Conflict in Afghanistan has raged for eight years, yet "victory" looks ever more distant. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel declared that the goal is "a credible government and a legitimate process." Alas, neither exists.

In March, Obama added 21,000 combat troops to the 84,000 U.S. and allied personnel already stationed in Afghanistan. Now Gen. Stanley McChrystal is pushing for at least 40,000, and as many as 80,000 more.

Even the latter would not guarantee success. Under traditional counterinsurgency doctrine, Afghanistan, with 33 million people, many of them living in remote villages amidst rugged terrain, warrants 660,000 allied personnel. The allied objective is critical.

The Western forces quickly displaced al-Qaida and ousted the Taliban government, which gave the organization refuge. U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones estimated fewer than 100 al-Qaida members are now operating in Afghanistan, and they have "no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Far harder will be creating "a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need," in Emanuel's words. Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires" in which outside powers never have successfully imposed their will.

Eight years of social engineering has failed.

The allies are left protecting, in the words of conservative columnist Ralph Peters, "an Afghan government the people despise."

Afghanistan's importance primarily derives from its impact on nuclear-armed Pakistan next door. However, an endless, escalating conflict is more likely than a Taliban victory to destabilize Pakistan.

Washington is left with only bad options. Matthew Hoh, who recently quit the State Department, observed that no "military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan."

Even if more troops were better deployed, the odds of reasonable success in reasonable time at reasonable cost are long.

The U.S. and its allies should begin drawing down their forces. The outcome might be Taliban conquest and rule, but equally likely is divided governance. In either case, the conflict would no longer be inflamed by outside intervention.

The Economist hyperbolically fears that "defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it more open to attacks."

However, jihadists are most likely to attack Westerners when Westerners are killing Muslims. Moreover, escalation, if followed by additional years of conflict and ultimate defeat, would more grievously harm America's reputation.

The most serious argument against withdrawal is that al-Qaida would gain additional "safe havens." Special envoy Richard Holbrooke contended that preventing this is "the only justification for what we're doing."

Yet, al-Qaida has not moved into territory governed by the Taliban. Anti-terrorism expert Marc Sageman observed, "There is no reason for al-Qaida to return to Afghanistan. It seems safer in Pakistan at the moment." The defuse jihadist movement even has organized terrorist plots from Europe.

The Obama administration should adjust its ends. It should focus on al-Qaida rather than the Taliban.

In contrast, it is not necessary to build a functional Afghan state. The allies should tolerate any group willing to cooperate in preventing terrorist attacks.

Washington should attempt to split the Afghan insurgency. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted, "Not every Taliban is an extremist ally."

Explained Arsalan Rahmani, a member of the old Taliban government: "Some are fighting to go to paradise, but among the Taliban leaders most want peace." Also subject to purchase or lease may be opportunistic warlords such as Gulbaddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

An essential aspect of this strategy, however, is withdrawing allied troops.

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, observed, "Many experts in and from Afghanistan warn that our presence over the past eight years has already hardened a meaningful percentage of the population into viewing the United States as an army of occupation which should be opposed and resisted."

In 2002, Obama warned against fighting a war "without a clear rationale," and that an invasion of Iraq would yield "a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and with unintended consequences." That is happening in Afghanistan.

Getting out won't be easy. The time and manner of reducing the allied military presence should reflect changing circumstances. But withdrawal should be the ultimate objective.

Even with the finest military on earth, the U.S. government cannot do everything. In Afghanistan, Washington policymakers should finally acknowledge the limits of U.S. power.

Growth accelerated with tentative reforms in 1980, and shot up to 9% after reforms deepened in the current decade. How much lower would infant mortality, illiteracy and poverty have been had India commenced reform a decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster growth and human development? I have published estimates in a paper for the Cato Institute (see http://www.cato.org/pubs/dbp/dbp4.pdf). This shows that the delay in reforms led to an additional 14.5 million infant deaths, an additional 261 million illiterates, and an additional 109 million poor people. Indian socialism delivered a monumental tragedy, lacking both growth and social justice.

Economists frequently estimate what would have happened had policies been different. The assumptions on which such estimates are based can always be questioned.

For instance, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has popularized the notion of 100 million missing women on account of gender discrimination in China, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa. These regions have 94 females per 100 males, against 105 females per 100 males in other countries with equal gender treatment. Sen assumed that without gender discrimination, the female:male ratio in the four developing regions would also have been 105:100. On this basis, he estimated that gender discrimination had caused a shortfall of over 100 million females — what he called "missing women".

Sen's model was so simplistic that he did not send his paper to an economic journal: he published these estimates in the New York Review of Books. Various economists complained that he had neglected other causes of gender differences, and some came out with alternative estimates.

Despite these objections, Sen's estimate of 100 million became world famous, and his phrase, "missing women", became standard lexicon in gender debates. What mattered was not the precision of his estimates, but the magnitude of the social disaster he was able to highlight.

In the same spirit (but without implicating Sen), i have sought to estimate the number of missing children, missing literates, and missing non-poor arising from the delay in economic reforms. Had reforms started in 1970 rather than 1980, India would have grown faster. In this fast-growth scenario, i assume that per capita income growth in the 1970s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1980s: growth in the 1980s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1990s: and growth in the 1990s would have been what was achieved in 2001-08.

I calculate the rate of change of infant mortality, literacy and poverty with GDP since 1971. I then apply this rate of change to the fast-growth scenario. This reveals what infant mortality, literacy and poverty would have been with faster growth.

In a fast-growth scenario, infant mortality would have been less every year, and in 2008 would have been 27 deaths per thousand births, against the actual 54 per thousand. The cumulative number of "missing children" turns out to be a massive 14.5 million. This is two-and-a-half times the number of Jews killed by Hitler.

I use trends from the latest surveys to calculate actual literacy and poverty levels in 2008, and compare these with literacy and poverty levels in a fast-growth scenario. With faster growth, literacy would have been virtually 100% by 2008, and 261 million more people would have been literate. Again, faster growth would have reduced the number of poor people in 2008 from 282 million to 174 million. This means we have 109 million "missing non-poor" on account of delayed reform.

