President must choose carefully

Sacramento Bee

This month, the United States enters its ninth year of seemingly never-ending troop escalation in Afghanistan.

In 2002, there were a mere 5,000 U.S. troops there. The number quadrupled in three years. When President Barack Obama came to office, some 37,000 U.S. troops were stationed in Afghanistan. He has steadily increased the U.S. presence -- to 68,000 today. And now, some in the U.S. military are recommending a U.S. presence of 100,000 troops.

It is not "dithering," in the words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, to stop, take a deep breath and do a cold, rational assessment of what are vital and peripheral U.S. interests in Afghanistan.

This is no time to blindly up the ante, engaging in the sorts of gradual escalation that prolonged the inconclusive Vietnam War. Nor is it time for a rush to judgment and precipitous action -- as the Bush administration did with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

This is a time for steady presidential nerves, not being pushed into either a crash program or creeping escalation with little attention to vital strategic questions: Do we really need a large-scale, ever-increasing, long-term presence in Afghanistan to keep it from being a significant safe haven for al-Qaida? What would a civil war or a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan mean for the safety of the United States?

These big questions have been addressed in very different ways by a pair of documents. Both show that the president's decisions will not be easy and are deserving of a deliberative approach:

* The first is an Aug. 30 assessment of the situation in Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley McChrystal (who subsequently expanded on his views in an Oct. 1 speech in London).

McChrystal's first paragraph lays out his greatest concern: "If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban -- or has insufficient capability to counter transnational terrorists -- Afghanistan could again become a base for terrorism, with obvious implications for regional stability."

He acknowledges the weakness of Afghan institutions, corruption and abuse of power. In that regard, widespread fraud in the Afghan election was a wake-up call to Americans, who don't want to be in the position of bolstering an illegitimate government.

McChrystal's favored solution is a counterinsurgency campaign to win the support of the Afghan people: Increase the Afghan army and police; address the capacity of the Afghan government; tackle the issue of predatory corruption.

McChrystal has presented three options for U.S. troop levels: send no more troops, which he considers high risk; send 40,000 more troops; send far more than 40,000.

* The second document is the Sept. 10 resignation letter of Afghanistan foreign service officer and former Marine Corps Capt. Matthew Hoh.

Hoh challenges McChrystal's very premises. He believes al-Qaida does not now exist in Afghanistan and is unlikely to come back. Al-Qaida, he notes, has evolved. It exists on the Internet, recruits worldwide and has no interest in tying itself again to a geographical or political boundary.

The Taliban, he observes, is unpopular. Remnants, he believes, are a threat to the Karzai government but not to the United States.

But his primary point is that increasing the number of U.S. troops only fuels the insurgency, which is fighting not for the Taliban but against the presence of foreign soldiers and a corrupt, unrepresentative government in Kabul. Further, Hoh believes that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan "has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan."

Hoh's main concern, he writes, is not how are we fighting the war in Afghanistan, but why are we fighting it. ...

Although opponents have tried to paint Obama as indecisive, he shouldn't succumb to pressure to make a rash decision. The president can't deliberate forever, but the stakes involved demand that he fully understand the consequences.