U.S. forces are being increased, top aides to President Obama are said to be advocating a “civilian surge,” just as in Iraq, and counterinsurgency doctrine is again the proposed answer. But to what question? Washington’s ultimate objectives in Afghanistan remain unclear. The United States has spent six years, more than 4,000 American lives, mass quantities of psychic and political energy, and untold billions on the effort in Iraq — a project that has to date yielded little in a strategic sense. Iraq had an urban, educated population, infrastructure and bountiful natural resources, whereas Afghanistan has none of these. If “counterinsurgency” is merely a more palatable stand-in for “nation-building,” that politically freighted but strategically more illuminating term, then our terminology may be obscuring the true extent of our predicament.blog comments powered by Disqus
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