Today let me join other PSA bloggers, such as Chris Preble and Brian Vogt who have recently written on Afghanistan.

Now that Iraq is no longer a geopolitical black hole, sucking all political discussion and media coverage into its event horizon, commentary on Afghanistan seems to be everywhere. In fact, it is not. The fact is that after nearly eight years of fighting there should be far more. Indeed, during the 2008 presidential campaign it was Barack Obama who said the United States should concentrate on Afghanistan. So now we are and everyone is making up for years of lost time.

But before we go any further perhaps we should take a moment to consider some of the ongoing costs and I don’t mean budgetary. I know it is not fashionable to do this; that the SOP among the elite is to focus on big picture national and international security impacts and realist politics but for just one moment, especially as a veteran, I say screw that. So,  let’s remember some of the most recent:

1st Lt. Tyler E. Parten, 24, of Arkansas, died Sept. 10 in Konar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

Lance Cpl. Christopher S. Fowlkes, 20, of Gaffney, S.C., died Sept. 10 from wounds sustained Sept. 3 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Sgt. Youvert Loney, 28, of Pohnpei, Micronesia, died Sept. 5 in Abad, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle using small arms and recoilless rifle fires.

Petty Officer 3rd Class James R. Layton, 22, of Riverbank, Calif., died Sept. 8 in Kunar province, Afghanistan, while supporting combat operations.

Capt. Joshua S. Meadows, 30, of Bastrop, Texas, died Sept. 5 while supporting combat operations in Farah province, Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Michael C. Murphrey, 25, of Snyder, Texas, died Sept. 6 in Paktika province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

There will be many more to come. Okay, now I return you to the establishment approved method of discourse, bloodless and emotionless

Right now the Obama Administration reminds me of the old saying, be careful for what you ask for because you just might get it. You wanted more resources devoted to Afghanistan? Okay, you have it, and will be getting more of it, because despite all the public handwringing, nobody really expects the Administration not to send more troops, beyond the additional 21,000 they deployed earlier this year.

Before going any further let’s remember that, thanks President’s Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan is still regarded as the “good war,” i.e., the war we have to fight, as opposed to the one we chose to fight. This is, however, a false choice. In a surprisingly good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, not known for running thoughtful, non-polemical pieces, Fouad Ajami wrote:

This distinction between a war of choice (Iraq) and a war of necessity (Afghanistan) has become canonical to American liberalism. But we should dispense with that distinction, for it is both morally false and intellectually muddled. No philosophy of just and unjust wars will support it. It was amid the ferocious attack on the American project in Iraq that there was born the idea of Afghanistan as the “good war.” This was the club with which the Iraq war was battered. This was where that binary division was set up: The good war of necessity in the mountains of Afghanistan, the multilateral war born of a collective NATO decision—versus George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, fought in defiance of the opinions of allies who had been with us in the aftermath of 9/11, and whose goodwill we squandered in the cruel streets of Fallujah and the deserts of Anbar.

Let’s just throw out a few questions. I confess I don’t know the answers but they merit consideration.

If a successful counterinsurgency strategy is at least partially predicated on the ability of a legitimate government to protect its own people what does it mean when, as this New York Times op-ed asked,  in the recent Afghanistan presidential election, the vote was plagued by so much fraud and violence, and had such low turnout, that it is inconceivable the Afghan people will regard the winner and incumbent, Hamid Karzai, as a legitimate leader?

Speaking of counterinsurgency how likely is it that the current doctrine will work? Richard A. Clarke and Steven Simon wrote:

A strong Afghan national army would mean doubling the number of trained Afghan military personnel that the US is now struggling to field. According to metrics developed by Gen. David Petraeus, a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan would require 1.3 million troops for a decade. That is five times the size of US, NATO, and Afghan government forces today. No one thinks this is feasible and we are not attempting to do so. A classic counter-insurgency strategy therefore is not in the cards.

It has been reported that the United States needs to stay for at least three more years to sufficiently train up the Afghan Army and National Police to handle fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But the way things are going with the police that might be a fantasy. Anup Kaphle reports in the Atlantic that:

the plan to funnel more money into training and equipping the Afghan National Police has raised questions about the efficacy of the program. Last year, the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office found that at least 75 percent of the more than 400 Afghan National Police units then in operation were still incapable of running their operations independently, despite some $10 billion having been spent on police mentoring and training since 2001.

Bringing the Afghan National Police up to a level where they can defend not only themselves but the areas under their jurisdiction is as yet little more than a distant hope. Someone like Abdullah will only fight loyally with the police so long as he can support his family—and be able to buy batteries for his radio. America and its allies have grandiose expectations, but by placing so much of the burden on an under-trained, inadequately equipped police force, they seem to be setting themselves up for failure.

Evidently the Obama Administration recognizes the current approach is insufficient as the Washington Post reported last week that the U.S. military and NATO are launching a major overhaul of the way they recruit, train and equip Afghanistan’s security forces, seeking to reverse a trend in which the alliance for years did not invest adequately in Afghan troops and police while the Taliban gained strength. Evidently, thus far, this is one area where the lessons of Iraq in terms of properly resourcing your trainers have not been learned.

Will the Obama Administration share the assessment of the Afghanistan war that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, recently submitted to the Pentagon? And will Congress hold hearings on it before voting on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan?

What should we think about a war where in 2002 there were roughly 5,000 U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled just a small corner of the country’s southeast and now we have Taliban fighting in the peaceful Kunduz and Baghlan (provinces) with NATO’s 100,000 troops? One might also note that since 2007, the number of IEDs in Afghanistan has jumped more than 300 percent. The number of troops killed is up more than 400 percent; the number of wounded up more than 700 percent.

Thus far I have generally been supportive of the Obama administration and give it credit for trying to do the right thing against incredible odds. But it doesn’t get a free pass just because it isn’t the Bush administration.

It’s possible that the U.S. can still do something useful in Afghanistan. But before we send more troops let’s have these and other important questions answered.

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