Quote of the Day: Lee Hamilton on the Afghan War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

One of Obama's leading foreign policy gurus isn't terribly enthusiastic about the current direction, such as there is one, of the Afghan war:

Seventy-five U.S. and NATO troops died in Afghanistan in July, the deadliest month for allied forces in nearly eight years of fighting. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have died this year, up 24 percent from 2008.

Tens of thousands more American troops are en route, adding to the approximately 90,000 troops, both U.S. and allied, already on the ground. The U.S. military leadership likely will request more troops in the months ahead. President Barack Obama will have to make a crucial decision on the future of a conflict that has become his war.

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Strategically, there are two broad and fundamental questions to be answered. First, how will our departure impact our regional and security interests over the next decade and longer? And second, is this type of war really the best use of American power and resources in today's world?

(That's the beginning and end of Hamilton's piece. Make sure to read it in full.)

Hamilton is nothing if not a realist. Specifically, he is unrelentingly realistic about the situation in Afghanistan and about the rather dim prospects ahead. He doesn't express any sort of overt criticism of Obama. Indeed, if there is criticism at all, it is implicit (and realistic) criticism that Obama hasn't really done much yet, that he has been slow to act, that he hasn't yet set a new and determined course for U.S. policy in the region in general and with respect to the Afghan War in particular: "To be successful, U.S. policy will have to become clear, forceful and well resourced." Evidently, in Hamilton's view, U.S. policy is not yet clear, forceful, or well resourced. (TNR's Michael Crowley makes the same point. Hamilton, interestingly, uses the future tense.)

The two questions in the final paragraph ought to give us further pause. Hamilton -- who speaks for the foreign-policy establishment, as Crowley notes -- assumes that U.S. withdrawal is inevitable sooner rather than later. In other words, this won't (or shouldn't) be a long, open-ended occupation. But how much longer will the U.S. be there? How much longer will the war be waged?

And if it's not the right "type of war," if American power and resources can best be employed differently, why is the U.S. even there?

Honestly, I don't know anymore -- if I ever really knew for sure -- and it's a question I've been asking more and more lately: What's the point? And, if there isn't a clear one, should the U.S. really send tens of thousands more troops to augment its (and NATO's) already sizable military commitment there?

As I put it a while back, what is needed is "an honest and open debate about American objectives and about the possibility for success." Since the initial defeat of the Taliban (and al Qaeda's withdrawal into the mountains), we haven't had anything like an honest and open debate. As one of Obama's "wise men," Hamilton is well-positioned to initiate one before a new course is set (and before more troops are sent), and this piece marks a key early step in that direction.