Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
For more on this dialogue, click here. A number of you have asked why this dialogue did not begin with me answering my own questions, which is a fair enough question to ask. I have some thoughts on this, obviously enough, but it might surprise you to know just how open I am to being persuaded in either direction on the issue. So I am enjoying this and will likely conclude this in a week or two with my own thoughts. I found Bernard's post yesteday to be thought-provoking and persuasive, though, and as far as considerate arguments for a continued engagement in Afghanistan go, so too is this one. Enjoy.
Is the war in Afghanistan in the interests of the United States and its allies?
Yes. In my personal view, the United States really has only 2 core national interests - preserving the safety and security of the country and its citizens, and sustaining a stable international system that facilitates commerce, communication, and travel. The conflict in Afghanistan clearly relates to the safety of our country and our people, as it was the haven from which Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11. We have an obligation to the American people to prevent such a haven from arising anew. It is also in our interest to prevent instability in Afghanistan from exacerbating pressures throughout this volatile region, as turmoil in Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East is detrimental to the stability of the international system. So Afghanistan is relevant to both of America's core national interests.
If so, at what point do the resources we are expending become too high a cost to bear?
This is tougher, as any answer must rely on judgments regarding end-states, strategy, and risk management, and politics. In much of this debate, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. We are not in Afghanistan to create a Central Asian Valhalla, as Secretary Gates put it. We are not there to reshape their society, create an efficient economy, modernize their social services or impose modernity. As soon as we enable sufficient Afghan security forces that are capable of preventing the Taliban from destabilizing vast swathes of the country, we need to get on a glide-path toward our eventual departure. We should be prepared to accept costs in order to achieve this end-state - the difficult question (which relates to the metrics debate you've helped generate) is determining when our progress is "good enough." The cost differential between getting from 50-75% will be high, but getting from 75% to 85% could be extremely high. We need to be happy with the 75% solution and accept the risk associated with a less than optimal outcome. Strategy, by definition, requires risk-taking and being honest about accepting less than perfect outcomes.
What are the strategic limitations of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and operations?
I think there are many and numerous strategic limitations. First, doctrine is only as good as the strategic context within which it is applied. The best doctrine in the world is not going to help very much if you've dorked up the strategy. This is why it remains vital for civilian policymakers to ask the tough questions and to have many sleepness nights getting the strategic parameters about right. Second, we defense geeks need to do a better job of differentiating between U.S. defense strategy and debates on doctrine and the operational-level of war. I think some COINsters, in their zeal to ensure that FM 3-24 or 3-07 and the innovations that undergird them are institutionalized, have tended to hype and inflate the importance of doctrine and construct arguments in which these ideas begin to sound like normative statements on what America's grand strategic principles must be in the 21st century. I think that is a dangerous and unsustainable road to put the country on.
At what point does this "fighting to prevent another 9/11" theme become the big lie of the Afghanistan War?
What evidence shows the relevance of al Qaeda “safe havens” in Afghanistan to 9-11? People asserting the connection seldom bother to explain the link in any way. That the first and third submissions lead off with this canard casts more doubt on the war than any anti-war logic could do.
The al Qaeda camps primarily trained fighters against the Northern Alliance. The key training of the 9-11 terrorists took place in US flgiht schools. Any minimal additional training required no substantial physical infrastructure, and could have been done almost anywhere — even in the wilds of the Western US.
For more about this see "Counterterrorism and Military Occupation", Dr. Bernard I. Finel, Small Wars Journal, 20 April 2009.
Bottom line questions:
If, "preserving the safety and security of the country and its citizens and sustaining a stable international system" are the two core interests of the United states," then does a continuing, open-ended, militarily-intensive American boots on the ground initiative by the United States in Afghanistan tend to facilitate this mission (make America more safe, sustain a stable international system) or, does it, instead, tend to endanger this mission.
We must consider that a continuing American presence in Afghanistan tends to endanger this mission. The greatest recruiting tool for Al Qaeda is American boots on the ground in an Islamic country. Thus, a continuing presence by the United States in Afghanistan is more likely to make America less safe and also more likely to continue to destabilze this country, the region and the international system.