Doubtless critics will object, as they did after Sen's exercise, that i have used a simple model that neglects other factors affecting infant mortality, literacy and poverty. Demographer Ansley Coale reworked Sen's calculations to show that the number of missing women was probably 60 million, not 100 million. That did not dent public horror at the social tragedy that Sen unveiled.

I invite critics to produce more sophisticated models on the impact of delayed reform, as Coale did in the case of missing women. If these more sophisticated models conclude that Indian socialism killed only 10 million children and not 14.5 million, i will shrug. My point about the magnitude of the social tragedy will stand.

Concerns over the legitimacy of the U.S.-backed central government were also voiced by Brookings Institution senior fellow Bruce Riedel, who chaired an interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration. Riedel said at a Brookings event in August: "If we don't have a government we can point to that has some basis of legitimacy in the country, the best generals, the best strategy isn't going to help turn it around."

Now in its ninth year in Afghanistan, the United States finds itself in the unenviable position of assisting and sponsoring a corrupt, illegitimate, and slightly autocratic regime, which itself is contributing to the collapse of public confidence and to the resurgence of the Taliban insurgency. Conflicting assessments over what to do in Afghanistan is why President Obama has been "dithering" on a decision. His hesitancy is an implicit recognition that the United States might not succeed in laying a centrally-administered facade onto Afghanistan's preexisting society. As the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stated in an August 2009 report:

Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction project—it is a construction project, starting almost from scratch in a country that will probably remain poverty-stricken no matter how much the U.S. and the international community accomplish in the coming years.

The fact that Americans are even discussing the capacity and political will of the government of Afghanistan shows how far we have strayed from our original objectives. The October 2001 invasion was to punish al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban regime that harbored them. That narrow mission has since morphed into improving governance, fighting corruption, and building infrastructure. Underpinning U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is the belief that remaining will keep America safe, despite evidence to the contrary. For example, a 2004 Pentagon Task Force that reviewed the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts found that the underlying sources of threats to American interests were America's direct intervention in the Muslim world. This was the same task force that reported: "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies." Reminder: That was Rumsfeld's Pentagon.

But when some people in Washington hear that nation-building in Afghanistan is not a precondition to making America safer, or that prolonging our presence undermines America's security, the argument for remaining then shifts to preserving the security and human rights of the people of Afghanistan. While I too would endorse preserving the human rights of the Afghan people, this line of reasoning invites certain questions: how many Afghans will be killed to save one Afghan life? How long should America stay until it sees progress? And what if some Afghans do not want the protection of western troops or the central government we keep afloat?

Of course, the same people who argue for preserving the security and human rights of the people of Afghanistan overlook certain contradictions. For instance, America's commitment to maintaining forward basing rights in countries like Uzbekistan puts America in the position of appearing to side with states that repress its own people. And, as my Cato Institute colleague Chris Preble says here on a recent bloggingheads.tv appearance, the rationale for intervening in Afghanistan was not the Taliban's human rights abuses, which we were well aware of in the late 1990s. Rather, the rational was for bringing al Qaeda to justice. Similarly in Iraq, the central rationale was not that Saddam Hussein did horrible things to his people. Only later — after several years of mission creep — did U.S. policymakers shift the goalposts of the mission to include moral considerations.

As we honor our veteran's this week with Armistice Day, we should be asking yet another important question regarding the preservation of human rights abroad: should U.S. soldiers be asked to fight and die for issues not directly related to U.S. national security?

In a recent article that appeared in the Times of London:

'We're lost — that's how I feel. I'm not exactly sure why we're here,' said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. 'I need a clear-cut purpose if I'm going to get hurt out here or if I'm going to die.' Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: 'If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don't.' The only soldiers who thought it was going well 'work in an office, not on the ground'. In his opinion 'the whole country is going to s***'.

Over one million U.S. soldiers have fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to General George Casey, U.S. Army chief of staff, troops have endured tough rotations of one-year-in, one-year-out for the past five years. Ryan Jaroncyk over at The Humble Libertarian writes that repeated deployments are leading to record suicide rates and an explosive epidemic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Given the strains on America's all volunteer force, we should not forget that within the first one hundred days of his administration, Obama approved sending an additional 21,000 troops (it was actually more like 30,000 when we include the number needed for logistical and support purposes). These numbers don't include the more than 70,000 private security contractors in the country right now.

Washington has already surged into Afghanistan once this year. The United States should not spend more American blood and more of its ever-diminishing financial resources to prop up Karzai's ineffectual regime.

GDP is a vulgar measure that misses many issues that make people happy, says the report. So, countries should also measure quality-of-life indicators such as leisure, education, social relationships, political voice and governance. Bhutan's own happiness index includes the frequency of meditation and prayer.

Now, everybody will agree that happiness is much more than GDP. However, Bhutan's dirty secret is that it is world champion in GDP growth.

The global recession sent growth plunging in many countries in 2008, but Bhutan had the fastest GDP growth rate in the world at 21.4%, says the CIA World Factbook. Back in the 1980s, Bhutan was much poorer than India. Today, thanks to galloping economic growth for two decades, Bhutan is almost twice as rich as India: its per capita income was $1,900 in 2008 against India's $1,070.

Was record GDP growth spurred by the pursuit of happiness? Actually, it was spurred by giant hydropower projects that India has been building in Bhutan for two decades. Bhutan's current hydropower capacity is 1,480 MW, and it plans additional projects to generate 10,000 MW of power by 2020, almost entirely for export to India, which provides all the financing.

Large dams are not usually regarded as recipes for happiness. Environmentalists usually condemn them for displacing people and submerging forests. Bhutan's neat ploy has been to adopt a green name (Druk Green Power Corporation) for its hydropower producer. It gets away with this since environmentalists don't want to attack a much ballyhooed Shangri-La of happiness.

