Is the War in Afghanistan Worth Fighting?

Time to Get Out of Afghanistan – George Will, Washington Post opinion.

… US strategy – protecting the population – is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about “deteriorating” (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined US involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.

The US strategy is “clear, hold and build.” Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that US forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country – “control” is an elastic concept – and ” ‘our’ Afghans may prove no more viable than were ‘our’ Vietnamese, the Saigon regime.” …

Is the War in Afghanistan Worth Fighting? – Washington Post opinions.

On Monday the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan called for a new strategy to fight the Taliban. The Post asked experts whether the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. Below are contributions from John Nagl, Andrew J. Bacevich, Erin M. Simpson, Thomas H. Johnson and Danielle Pletka.