The example of Vietnam is again instructive. While the Americans are in Vietnam, the safety and security of the United States is endangered (nearly ruins the country and the Army) and a more stable international system cannot be achieved (other, surrounding countries are brought into the conflict) . However, when the Americans depart Vietnam, the United States and its Army regain their vitality and the international system becomes more stable almost overnight.
This example of Vietnam may also inform the question as to whether the trend towards greater irregular warfare capability in DoD -- and greater nation-building capability in DoS (both of which one would expect will not just sit on the shelf) -- does this trend toward intervention tend to make the United States more or less safe and does it tend to make the international system more or less secure?
Another way to frame this is to reverse the big-picture question slightly. Suppose the US pulls out of Afghanistan and adopts more of the "whack-a-mole" strategy. What's the worst case scenario in Afghanistan/Central Asia and what's the best case scenario?
Follow-up:
Let us consider that the REAL reason that the United States has determined to stay in and around Afghanistan and Central Asia is the potential for the United States to be denied adequate access to this region by China and/or Russia in the future.
Now, with this set of concerns and threats presented -- for the first time in this discussion I believe -- how does this change how we consider the issues and answers?
Agreeing with Fabius Maximus, I might add that this little exercise seems to be veering away from what I thought was its intent: addressing the concerns of Andrew Bacevich and those of us with similar views that question imperial assumptions, designs, and actions, and use that critique in the debate over Afghanistan. What I'm seeing so far behind too many peoples' posts is the unquestioned assumption that in order to achieve US national interests--say, the two mentioned in this post above--it is necessary for the US to materially project all aspects of national power, including and especially military, which can only be done through maintaining ourselves as the superpower in a unipolar world. I question this assumption. It has been my argument that the very pursuit of imperialistic goals undermines the welfare and security of the American people, which is THE national interest. (At best, facilitating commerce, communications, and travel is a secondary interest; it depends upon how it's done, and it's clear to me that how we're doing it now is benefiting the American people. What's good for Goldman-Sachs, Halliburton, and Xe most certainly is not good for the American people).
Morals aside, the imperial enterprise has been and still is a primary factor in bankrupting the country. (Bailing out Wall Street hasn't helped the American people either, although privatizing public wealth is also part of the imperial enterprise). If the cost of empire--in this case, fighting terrorism in Afghanistan through military occupation and nation building--bankrupts the people of the United States, why isn't that irrational delusion of the worst sort? Even if we were "successful" (not that anyone's defined success), it's not even a pyrrhic victory. It's no victory at all.
I'd ask--were the United States neutral, how would that shift the debate? How would that change the interpretation of what our interests are and how we go about achieving them? Further, Is neutrality something we can choose, or will it be something forced upon the country through bankruptcy?
I'll be interested to see where this debate goes when I get back; I am going to the field for a week.
EMN
P. S. Regarding COIN, one thing I wonder--is the Taliban truly an insurgency?
Correction to para 1: it's NOT clear that how we're doing it now is benefiting the American people ...
Re: China/Russia--must the United States be a hegemon in Eurasia to undermine Chinese/Russian hegemony? Can we afford the Great Game in the 21st century?
Neutrality is a myth for the United States. In Walter Mead's "Promised Land, Crusader State" he lays out the myth of virtuous isolation and its roots in the need to sell the Cold War to the American public. The US was never really as neutral or as isolationist as today's advocates claim.
@Visitor
What pieces of empirical evidence make you think that is why the US is really involved in Central Asia?
Sorry one more thing: A separate conversation, and one that EMN brings up, is about American grand strategy in general. You have a clear set of critics lined up, from Bacevich to Posen and others, advocating some form of global retrenchment. But, as AM has pointed out many times before, it is unclear in some ways exactly what American grand strategy "is". Until we figure that out, I think debates about something like Afghanistan will always be a bit unsatisfying, because they always lead to the question of "to what end". . . .
Another argument as to why the United States is in this interventionalist mode is "Globalization," wherein, the United States has determined, much as it did re: Japan in the 19th Century, that it must "open" various nations so that greater economic activity and growth may be achieved.
Is not the DoD and DoS being primed for this "opening" initiative?
Scott--
I think where I'm going is, neutrality doesn't need to be a myth or a virtue of American exceptionalism, something in which I certainly don't believe. It may become a brute fact for purely material reasons.
EMN.