Its first big hydropower project of 336 MW capacity at Chuka was commissioned in 1988. This was followed by Kurichhu (60MW) in 2001, Basochho (40MW) in 2005 and the giant Tala project (1,020 MW) in 2007. The commissioning of Tala largely explains the subsequent huge jump in GDP in 2008. Electricity revenue will provide no less than 60% of the government's entire revenue in 2009. Yet, barely 66% of Bhutanese households and 39% of its villages are electrified.

Developing countries with rich natural resources, like oil, often fare very badly (as in Africa). Economists talk of a "resource curse" that enables a kleptocratic ruling elite to become very rich, without any productive effort or decent governance. Revenues from natural resources flow directly to governments, bypassing citizens.

Hydropower potential is Bhutan's big natural resource, generating vast revenues for its government. To its credit, kleptocracy and misgovernance have been kept at bay so far. Yet, as hydropower revenue keeps soaring, the risks will keep rising.

Bhutan has done many things to deserve its Shangri-La reputation. Its forest cover is a very high 72%, and it has pledged to keep this above 60% forever. It admits only a small number of high-end tourists, helping preserve the traditional character of its delightful towns. Tourists say the people are very friendly, tranquil and hospitable.

Yet, appearances can be deceptive. A nasty ethnic struggle has led Bhutan to expel 100,000 people of Nepali origin, who now languish in refugee camps in Nepal. Ethnic Bhutias constitute 50% of Bhutan's population, and ethnic Nepalese 35%. Nepalese migrants have swamped original ethnic groups in neighbouring parts of India like Sikkim and Darjeeling. The Bhutias of Bhutan are determined not to be swamped too. Those expelled say they are regular citizens who have been ethnically cleansed, while the government claims they are illegal immigrants. Such ethnic strife does not look like a recipe for happiness.

In most countries women outnumber men. But Bhutan has only 89.2 females per 100 males. This is worse even than India (93.3 females per 100 males) where female foeticide and infanticide are common. Bhutan's gender ratio suggests strong discrimination against female children in access to health and food.

The CIA World Factbook estimates literacy in Bhutan at 47%, while a recent Bhutanese publication puts it at 59.5%. The country banned TV for decades to protect its people from pernicious modern influences, but finally allowed TV in 1999. Low literacy and media bans are not usually associated with happiness, but some will say that ignorance is bliss.

I cannot say whether Bhutan is truly happy. But if that's true, Bhutan seems to have proved that the happiness flowing from large dams and fast GDP growth more than compensates for the unhappiness caused by ethnic strife, gender discrimination and low literacy.

Instead, the president should rethink Washington's objective. The conflict has become his war. He should not ask, is Afghanistan winnable? Rather, the right question is what should the U.S. attempt to achieve? The goal should be to advance American security, not build an Afghan state.

The president need not rush his decision. Hawkish demagogues who entrapped the U.S. in an unnecessary war in Iraq hope to do the same in Afghanistan. For instance, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) claimed: "the lack of decisiveness about how to best proceed is emboldening our enemies and endangering our troops and friends." The worst policy, however, would be to mimic the foolish decisiveness of President George W. Bush.

Afghanistan was President Bush's "good war," in which Washington ousted the ruling Taliban for hosting al-Qaeda. But he quickly lost interest in Afghanistan, shifting Washington's attention and resources to Iraq. Conflict in Afghanistan has raged for eight years--longer than the U.S. spent fighting World Wars I and II combined--consuming nearly 900 U.S. and 600 allied lives, as well as $220 billion. The Afghan people, too, have suffered greatly.

Yet "victory" looks ever more distant. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the situation in Afghanistan is "deteriorating." The government barely functions; drug money pervades the otherwise moribund economy. The number of estimated insurgents, Taliban attacks, and allied casualties all are rising. Barely a third of the territory can be said to be under the central government's (very loose) control, and even large urban areas are no longer safe. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's supporters engaged in ostentatious and widespread electoral fraud.

Indeed, the election imbroglio highlights the administration's challenge. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel declared: "The result, for us and for the president, is whether, in fact, there's a credible government and a legitimate process." But that question has been answered--in the negative. The initial vote was marred by widespread irregularities; the fraudulently reelected president accepted a run-off only because the foreign military powers keeping him in power demanded one; no one imagines President Karzai losing even if Abdullah Abdullah reverses his decision to boycott the poll. A forced coalition/national unity government would offer little more legitimacy.

President Obama termed the war one of "necessity" and in March added 21,000 combat troops to the 47,000 Americans already stationed in Afghanistan. (Another 37,000 allied, largely NATO, forces are on station, though often where they are not needed.) Now the president's hand-picked commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is pushing for upwards of 80,000 more personnel, with 40,000 apparently the "minimum" acceptable in his view.

The administration is worried about the political implications of escalation and is considering a compromise--adding some troops, but fewer than desired by Gen. McChrystal. However, pursuing expansive objectives without providing the necessary resources would be the worst policy. Commented Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson: "This game's been going on for eight years. It's time to raise or fold."

But raising would not guarantee success. The allies initially deployed 60,000 personnel in Bosnia, a much smaller territory in which conflict had ceased. At its maximum Russia had 118,000 troops in Afghanistan, which proved to be too few. Even an extra 80,000 troops--which the U.S. does not have handy to deploy in Afghanistan--would not be enough. Under traditional counterinsurgency doctrine, Afghanistan, with 33 million people, many of them living in remote villages amidst rugged terrain, warrants 660,000 allied personnel. Nor is NATO reinforcement a realistic option. President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Gen. McChrystal all have pushed for more assistance, but garnered few commitments and even fewer boots on the ground. Europeans have far less stomach for continuing the war than do Americans.

The critical issue is Washington's objective. The U.S. long ago achieved its goal of displacing and weakening al-Qaeda (despite the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden) and ousting the Taliban government which gave the organization refuge. That success persists despite recent Taliban gains. National Security Adviser James Jones estimated fewer than 100 al-Qaeda members are operating in Afghanistan, and said they have "no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Ousting the Taliban was simple compared to creating "an effective and representative government," in the words of Marin Strmecki, formerly at the Pentagon, or "a national representative government that is able to govern, defend, and sustain itself," according to four scholars at the Center for American Progress, or "a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need," in Rahm Emanuel's words. Such a partner doesn't currently exist and is no where close to existing.

