Succeeding in Afghanistan

We tend to be focused almost exclusively on Iraq, but Lawrence Korb and Caroline Wadhams think that Afghanistan is at least, if not more, important and, surprisingly, is a war that we can win, if you define 'winning' as ousting Al Qaeda and building a stable, secure country. Afghanistan has a number of advantages over Iraq:

• The government represents the people and is supported by a majority.
• We actually have allies in Afghanistan who number almost half of the total troops there.
• There is little, if any, sectarianism.
• Polls seem to show support for us and against the Taliban.

I'm not as sure as Korb and Wadhams of the effectiveness of the NATO forces that are there; one gets the impression that they are not overly effective or that there are enough of them there.

Clearly, things have gotten worse there over the past couple of years, but the authors feel that we can succeed if we change our approach and start paying attention to the country by increasing our support. Specifically, they urge us to

• Increase the number of troops (including moving some from Iraq) and make sure there is enough equipment for all the troops.
• Increase our assistance in reconstruction tasks, but make sure we have an inspector general as focused as Stuart Bowen is with Iraq.
• Figure out a better way to interdict narcotics trafficking, one which does not penalize the farmers.
• Get more involved in shutting down the Pakistan strongholds of the Taliban, but not to the point of invasion.
• Help to improve the government.

These are sound ideas, but I doubt our leaders will do anything, as they are fixated on Iraq.