Scott, you said:
"it is unclear in some ways exactly what American grand strategy 'is'. Until we figure that out, I think debates about something like Afghanistan will always be a bit unsatisfying, because they always lead to the question of "to what end"
I think this is a very important point. It makes me think of historian Brian Linn's excellent and correct observation of the American Way (grand strategy can fit as a surrogate for way, i think) as one being defined not as annihilation, or attrition but one that over time has consisted of practicality, utility, and adaptation. In short, there isn’t one way of American warfare but multiple ways. For all of his brilliance and importance Weigley's classic once it worked its way into the Coin community has done more harm than good. For them the American Way, the bad way, has been the way of annihilation and big battles, to the detriment of being able to do Coin. Now, it seems to me, they believe that they have finally moved beyond the American fetish of Big Battles of annihilation to a higher level of population centric counterinsurgency as the New American Way of War.
But the American Way, or American Way of Grand Strategy, is not just one mono-form but many. Yet in the absence of this understanding of American grand strategy we have replaced it with a singular conception of war which is premised on the notion of "wars amongst the people" and its derivative of population centric counterinsurgency. In short, tactics and operations have taken over American grand strategy which is why folks like Exum, Cordesman, Biddle and others (all of whom were on McChrystal's advisory team) seem to be able to conceive of the only reasonable way ahead in Astan as Armed Nation Building, or to use its more militarized term--population centric counterinsurgency.
gian
"As soon as we enable sufficient Afghan security forces that are capable of preventing the Taliban from destabilizing vast swathes of the country, we need to get on a glide-path toward our eventual departure."
And what happens after the departure? Assuming even the best case scenario where our 'metrics' have been met?
So, to repeat myself from the Day One thread: The assumption seems to be that once the US leaves a security force and a relatively stable government that can control Afghanistan geographically, the country will be in an 'inert' end state. Won't the situation remain dynamic, with all the same players involved, and the temptation to use Afghanistan as a proxy still present?
Why couldn't Afghanistan still be used as a haven, even after we leave, even after all the effort of building up a reasonable security force? Neither Pakistan nor India completely control all their territories, either. And Pakistan and India are as likely to influence Afghanistan as the other way around. My points aren't novel, lots and of people are making the same arguments, but I never sense that they are acknowledged in posts such as the above. I dunno.
@ Madhu
I think your concern makes sense. The situation will be dynamic once the United States leaves. There is the risk, whenever the United States leaves, of things falling apart. To boil things down into a very simple (i.e. way too reductionist) form, if you think US troops in Afghanistan only delay an inevitable end-state of AQ safe havens and/or Taliban control (or make that end-state more likely), withdrawal looks more attractive. If you think US troops in Afghanistan can help transform the facts on the ground to make such an outcome less likely, withdrawal looks less attractive.
"Why couldn't Afghanistan still be used as a haven, even after we leave, even after all the effort of building up a reasonable security force? Neither Pakistan nor India completely control all their territories, either. And Pakistan and India are as likely to influence Afghanistan as the other way around. "
Of course they could, can, and will be. The "Shores of Tripoli" spawned pirates long before, and long after, O'Bannion and his boys hoisted the flag over that coast. Red Brigades were formed in Italy and Germany, Shining Paths in Peru, Liberation Tigers in India and Sri Lanka.
Unless we are willing to police the turning earth, the U.S. cannot spend the forseeable future policing every other polity on earth likely to be or become unstable and spawn hard men looking to make trouble. More to the point if, after a period longer than the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2 or the Korean War, the U.S. has not managed to prop up local governments in our foederati that are capable of resisting the local badmashes it is increasingly unlikely that they ever will be. The reality of Western COIN in the Third World post-WW2 is that if your local proxy can't fight, you will lose. And, frankly, it's probable that you will lose in the long run, anyway - the force of local entropy will always be stronger than the force of foreign control.
EMN's analogy to Rome is exact in this, too: in Republican times and the early Empire the Romans ruled their world through a combination of judicious application of force - that is, where they were challeneged directly they utterly destroyed the locals ("solitudenem facient et pacem appelant") - and the use of indirectly ruled client states. The later Empire, in large part due to senatorial greed for the looting of these proxies, took over direct rule, exhausted itself trying to be everywhere at once while exacerbating the resentments of the dispossed locals.