Everyone uses the old adage that Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires," but outside powers never have had much success in imposing their will on the Afghan people. Nation-building is difficult enough: only in Germany and Japan, with ordered societies and democratic traditions, has the U.S. had unambiguous success. Third World states have proved largely impervious to Western attentions.

Afghanistan is no different. Afghanistan "worked" during the mid-20th century under a monarchy which understood the limits of its power. The regime respected the poor, traditional, autonomous tribal-based society which it purportedly ruled. And, most important, there were no foreign military occupiers.

Social engineering by Washington would be difficult in the best of circumstances. Afghanistan's challenges are daunting. Observed the Economist magazine: "The country's mountains and deserts are forbidding; its tribal make-up bewildering; and, after three decades of war, its communities broken, poor and ignorant. Well-meant actions often have unintended effects: fighting can create more insurgents than it kills; foreigners are blamed for attacks that hurt Afghan civilians; and schemes to win people over can deepen antagonism."

Afghanistan hosts 20 ethnic groups. Even the Pashtuns are divided into 50 tribes. This is not a society traditionally welcoming to outsiders, let alone foreigners. Afghanistan has become the world's largest opium producer. Finally, Afghan society has been badly deformed by three decades of war.

After eight years, Washington has not created the answer in Kabul. Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps officer who recently resigned from the State Department, explained: "Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people." Ralph Peters, a columnist who backed the Iraq war, criticized protecting "an Afghan government the people despise."

The inadequacies of the Karzai regime are manifest and multiple. The International Crisis Group pointed to "a highly centralized constitutional order in which the legislature has been denied the tools to check an overbearing executive, and a neglected judiciary, which contributes to the climate of impunity and corruption fuelling the insurgency." Malalai Joya, vilified by fundamentalists for daring to run for parliament and promote women's rights, complained: "Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords."

Then there is the recent flagrant election fraud, which, wrote Hoh, "will call into question worldwide our government's military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government." Karzai's allies claim that the Afghan president has learned from the experience, but what has he learned? If he can get away with rampant fraud, whether or not a second poll is held, he likely will become even less tractable. U.S. escalation will be seen as support for the existing regime, not for the sort of idealized system Washington claims to support.

No intrinsic strategic importance justifies attempting to construct a genuine Afghan state. Boston University's Andrew Bacevich explained: "No serious person thinks that Afghanistan--remote, impoverished, barely qualifying as a nation-state--seriously matters to the United States." Afghanistan's importance primarily derives from its impact on nuclear-armed Pakistan, whose largely ungoverned border territories provide a haven for both Taliban forces and what remains of al-Qaeda.

Blogger Paul Mirengoff contended that "Ceding Afghanistan to [America's main] enemy would have serious adverse implications for Pakistan." The Washington Post worried: "success by the [Taliban] movement in toppling the government of either country would be a catastrophe for the interests of the United States and major allies such as India." Others predict a veritable regional disaster if the U.S. withdraws.

However, a semi-stable, semi-workable Afghan state doesn't necessarily work to Pakistan's advantage. First, how would it affect Islamabad's most serious security concern--the regional balance with India? Pakistan strongly supported the Taliban regime pre-9/11 for a reason. Second, Afghans enjoying the benefits of peace might not welcome jihadists and terrorists, encouraging the latter to remain in Pakistan's largely autonomous border provinces.

Most important, Pakistan seems more likely to be destabilized by an endless, escalating conflict than a Taliban advance. Islamabad's vulnerabilities are obvious, with a weak civilian government facing a complex mix of poverty, instability, insurgency, and terrorism.

Unfortunately, the war in neighboring Afghanistan exacerbates all of these problems. Argued Hoh: "Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan." First, the war has pushed Afghan insurgents across the border. Second, cooperation with unpopular U.S. policy has reinforced the Zardari government's appearance as an American toady. Ever-rising American demands further undercut Pakistani sovereignty and increase public hostility.

From Pakistan's perspective, limiting the war on almost any terms would be better than prosecuting it for years, even to "victory," whatever that would mean. In fact, the least likely outcome is a takeover by widely unpopular Pakistani militants. The Pakistan military is the nation's strongest institution; while the army might not be able to rule alone, it can prevent any other force from ruling.

Indeed, Bennett Ramberg made the important point: "Pakistan, Iran and the former Soviet republics to the north have demonstrated a brutal capacity to suppress political violence to ensure survival. This suggests that even were Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven, the neighborhood can adapt and resist." The results might not be pretty, but the region would not descend into chaos. In contrast, warned Bacevich: "To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake."

Washington is left with only bad options. One is to continue trying to "fix" Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal argued: "A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy." Moreover, said Gen. McChrystal, American strategy must "earn the support of the people," which will win the war "regardless of how many militants are killed or captured."

Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations even suggested that "Poor governance is an argument for, not against, a troop surge. Only by sending more personnel, military and civilian, can President Obama improve the Afghan government's performance, reverse the Taliban's gains and prevent al-Qaeda's allies from regaining the ground they lost after 9/11." In short, failing to create a functional state after eight years of war means Washington should double down, pushing more lives and money into the growing pot.

America's well-disciplined and well-trained forces can do much, but not everything. Hoh observed that no "military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan." Even if better deployed in more heavily populated areas, the odds of reasonable success in reasonable time at reasonable cost seem long at best.

The point is not that the majority of Afghans love the Taliban. But many dislike the Karzai government, local warlords, and/or allied forces. The costs of "winning" such a complicated game almost certainly would outweigh the benefits of even the most optimistic projections. As Peters bluntly states, "the hearts and minds of the Afghans not only can't be won, but aren't worth winning." More likely than victory would be years of war, persistent insurgent activity, thousands more American casualties, hundreds of billions of dollars more outlays, persistent regional instability, and ultimate U.S. withdrawal.

