?