If we WANT to be Rome, we should at least be honest about it and have an open debate. The notion that we can somehow have tens of thousands of Americans overseas, fighting an internal war in a foreign land, and NOT be in the business of imperial rule, seems foolish at best and self-deluding at worst.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia...all of these places are liable to breed jihadis. We can attempt to prevent this, as the Spanish did with Protestantism in the Netherlands. My suggestion is that there is no counterinsurgency other than the Roman one that offers a reasonable hope of success.
Whether or not we want to be Romans is, of course, another question.
"Why couldn't Afghanistan still be used as a haven, even after we leave, even after all the effort of building up a reasonable security force?"
Of course it can be. And probably will.
The main point of Prof. Bachevich's question isn't "can we/should we do this?". It's "can we do this for a price we can afford?. Looking at the history of Western efforts in the Third World post-1945, the recurring theme is that if you don't have a local proxy to fight the local badmashes, you lose. Local entropy will outplay foreign control. And, similarly, history is littered with empires that exhausted themselves trying to impose their will on fractious foreign lands. The cost simply exceeded the benefit, and the cost, in some cases, was political desuetude.
Given the social, economic and political realities of central Asia, and the fact that we can't manage to return economic vitality and social stability to urban Detroit, why should we expect that we can do this in AfPak for a reasonable cost?
If we cannot prop up a local proxy to do our dirty work in the Hindu Kush in a time longer than it took to defeat the industrial powers of Germany and Japan it is unlikely that hanging about irritating the locals will have any long-term beneficial effects. The best we are likely to be able to do is to mount punitive expeditions when the chaos throws up a Mahdi or a bin Laden. Trying to "transforming the facts on the ground" with foreign troops is like doing cosmetic surgery with a bullet. You are probably not going to like the results.
FDChief
Well, damn. Sorry for the double comment - it initially looked like my first version disappeared. Disregard #2, as it makes the same points and less throughly.
"P. S. Regarding COIN, one thing I wonder--is the Taliban truly an insurgency?"
oh dear. that would appear to be a pretty damn key point.
"I have some thoughts on this, obviously enough, but it might surprise you to know just how open I am to being persuaded in either direction on the issue."
Didn't seem that way at the CNAS conference.
Very interesting discussion. Thanks to Ed for the headsup.
I'd like to make a few comments/questions which haven't appeared on this thread. Something to chew on:
First, the Soviets in 1979 went into Afghanistan with seemingly clear goals and a military which should have been able to complete the job. They gained control of the country comparatively quickly (when compared to our own action on the island of Grenada which happened a few years later). They had extensive local support (some of whom are now with us), at least compared to the support we enjoy today.
Yet they failed. My first question: is there any analysis going on as to why they failed and what they could have done to have succeeded? According to William Odom's book on the fall of the Soviet Army, by 1985 they had realized that the Afghan people would never accept a foreign occupying power and only mass deportation or genocide would allow the Soviet's to establish a client state. That is they remained on for another four years after they knew they had lost.
Second, and following the first, what kept them there after 1985 was internal Soviet political dynamics, or in Clausewitzian terms "objective" politics as opposed to "subjective" policy. Mr Exum, have you not implied that it is the same case with the US today? That the Obama administration is staying in Afghanistan since to leave is politically impossible domestically speaking?
Third, Anthony Cordesman made the statement, "Above all, this is a war shaped not by strategy but by years of neglect and systemic under-resourcing". Does this reality have any influence on the new policy?
Fourth, and finally, is it the assumption - post Iraqi surge - that any capable US commander must be well versed in domestic information operations? Is the current sole center of gravity US public opinion?
"the Romans ruled their world through a combination of judicious application of force - that is, where they were challenged directly they utterly destroyed the locals ("solitudenem facient et pacem appelant")"
This is the Kipling "One Hundred Heads" solution and it can be effective. But it is only effective if the will to employ it is also present.
We could, if we willed it, eliminate various tribal elements in their totality from above. But we will not do so because we haven't the will, or have not yet found the will, to do so.
Losing an American city, men women and children, might give rise to such a will, but absent that we're merely shoveling seaweed against the tide.
I think a lot of the issue is the idea that American needs to do this alone. A stable and secure Afghanistan is not just in American’s interest it is in the world’s interest and as such it should be a greater portion of counties pulling weight there.