What are the alternatives? The status quo offers little hope of reversing the Taliban's gains. Concentrating allied troops in the cities might offer greater urban security but would concede most of the country to the insurgency. Accelerating training and equipping of the Afghan army and police would yield positive results only if the resulting forces proved to be competent and honest, as well as competently and honestly led.

The better policy would be for Washington to begin drawing down its combat forces. The outcome might be Taliban conquest and rule, but equally likely is continuing conflict and divided governance amongst competing political factions, ethnic groups, and tribes. The resulting patchwork would be tragic, but the fighting would no longer be inflamed by outside intervention.

Would adverse consequences extend beyond the region? The Economist hyperbolically fears that "defeat for the West in Afghanistan would embolden its opponents not just in Pakistan, but all around the world, leaving it more open to attacks." However, jihadists are most likely to attack Westerners when their grievances are ongoing. Groups based in Amman, London, Madrid, and Riyadh as well as America are more likely to act if the American government is killing more rather than fewer Muslims in Afghanistan.

Moreover, escalation, followed by additional years of conflict and then ultimate defeat would multiply the harm to America's reputation. The Soviet Union made this mistake. Author Victor Sebestyen reviewed the minutes of meetings between Politburo and military officials and reported: "The Soviets saw withdrawal as potentially fatal to their prestige in the cold war, so they became mired deeper and deeper in their failed occupation." Even reformist Mikhail Gorbachev dithered out of fear of the impact on Moscow's image before finally withdrawing Soviet forces in 1989.

The most serious argument against withdrawal is that al-Qaeda would gain additional "safe havens." Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute argued that "Afghanistan is not now a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, but it would likely become one again if we abandoned it." Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy to South Asia, contended: "without any shadow of a doubt, al-Qaeda would move back into Afghanistan, set up a larger presence, recruit more people and pursue its objectives against the United States even more aggressively." Preventing this is "the only justification for what we're doing," he insisted.

Yet there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has moved into territory currently governed by the Taliban. Even Taliban-controlled Afghanistan would not be a genuine safe haven. Noted Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School: "The Taliban will not be able to protect [bin Laden] from U.S. commandos, cruise missiles and armed drones. He and his henchmen will always have to stay in hiding, which is why even an outright Taliban victory will not enhance their position very much."

Indeed, anti-terrorism expert Marc Sageman observed in recent congressional testimony: "there is no reason for al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan. It seems safer in Pakistan at the moment." Other options include other failed or semi-failed states, such as Somalia and Yemen. The defuse jihadist movement which has organized most of the terrorist plots since 9/11 has found adequate safe havens even in Europe.

No wonder Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations admitted, while calling for continuing "a war effort that is costly, risky and worth waging--but only barely so," that preventing al-Qaeda from moving back into Afghanistan was "the weakest argument for waging the kind of war we are now waging." The U.S. doesn't have the resources necessary to wage war everywhere terrorists might conceivably seek a safe haven and need not do so in any case.

The administration should adjust its policy ends. Washington's principal objective should be protecting U.S. security. The Washington Post's David Ignatius railed against adopting "a more selfish counterterrorism strategy that drops the rebuilding part and seeks to assassinate America's enemies." But the U.S. government's overriding obligation is to protect U.S. citizens, and that means focusing on al-Qaeda rather than the Taliban, forestalling and disrupting terrorist operations against America. Doing so requires sharing intelligence widely among affected nations, squeezing terrorist funding networks, utilizing Special Forces on the ground, employing predator and air strikes--judiciously, given the tragic risk of civilian casualties, which both raises moral issues and fuels anti-American sentiment--and cooperating with various Afghan forces and the Pakistani government.

In contrast, it is not necessary to build a functional state in Kabul allied with the U.S. Noted Sageman: "The proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is at present irrelevant to the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda, which is located in Pakistan. None of the plots in the West has any connection to any Afghan insurgent group, labeled under the umbrella name 'Afghan Taliban'." In Afghanistan Washington should tolerate any regime or group, or combination of regimes or groups, willing to cooperate in preventing terrorist attacks.

Obviously, policymakers disagree on the likelihood of success of such a political strategy. One unnamed anti-terrorism official told the Washington Post that the prospects of political reconciliation are "dim and grim." Other analysts contend that only major battlefield victories would encourage Taliban forces to surrender.

Yet history suggests that accommodation is possible and certainly worth pursuing. After all, the Karzai government has made deals with warlords and narcotics producers alike. Washington once worked, reluctantly to be sure, with the Taliban regime to combat drug production. There are indications that the Taliban was angered by al-Qaeda's 9/11 assault on the U.S. Moreover, a number of Taliban commanders defected in the early years after American intervention.

Thus, Washington should attempt to split the Afghan insurgency. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once equated al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but more recently admitted: "Not every Taliban is an extremist ally." In fact, the Taliban mixes hard-core militants and disaffected residents. Arsalan Rahmani, once Islamic affairs minister in the Taliban government and now a member of the Afghan parliament, explained: "Some are fighting to go to paradise, but among the Taliban leaders most want peace. Afghanistan is their homeland and they want peace here."

The distinction is widely recognized. Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria wrote: "It is unclear how many Taliban fighters believe in a global jihadist ideology, but most U.S. commanders with whom I've spoken feel that the number is less than 30 percent. The other 70 percent are driven by money, gangland peer pressure or opposition to Karzai." Similarly, the Boston Globe quoted an American intelligence official who contended that only ten percent of insurgents were Taliban ideologues, while "Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency."

Even Gen. McChrystal advocated going "pretty high up" to give even Taliban commanders "the opportunity to come in." He added that Pashtuns "have always been willing to change positions, change sides. I don't think much of the Taliban are ideologically driven; I think they are practically driven. I'm not sure they wouldn't flip to our side."

Washington will need to display both knowledge and nuance, admittedly too often in short supply, to exploit Taliban differences. However, being out of power apparently has left the Taliban even less well-disposed to bin Laden & Co. Explained John Mueller of Ohio State University: "There are reports that Omar's group has made clear its rupture with al-Qaeda in talks with Saudi Arabia."

