Diplomat, scholar, soldier, and Afghanistan expert Rory Stewart was at the New York Review of Books conference and had some interesting things to say about Afghanistan.
The video is here. (Can't embed.)
First, he talks about what he thinks US policy should be in Afghanistan and why the surge is futile:
There's a propensity to imagine that in...Afghanistan one should like a macho poker player either raise or fold instead of calling.... That calling, making the minimal bet to stay in the game, is somehow childish, it shows you can't calculate the odds, you're being bossed by the other players at the table. We very much like the idea that we should increase troops or we should get out. There's a lot of talk about victory and exit. In reality I think the best approach, at least initially in Afghanistan, should be to try to see if we can call, in other words to see if we can make a minimal bet to stay in the game.... Almost every troop increase since 2005 has been of dubious justification.... Why should one not increase one's bet in the game? Largely because it's not going to do any good.... Even within General MChrystal's own definition of counterinsurgency 40,000 troops in current conditions are likely to do almost nothing...
Second, he points out how the rhetoric being used about what's happening in Afghanistan is restricting the policy options and in fact is keeping the most reasonable options from being considered:
We have trapped ourselves in a theoretical framework with big words like counterinsurgency, failed states, global jihad...and these big words...restrict our response as to what we can do in Afghanistan.... If we agree to call what is happening in Afghanistan a counterinsurgency war, certain things immediately follow from that. It immediately becomes possible for the military to say, Oh, in that case we need 600,000 trained counterinsurgents. If we agree to call the Taliban a global jihadist movement, certain things follow from that. For example, you cannot negotiate with the Taliban because this is global jihad. If you agree to say this is a failed state or a safe haven, certain things follow from that too. As a result, failure is not an option. In this context it becomes very difficult to say what I suppose is the case, which is Afghanistan poses some kind of threat, but not an existential threat, and that there's a limit to what we can do about it. In very banal terms, saying Afghanistan may not be that scary and there may not be that much we can do about it becomes entirely impossible in a world with this kind of inflationary rhetoric.
And third, what Obama should tell the military and the war cheerleaders 18 months from now once it's clear the surge hasn't changed anything and he's being pressed to escalate once again:
Perhaps the strongest argument would be an argument about political will. Say to General McChrystal, your request for an additional 40,000 troops has simply terrified large elements of the American public. People can see ghosts of Vietnam emerging. If you continue to ask for any more troops, the pressure for withdrawal will become almost irresistible.
The full video is a bit long at 20 minutes, but it's worth viewing in its entirety.