Sounds stupid and idealistic I know, but call me a COIN centric optimist at heart.
Here’s where I like Barnett idea of Leviathan and Sys-Admin. No other country has the resources that the US has. But that alone done not make the US a automatic candidate for global police. But it does give a moral imperative to offer that service. If you’re the only one in the room that can stop some guy beating on his woman, then you have to stand up. Other wise all the guff about American pride is just that guff.
But asking you to stay around and pick up all the pieces is too much to ask. That’s when the EU has to send police; China needs to send engineers and my mates down at Holsworthy need to do what Australian troops do really well, goo talk to locals, digs wells and kill any one who tiers to stop the process.
Visitor said:
"The example of Vietnam is again instructive. While the Americans are in Vietnam, the safety and security of the United States is endangered (nearly ruins the country and the Army) and a more stable international system cannot be achieved (other, surrounding countries are brought into the conflict) . However, when the Americans depart Vietnam, the United States and its Army regain their vitality and the international system becomes more stable almost overnight. "
This is a really bizarre take. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not blowing up US warships and embassies in different parts of the world, nor did they ever, ever, have the capacity to strike the US in its own homeland. They weren't threatening the world's oil supplies!. During the entire period of the Vietnam war, Vistor, the economies of the UNITED STATES and West boomed and young people started travelling the world in huge, huge numbers.
It was after the US quit Vietnam that the big trouble started! - in the Middle East. The west was immediately sent into a lengthy oil-deprived recession that lasted for 10 years!
The US military regained its vitality after the Vietnam pullout?
Three iconic moments from 1975 to 1983 - the last helicopter fleeing Saigon 1975; the US hostages paraded in Tehran 1980 and Reagan scuttling the marines out of Beirut .
Some vitality, some stability Mr Visitor. You must have lived in a parallel universe.
Is the war in Afghanistan in the interests of the United States and its allies?
Yes. In my personal view, the United States really has only 2 core national interests - preserving the safety and security of the country and its citizens, and sustaining a stable international system that facilitates commerce, communication, and travel. The conflict in Afghanistan clearly relates to the safety of our country and our people, as it was the haven from which Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11. We have an obligation to the American people to prevent such a haven from arising anew. It is also in our interest to prevent instability in Afghanistan from exacerbating pressures throughout this volatile region, as turmoil in Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East is detrimental to the stability of the international system. So Afghanistan is relevant to both of America's core national interests.
All very well and good to say it is possible to achieve such results from within the framework of first world power. More arguable is that all your plans in fact will achieve that end.
Use terror against others, and terror will be used against us, rightly so. This is a truth that cannot be evaded, nor explained away.
Use terror against your own, as a tactic, and you must deal with the consequences. Such consequences cannot be contained by the skill set available to mere men, even when potentiated by computational capability.
@ Visitor
You write that: "Use terror against others, and terror will be used against us, rightly so. This is a truth that cannot be evaded, nor explained away."
This seems important to me. Differences of opinion on the basic concept behind this issue can lead to big policy disputes down the road.
Essentially, some people think that if the US doesn't attack other people, it will be relatively safe and unlikely to be attacked. They view dangers as primarily the result of backlash against interventionist American strategies. Others think that sitting on your hands is no guarantee of safety -- put in the parlance of the prior post, others will use terror against you even if you do not use terror against others.
Now you could come out differently on this issue depending on the adversary -- some you might be able to satisfy by just leaving them alone, while others might come at you regardless. However, this seems like a basic, fundamental question about the character of different adversaries. A first principle type question that, by answering you can use to help build a policy.
But I wonder whether or not disagreements about the war in Afghanistan really have to do with fundamental unacknowledged differences about the baseline conditions in which the United States is most likely to be safe.
SMG has a point about the Vietcong/NVA not posing a threat to US interests outside of the region, which cannot be said of al-Qaeda or other extremist groups. However, the question remains, is a massive military commitment (a la Vietnam) in Afghanistan the best way to confront the threat, and can we afford it? I've seen a lot of convincing arguments that say yes to the first, but most of them completely ignore the second.
I generally don't like the way Bacevich bates the COIN crowd...the whole "Conservatives" vs. "Crusaders" thing was obviously designed to make anyone not in his camp look hungry for everlasting conflict in faraway places. That said, he has a solid point about America's "crisis of profligacy," and I don't think enough people in high places have either picked up on his points or debated them seriously.