Thus, the Taliban may well focus on its own interests. Mullah Mutawakkil, once a minister in the Taliban government, believes a deal is possible: remove bounties on commanders, release insurgent prisoners held at Bagram air base, and accept Taliban rule in Afghanistan's southern provinces in return for a commitment not to allow use of Taliban-controlled territory in attacks on the West.

This would not be a radical policy, since Washington already has ceded certain areas to warlord control. Insurgent leaders know well that denial is less costly than control: Washington could launch targeted strikes against any al-Qaeda operations and oust any regime, Taliban or other, which allied itself with terrorists. This approach also would demonstrate to the Muslim world that the U.S. is targeting terrorists, not Islamic governments. In contrast, warns Mutawakkil: "If the Taliban fight on and finally became Afghanistan's government with the help of al-Qaeda, it would then be very difficult to separate them."

Currently joined with the Taliban are opportunistic warlords such as Gulbaddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Washington should appeal to differences among uneasy allies and offer to buy off--or lease--the more venal opposition.

An essential aspect of this strategy, however, is withdrawing allied troops, since many Afghan fighters are determined to resist any foreign occupiers. A continuing occupation, no matter how well-intentioned from our perspective, will generate "more casualties, irritation and recruitment for the Taliban," in the words of Nicholas Kristof.

In fact, the longer more U.S. forces remain, the harder more insurgents will resist. In 2007, for instance, 27 often feuding groups coalesced in Pakistan in response to U.S. airstrikes. In Afghanistan the population has not turned on the Taliban the way Iraqis turned on the al-Qaeda. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, advocated a U.S. withdrawal over the next 18 months: "Many experts in and from Afghanistan warn that our presence over the past eight years has already hardened a meaningful percentage of the population into viewing the United States as an army of occupation which should be opposed and resisted."

Unfortunately, there are limits to Washington's ability to ameliorate this result. Argued Hugh Gusterson, of George Mason University: "The Pentagon will try to minimize the insult through cultural sensitivity training and new doctrines that emphasize befriending the locals, but they will fail because it's in the very nature of counterinsurgency that occupying forces must be intrusive to be effective. And when you have thousands of foreign troops being shot at, accidents and atrocities happen. The more such troops you have, the more accidents and atrocities you get."

There remains the emotional case for escalation. Army Sgt. Teresa Coble complained to the Washington Times: "We would not be honoring the lives of the troops who died if we left here without finishing our mission." But what is the mission? One should mourn those whose lives were sacrificed by their government for any policy which failed. However, al-Qaeda has been largely defanged. The failure to create an Afghan nation is one of policy, not personnel. It would not honor American servicemen and women to needlessly toss away even more lives to continue this failed policy.

It would be especially foolish to embark upon a campaign of escalation if it is not sustainable over the long-term. And escalation is not. After nearly eight years of war, the American people are losing faith--not in the necessity of killing or capturing terrorists, but in the dream of remaking Afghanistan. The latest CNN poll indicates that six of ten Americans oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan. Nearly half want to reduce manpower levels or even withdraw all troops. A majority also believes that Afghanistan has turned into another Vietnam.

Advocates of years more of costly war for dubious gain argue that the public should support their policy, but that is irrelevant. The president must base U.S. policy on what the public likely will support. Else his strategy will be doomed from the start.

In 2002 Barack Obama warned against fighting a war "without a clear rationale and without strong international support," and that an invasion of Iraq would yield: "a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and with unintended consequences." That is happening in Afghanistan. In fact, one could imagine bin Laden hoping to ensnare the U.S. in a no-win war in Afghanistan. Seth Jones and Martin Libicki of the Rand Corporation noted that "combat operations in Muslim societies" are "likely to increase terrorist recruitment." Indeed, parody has become truth. "Reported" the Onion: "According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever."

Of course, the desire of many Washington policymakers to improve the lives of Afghans is genuine. Most Afghans want peace and many Afghans desire American aid to better their land. Given enough resources and time, courageous and dedicated U.S. personnel could conceivably succeed in remaking Afghanistan. But the chances are slim while the cost in lives and treasure inevitably would be high--too high.

Getting out of Afghanistan won't be as easy as getting in. The administration should develop a strategy to steadily reduce rather than increase America's military presence. Combat forces should be fully withdrawn. The U.S. should focus on counter-terrorism. The time and manner of getting out should reflect potentially changing circumstances. But withdrawal should be Washington's ultimate objective.

An independent America was born of a rugged determination by common folk to govern themselves. It should not surprise modern Americans that many Afghans feel the same way. Despite the persistent delusion in Washington that the rest of world desperately desires to become America's next attempt at social engineering, most Afghans are not waiting for U.S. advisers, diplomats, and soldiers to show them a better way. To the contrary, many are ready to fight to follow their own way.

Their determination presents the president with a momentous decision. The administration should narrow the Afghan mission. Washington's objective should be disrupting al-Qaeda wherever located, whether Afghanistan, Pakistan, or elsewhere. On occasion that will warrant military action, but more often other tools will be required. Even with the finest military on earth the U.S. government cannot do everything. Reconsidering American strategy in Afghanistan is an important way for Washington policymakers to acknowledge the limits of U.S. power. Changing American priorities in this way would be a giant step by President Obama towards actually earning a Nobel award bestowed more out of future hope than past achievement.

President Karzai has long been considered a U.S. puppet. And now, with evidence that his brother has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years (a claim conveniently disclosed ahead of the second-round presidential election), shows why Afghanistan's "democratic experiment" is largely a sham. But what's new? What does "justice" really mean when someone with friends in high places can get away with a $4 billion drug trafficking racket; while poor local farmers have their opium crops eradicated and their drug processing facilities destroyed?

According to New York Times reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti, and James Risen, brother Karzai helps the CIA by operating a paramilitary group; renting out housing to U.S. forces, and acting as a go-between for the Americans and the Taliban. This should come as no surprise. Even though free markets, democracy, and freedom are the principles that define the United States of America, these have not always been the principles that guided its foreign policy. From time to time, America's perceived national security interests have led it to cooperate with some of the world's most repressive regimes and unsavory political movements. U.S. policymakers often openly embrace authoritarian allies. But such prominent alliances are all too often coupled with America's simultaneous promotion of democracy, liberty and human rights. These mixed messages have severely compromised America's image and interests on more than one occasion.

