A Pair of George Will Columns on Afghanistan

His perspective on Afghanistan is a little bit aphoristic, but still shows a good range of questions.

The three prongs of counterinsurgency -- "clear, hold and build" -- involve three entangled problems.

First, is an area "cleared" only because the Taliban have cleared out, knowing they can wait out the enemy and then return? The Americans are going home; the Taliban are home. Second, what can be held by a counterinsurgency force focused on an exit strategy? Third, can anything lasting be built when what has been only tenuously cleared is only conditionally held?

The answer to those questions must involve defusing an insurgency by means of a political settlement, after the insurgency has been weakened by the application of violence, and sapping its ardor with new institutions and economic infrastructure. Again, nation-building.

What Petraeus calls "a whole of government approach" does not promise a tidy ending of "take the hill, plant the flag, go home for a victory parade." Turning off an insurgency is "never a light switch, it's more of a rheostat." He recounts a story: An Afghan waits 99 years for vengeance, then regrets his impatience. This parable gives a serrated edge to a familiar Afghan aphorism regarding outsiders -- "You have the watches, we have the time." Tick, tick, tick.

An interesting perspective on the military focusing on civilian tasks for rebuilding and how Petraeus brought it to the forefront.

When asked whether nationalism is putting down roots in Afghanistan's tribalized society, Gen. David Petraeus is judicious: "I don't know that I could say that." He adds, however, that "we do polling" on that subject. When his questioner expresses skepticism about the feasibility of psephology -- measuring opinion -- concerning an abstraction such as nationalism in a chaotic, secretive and suspicious semi-nation, Petraeus, his pride aroused, protests: "I took research methodology" at Princeton. There he acquired a PhD in just two years: His voracious appetite for knowing things is the leitmotif of his career.

Petraeus thinks he knows that President Hamid Karzai is widely viewed as "the father of the new Afghanistan." Although there was widespread fraud in the election last August that extended Karzai's presidency by five years, Petraeus says "ordinary people are not seized with anxiety about electoral corruption." Besides, "there is a democratic culture in these tribal councils," which are "like caucuses, if you will."

Perhaps, but the limitations of this culture are evident in Petraeus's belief that part of the Taliban's appeal, where it has had appeal, has been its ability to offer "dispute resolution" that is sometimes harsh but at least is rapid. And, Petraeus adds, with an inconvenient candor, the Taliban are sometimes "less predatory" than the Afghan security forces. Although strengthening the central government is a U.S. goal, that government's corruption and brutality might make the localities less than eager for it to be strengthened.

By: Brant