What Will Happen in Afghanistan?

This is going to sound cynical. Maybe it actually is; I’ve gradually been losing my ability to tell. But this post really isn’t about Afghanistan. It’s about us and how we talk ourselves into doing what must be done.

Imagine that a father is dropping his son off at the bus station. The son is off on his first bus trip. He looks uneasy. The father is loth to leave him at the station by himself when he seems so uncomfortable. On the other hand, the father has a meeting and really needs to leave. Father and son come to an understanding—ordinarily, this is done without words—that the son will stop looking uncomfortable. This will permit the father to leave for his meeting, even though he knows his son is uncomfortable. The son, as a practical matter, grants his father permission to leave by appearing confident until after the father has left.

There is a lesson here. Whatever must be, will be.

We need to leave Afghanistan. That’s what must be. We don’t want to leave a failed state behind us. We don’t want to have failed in our mission, whatever it was. So we will be hearing the stories that will enable us to leave. Here are six of those stories.

First, the Afghan government is pervasively corrupt. I’m inclined to believe that is true, but my point here is that we need to hear that story whether it is true or not. “Corrupt” means that no additional money or handholding or training of local forces will be “enough.” That means that “staying until the job is done” is no longer one of the options and also that “leaving before the job is done” is not our fault.

Second, we will hear that the warlords are not as bad as we thought. These warlords will become “provincial leaders” fairly quickly, because we don’t want to abandon Afghanistan to warlords. The provincial leaders provide stability, after all. They control the countryside. They are the de facto governments in most of Afghanistan and will be the de jure governments as the grasp of the central government loosens further. Since we don’t want to pull out and leave the Afghan people in the hands of ruthless and irresponsible warlords, we will pull out and leave the people in the safe keeping of “local leadership” instead.

Third, we will hear that the true goal in Afghanistan is to prevent al Qaeda from having “a safe haven” to plot their evil deeds. That means that the Taliban are really not our reason for being there. We will hear that most of the Taliban troops are really just mercenaries. They would become “government troops” or “provincial troops” if someone paid them enough. They aren’t bad guys, really; just for rent to the highest bidder. The Taliban leadership, on the other hand, need to be included in any stable arrangement because they are…well…Afghans and we are not. So the leaders will be invited to “peace talks” where there will be “frank exchanges of opinion,” and the followers will be hired by the government to protect Afghanistan from themselves.

Fourth, we will hear that the war against al Qaeda is going nicely. What with the targeted assassinations of a substantial part of their leadership and a flurry of targeted drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, al Qaeda’s ability to plan and carry out attacks on Americans at home and abroad has been limited. So the “war aims” have been achieved and we can leave Afghanistan as victors.

Fifth, we will hear that it is costing a lot to sustain our present effort in Afghanistan. That’s always been true, of course. But now, we will hear a lot more about it because it is the “pull.” The acceptability of the conditions we are leaving in Afghanistan—achieving the war aims and all—are the push. The unsustainable cost of continued war there is the “pull.” President Obama has begun to talk about “nation-building” here at home (which is not seen as something we can and should do) rather than “nation-building” in Afghanistan which is something we can’t do and so, as a practical matter, something we have already completed successfully.

Sixth, we will hear that Pakistan is, in any case, a more crucial ally than Afghanistan, and that our continued hostilities in Afghanistan have put the government of Pakistan in a very tight place. Pakistan has al Qaeda enemies too and what we have done exacerbates Pakistan’s ability to act in its own best interest. So pulling out of Afghanistan is not a step away from Afghanistan so much as a step toward Pakistan, which is a more important ally in the long run and which, in any case, has nuclear weapons.

All these stories will add up to the boy at the bus station being no longer afraid. Since he is no longer afraid, the father can go off to his meeting having fulfilled the duties of fatherhood. The duty of fatherhood in this case is not, whatever we might like to think, refusing to leave a frightened boy at the bus station—the father actually is doing that. No, the relevant duty is getting the boy to understand that he needs to stop looking frightened so the father can get on with his work.

What must be, will be. We will hear the stories that will tell us that it is a really good idea to do the things that we would have to do whether it was a good idea or not.