Which brings us to Afghanistan. The U.S. has assisted and sponsored a corrupt, illegitimate and slightly autocratic regime there while purporting to advance the values of freedom and democracy. The entire rationale for the presence of the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan rests on democracy, stability and winning hearts and minds.

President Obama has just signed a $680 billion defense appropriations bill with a provision giving commanders in Afghanistan the ability to pay Taliban members to switch sides. Sponsoring assets is not necessarily a bad thing. But the U.S. government works at cross purposes when it attempts to install a "legitimate" centralized government, wags a sanctimonious finger when elections are riddled with pervasive levels of fraud and vote-fixing, and then go behind the backs of millions of Afghans by having a close working relationship with the brother of the incumbent candidate.

Brother Karzai is one of the most powerful figures in the southern province of Kandahar; the heart of Taliban country. This ongoing relationship with the CIA is arguably critical in getting information on the whereabouts of insurgents, which is a U.S. interest. But it undermines America's stated policy of trying to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty stricken, tribal based society into a self sufficient, non-corrupt, stable electoral democracy, which is not a U.S. interest.

"If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves," said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan quoted in the NYT piece. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps' Counterinsurgency Field Manual states that the legitimacy of the host nation's government is a critical component of combating an insurgency. We are sending our brave, disciplined and highly dedicated men and women in uniform to fight the Taliban; yet, as Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent noted, "CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?"

Certainly, America's national interests sometimes dictate cooperation with a foreign government or movement that does not share America's values. Some partnerships are unavoidable. Even so, Washington's goal should be to foster only as much cooperation as is necessary to protect and advance the vital interests of the American people. To what end are we needlessly compromising our values in Afghanistan? That is a question that should not be answered with more troops.

The headline above a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, "Behind the War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages," seem to illustrate the way supporters and opponents of increasing U.S. troop level in Afghanistan have been making use of what they see as the lessons of Vietnam, and applying them to the debates over the process of presidential national security policymaking and civilian-military relationship.

Hence, political scientist Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster which depicts a President Lyndon Johnson being pressed to escalate the war in Vietnam by a somewhat narrow-minded military is being cited by those skeptical about the recommendation by General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, to increase the number of troops there.

At the same time, military analyst Lewis Sorley's A Better War, which describes the administration of President Richard Nixon under public and Congressional pressure to get out of Vietnam and rejecting what could have become an effective counter-insurgency strategy by the military, is being touted by those who leaning in the direction of General McChrystal's recommendations.

Applying historical analogies à la "the lessons of..." to contemporary foreign policy dilemmas could certainly be instructive. As President Obama prepares to make his decisions in Afghanistan, he should consider the pitfalls faced by U.S. presidents, starting with John Kennedy as they tried to calibrate U.S. strategic choices in Vietnam by drawing on the input of their military and civilian advisors and juggling conflicting political pressures from the public, Congress and the bureaucracy.

But the historical analogies of Vietnam could become confusing if not misleading when one shifts the focus from the decision making processes to ideological premises of U.S. involvement the Cold War. In fact, Obama and his advisors should recall that as President Johnson and the members of his national security team were deliberating whether to expand U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia, it was the specter Munich 1938 that was haunting Washington then, and that the lessons of British attempts to appease Nazi Germany's dictator Adolph Hitler were being employed in a way that seemed to be leaving the White House with no other choice but to hang tough and stay the course in Vietnam lest U.S. policymakers would be perceived as lacking the resolve to stand-up to Hitler-like aggressors.

The reason that the lessons of Munich in the context of World War II seemed be so relevant to U.S. policymakers during the Vietnam War taking place at the height of the Cold War was that American intervention in the two wars were driven by grand Manichean narratives in which a U.S.-led Western alliance was confronting a powerful global aggressor representing a threatening and dynamic ideology.

Indeed, for the American foreign policy establishment as well as for the general public, North Vietnam was perceived to be an integral part of a monolithic Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, including its Eastern European satellites, China and Cuba. The only serious debate in Washington was over the kind of mix of diplomacy and military force that the U.S. needed to employ in defending South Vietnam and confronting North Vietnam. And in that context, it wasn't difficult for the "hawks" in Washington to suggest that just like Czechoslovakia in 1938, South Vietnam was being threatened by a regional satellite of an antagonistic global adversary and thus required forceful American military support.

Recognizing that nationalism and not adherence to communist ideology or solidarity with the Soviet Union and China was the main driving force behind North Vietnamese policy could have changed the strategic calculations of policymakers in Washington. Indeed, the growing realization that there was no Soviet-led global communist bloc led to the U.S. opening to China — which ended-up going to war against Vietnam — and to the use of the "China Card" in dealing with the Soviet Union. And it helped accelerate U.S. détente with the Soviet Union as well West German rapprochement with Eastern Europe or "Ostpolitik."

In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the period leading to the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seemed for a while as though President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors would be successful in constructing a new grand Manichean narrative that conceived of a U.S.-led West confronting a global Islamofascist threat or a Caliphate-in-the-making that allegedly included Al Qaeda, a radical Muslim-Sunni fundamentalist terrorist group; Taliban, an Afghani-Pashtun and Sunni-fundamentalist movement allied with U.S. partners, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; Iran, a Muslim-Shiite fundamentalist state and Hizbollah, a Lebanese-Arab Shiite movement as well as the secular Syrian Ba'ath regime and the Palestinian-Sunni Hamas movement, elected to power in a U.S.-sponsored election and a mish-mash of national and regional militant Muslim groups — in the Horn of Africa and North Africa, and in places like Chechnya (Russia), Kashmir (India), and Xinjiang (China).

