Evaluating Our Role in Afghanistan

Remember when Iraq was just heating up? The administration was talking about "victory" in the Iraq War, but no one -- to my mind at least -- ever defined what "victory" would mean. It seemed that it might mean that there were no longer any insurgent attacks, which would have to mean no more insurgents. But more about that below, in the Afghanistan context.

So what are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Let's first state some mostly undisputed truths: Though we seem to be fighting, at least in part, to support the Afghan government, there is little dispute that Hamid Karzai's administration is weak, incompetent, corrupt, and disliked by a large part of the population. Another fact: Afghanistan has never had a national government; it is a feudal region (nation?), ruled by local warlords who have never accepted rule from outside their territory and who dislike and distrust outsiders. At least part of the insurgency is fed by men who, sharing these values, want to drive invaders -- particularly Westerners -- out.

Another fact: War is messy. When it consists of two orderly armies attacking each other on the battlefield, there may be some hope of minimizing civilian casualties ("collateral damage"). But when one large, well-equipped orderly army is fighting a rag-tag guerrilla force that hides in the landscape and among the civilian population, that well-equipped army is almost certainly going to kill and injure an appallingly large number of civilians. And in any culture, but particularly in one where there is a strong code of honor calling for revenge (think Hatfields and McCoys), every civilian death might lead to five more insurgent recruits.


So we have a peculiar logic at work here. The more we attack insurgents, the more civilians we will kill. The American military in Afghanistan is saying we need 40,000 more troops, and ironically the more troops there are, the more insurgents there will be.

So define "winning" for me.