The Big Five Questions About Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

Andrew Bacevich today identifies the five questions Obama must ask and answer before approving further escalation in Afghanistan.

-- Does saving Afghanistan from the Taliban constitute a vital national security interest?

-- If so, is armed nation-building the best way to serve America's national interest?

-- Is the failure of every other great power to impose its will on Afghanistan irrelevant?

-- Does America possess enough blood and treasure, enough expertise, to accomplish that armed nation-building?

-- Will Afghanistan continue to be the most pressing priority, both foreign and domestic, for the next decade?

If the answer to any or all of those five is a negative, Bacevich writes, then:

As difficult as it is to do so at a time when war has become a seemingly perpetual condition, when it comes to Afghanistan, the really urgent need is to recast the debate. Official Washington obsesses over the question: How do we win? Yet perhaps a different question merits presidential consideration: What alternatives other than open-ended war might enable the United States to achieve its limited interests in Afghanistan?

At this pivotal moment in his presidency, if Obama is going to demonstrate his ability to lead, he will direct his subordinates to identify those alternatives.

The alternative is that Afghanistan will swallow Obama's presidency as surely as Lyndon Johnson's was by Vietnam and Bush's by Iraq, with Obama having to continually revisit his answers to those five questions, to reaffirm and defend them against political opponents as costs and casualties mount. To deliver meaningful reform of what desperately needs reform will be an incredibly uphill task in such an atmosphere.