The Afghanistan Problem: Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire?

Joe Kein, in TIME, here

"...What to do? Actually, there's a consensus within the Obama Administration about how to approach the Pakistan part of the problem. The policy might be described as comprehensive diplomacy accompanied by lots of money. The diplomatic task is to nudge India and Pakistan, who nearly came to an agreement in their eternal Kashmir dispute in 2007, toward a lessening of tensions in the hope that the Pakistani army will turn to the struggle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.....

And what about Afghanistan? It is, once again, a sideshow, given the focus on Pakistan — but it is also where Obama's most important decision will be made: To escalate or not? The military is in favor of an Afghan surge to protect the entire population in the provinces affected by the Taliban insurgency. That could mean another 15,000 troops, or more, on top of the 17,000 already sent. It might even succeed; the Afghan people are terrified by the Taliban, but they do want law and order — which the corrupt Karzai government has failed to provide and Petraeus-style counterinsurgency tactics emphasize.
But why expend that sort of effort on a sideshow? Obama's civilian advisers fear a quagmire. But they know that some middle ground, between a "Central Asian Valhalla," as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it, and the current slide into chaos, has to be found. "We have to stabilize the military situation," said an Obama aide. "Continue to build up the Afghan army, and help the government to become more effective." In other words, hope that the disintegration of Afghanistan can be prevented while waiting — and hoping — for the Pakistanis to take effective action against the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens...."