There has to be some middle way in which the US can confront terrorists without having to employ a massive military force. I wonder if it would be possible to employ a force structure model along the lines of OEF-Phillipines, or the American presence in El Salvador in the '80s, which a lot of studies have said were both successful because they were very small scale and un-ambitious. If anyone out there knows more about this one, I think it would add to the discussion (not that its really my call).
Scott, it seems to me that differences of opinion on this basic concept are at the root of current policy disputes, one enlarged by the failure to acknowledge it.
Regardless of one's view of 'insurgency,' it is impossible to ignore the constant presence throughout history of civil unrest arising from a failure by those who govern to provide for the basic needs of the greater population. I would argue that the greater population now includes the world's inhabitants; no longer is it possible to isolate any one group effectively from others.
You limit your statement of alternatives to two. You can widen the range of alternatives, if you are willing to do so.
Will you or not, they exist.
@Visitor
I don't disagree with what you said about "civil unrest arising from a failure by those who govern to provide for the basic needs of the greater population". That does certainly happen.
I thought you were making a broader US strategy point that "if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone". Them here meaning "the world". I was suggesting that we don't often get into debate at that level, since you have two different perspectives on this (more than two as well, obviously). That one and then the converse, that trouble will find you and come after you even if you sit on your hands. And as I pointed out, reality is obviously more complicated.
However, if you meant your comment to be just about the sources of civil unrest, then I misinterpreted your point and my attempt to lay out that area of conceptual disagreement in the way I did was misplaced.
If I did not misinterpret your original comment and you were making a point with an implicit theoretical assumption about human behavior: leave people alone and they will leave you alone, then I think my contrast could potentially shed some light on the issue.
I look forward to hearing your response.
My comment was regarding civil unrest. Not just civil unrest but, more broadly, societal unrest.
""The conflict in Afghanistan clearly relates to the safety of our country and our people, as it was the haven from which Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11.""
I'd have to agree with the initial comments here. Either this is an argument for a military deployment to the Sudan or it is no argument at all. Kind of worrying that it's front and centre in addressing the question of how's this in our interests.
If counterterrorism against non-state actors -- particularly ones which have shown such ease in moving command between continents and with presence in dozens of countries -- is going to be a justification for military occupation of countries where they used to be, then again, this this is no argument at all.
Maybe your own personal interests could be brought to bear on this. Should Israel have never withdrawn from Lebanon if this counts for anything significant ? If non-state actors who have shown they can operate from various countries once used a particular country for staging attacks, what does the occupation of that one state serve in terms of security ?
Perhaps we could consider how Israeli attitudes may have differed if they had the fkn Pacific Ocean between them.
"A stable and secure Afghanistan is not just in American’s interest it is in the world’s interest and as such it should be a greater portion of counties pulling weight there. "
State how, using the year 2000 as an example.
Otherwise the counterargument is as complicated as me saying "a stable and secure Afghanistan is in nobody's interest but America's and therefor everyone else should pull out".
The war in Afghanistan is necessary to destroy the remaining al Qaeda targets in the FATA region of Pakistan. This was the main purpose for invading Afghanistan and should remain our first priority. By engaging the Taliban elements, who support al Qaeda, we apply pressure to the movement that continues in its desire to spread its vision of an Islamist society. Our current strategic thinking is that the presence of the Taliban in any region outside the FATA is unacceptable to the security of the US because of their connection to al Qaeda. If the US can make modest gains in stabilizing a systematic governing cycle of loose federalism in Afghanistan and pacifying support for the Taliban in the population then succeeding in our goal of denying a safe haven to terrorists improves dramatically.
http://thetruenarcissists.com/
"The war in Afghanistan is necessary to destroy the remaining al Qaeda targets in the FATA region of Pakistan. "
No it isn't. The fact that you're claiming war in one country is necessary to attack targets in another should make this explanation unnecessary. Apart from a redundant airstrip Afghanistan is completely unnecessary in this respect.
Again, I'm not a proponent for withdrawal, but if the arguments for why the Afghanistan occupation is necessary are this devoid of reasoning I may just come around.
Jihad in Afghanistan: Defending Muslims or Defending al-Qa'ida?
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