A sadly simplistic Afghan debate.

• Author: Merry, Robert W.
• Position: The Realist - United States' Afghan troop withdrawal - Essay

As the debate over America's Afghan troop withdrawal grinds on, it's time to consider the lesson of Richard Nixon, whose Watergate abasement obscures the reality that he has more to teach us on such matters than is generally recognized. The country could use some of Nixon's strategic acumen these days.

This is reflected in the foreign-policy discourse unfolding in response to the Obama administration's plans to speed up its exit from Afghanistan. It's essentially a binary debate, simplistic in its terms. Neither President Obama nor his critics look good in this face-off.

The discussion is focused on the simple question of how many troops should be brought home from that troubled land-- and when. Obama, seeing little hope of a traditional military victory, wants them out as quickly as he can get them home smoothly and without serious harm to them in the process. His critics argue that this represents a military capitulation, foregoing a victory that would be achievable if the president had sufficient fortitude.

In such narrow terms, Obama has an edge in political and policy logic. But the problem is that he hasn't spelled out how he plans to execute the withdrawal in a purposeful fashion or how the exit would fit into a broader strategic framework.

True, the country is war-weary. Its volunteer troops are stretched beyond their psychological limit. The public fisc is a mess, in part because of war costs. Strains in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship have reached dangerous proportions. The civilizational tensions between Islam and the West have been heightened by America's continued presence on Islamic soil. And there's no reason to believe that A1 Qaeda, which precipitated the war with its 9/11 attacks on America, now figures appreciably in the outcome of this war one way or the other.

Thus, Obama is wise to deflect opponents who can't accept that these realities negate prospects of the victory they foresee if the U.S. military effort were sufficiently robust and long lasting. As neoconservative commentator Gary Schmitt wrote in the Weekly Standard, "In short, the insurgent cancer was going into remission but the White House, irrationally, wants to stop treatment." But for Schmitt and his allies, there never seems to be any discernible turn of events that could end the treatment. Since the aim is to defeat and subdue Afghanistan's Taliban--and since the Taliban is an indigenous element of Afghan society that is never going away-- the neocon...