In a way, it was the costly and failed Iraq War that helped disprove the Islamofascist myth — after all, the collapse of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban helped strengthen Iran — and undermine the ideological premises of short-lived grand narrative that steered the U.S. into the war in Mesopotamia while preventing it from achieving its original and limited goals in Afghanistan (destroying Al Qaeda). Indeed, any serious discussion of the political realities in the Greater Middle East taking place in Washington today would have to assume that the U.S. has to deal today — including in Afghanistan — not with a unified and monolithic adversary or "axis" but with a hodgepodge of Muslim governments and movements that lack any shared ideology or common interests.

To apply the historical analogies here, the choices facing the U.S. in Afghanistan are unlike the dilemmas the U.S. confronted during the Vietnam War, in the same way that the "loss" of South Vietnam wasn't akin to the destruction of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's Germany. Even under a scenario under which the Taliban ends up controlling even more territory than it already does today, the impact on core U.S. national interest would be limited. Local and regional players (India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) would be forced to work together or separately to prevent the country from becoming a source of instability and a center of international terrorism. Hence, taking limited steps towards securing U.S. narrow goals of preventing Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a military base should not be regarded as a new and dramatic chapter in a grand narrative but as a cost-effective exercise in fighting terrorism.

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

Many critics of the war, including Boehner, are not asking the right question when it comes to the eight-year campaign in Afghanistan: not whether the war is winnable, but whether the mission constitutes a vital national security interest. From that perspective the current open-ended strategy fails.

In his battlefield assessment of the war, General Stanley McChrystal, America's top commander in Afghanistan, says without more troops the mission "will likely result in failure." But success in Afghanistan would hardly be guaranteed even if Obama were to commit several hundred thousand troops and decades of armed nation-building.

It is well past time for the US to adapt means and ends. Rather than an indefinite military mission with large numbers of US troops, US strategy should focus on assisting and training Afghan forces in order to limit that country's future dependence on foreign troops for security.

Growing and improving the effectiveness of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is limited and feasible. A focused mission of training the ANSF means America must support, rather than supplant, indigenous security efforts. In March, Obama committed 4,000 US trainers to Afghanistan, while NATO pledged an additional 5,000 military trainers and police. At that time, the Afghan National Army (ANA) had about 82,000 soldiers, a number scheduled to grow to 134,000 by the end of 2011. The Afghan National Police (ANP) stands between 85,000 and 90,000. It currently covers 365 districts, 46 city police precincts and has a presence in all 34 provinces.

But numbers tell only part of the story.

The Focused District Development program (FDD) is a district-by-district training regimen for police units. The FDD is directed by the combined security transition command Afghanistan, a joint service organisation under the command and control of US Central Command that is responsible for equipping and training Afghan security forces. Since it began in October 2007, a mere 52 of 365 police districts have successfully completed the program, despite training camps operating at maximum capacity.

The concept of proper police procedures and respect for the rights of citizens remains underdeveloped. "The first time they heard that they weren't supposed to beat people, and they weren't supposed to take their money, [but] that they were supposed to enforce laws and that their job was to protect the people, most police were surprised," said Army Colonel Michael McMahon, the FDD's director.

According to Karen Hall, police program manager in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the US Department of State, 75% of the Afghan national police are illiterate, which prevents many officers from filling out arrest reports, equipment and supply requests and arguing before a judge or prosecutor.

Going forward, training should be tied to clear metrics, such as whether Afghans can operate independent of coalition forces and can take the lead in operations against insurgents. As the war in Afghanistan rages on, Obama should be skeptical of any suggestions that the defeat of al-Qaida depends upon a massive troop presence.

Committing still more US personnel to Afghanistan undermines the already weak authority of Afghan leaders, interferes with the ability to deal with other security challenges and pulls the US deeper into a bloody and protracted guerilla war with no end in sight.

Without knowing the answers to such questions, the United States has no way of determining whether it is succeeding. And as long as it continues to conflate military and state-building objectives, the United States will always appear to be losing. But by focusing on stamping out al Qaeda with a light military footprint and accepting an Islamist government in Afghanistan, the United States has an opportunity for unqualified success.

Indeed, by most military standards, the United States has already achieved numerous victories. In early October 2001, a small number of U.S. personnel working in tandem with sympathetic Afghans punished al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that harbored the terrorist group. Although it hasn't met its goal of capturing Osama bin Laden, the United States has still seriously degraded al Qaeda's global capabilities — a major win.

But perceptions have lagged behind reality. Many U.S. policymakers, defense officials, and prominent opinion leaders still tend to lump al Qaeda (a loose, transnational jihadist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks) together with the Taliban (an indigenous Pashtun-dominated movement with no shadowy global mission). Because of this conflation, the suppression of al Qaeda is not seen as the victory it is — and disproportionate focus is placed on suppressing the Taliban.

However, the Taliban and other parochial fighters, such as the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group, and other indigenous Pashtun militants, pose little threat to the sovereignty or physical security of the United States. Therefore, waging a counterinsurgency campaign against these militants is not a pressing national security interest. In fact, the effect of prolonging the large-scale U.S. military presence and artificially expanding the number of enemies risks uniting these otherwise irrelevant guerrilla groups against the United States.

An Islamist regime such as the Taliban — if it can be encouraged to moderate its more militant fringes — can be an acceptable U.S. ally. Consider Somalia, a country where Washington once also conflated al Qaeda with a local nationalist regime. In 2006, Somalia's moderate Islamic Courts Union (ICU) expanded from its bases in the capital, Mogadishu, to command most of southern and central Somalia. Although the ICU's enforcement of sharia law made some Western observers uncomfortable, the regime's widespread public support and effective governance meant it was in fact the best chance for lasting stability that Somalia had had in decades.

But George W. Bush's administration didn't see things that way. A handful of al Qaeda operatives had sought refuge in remote Somali villages, and in response, the U.S. military launched several raids, killing at least two of the operatives. Under Bush, Washington seemed incapable of viewing the ICU separately from these al Qaeda refugees. Defeating terrorism in Somalia also meant destroying the ICU. In retrospect, it seems that the Bush administration sacrificed an opportunity for peace in Somalia on the altar of the war on terrorism. In December 2006, Washington provided key logistical, military, and diplomatic support to neighboring Ethiopia as that country launched a mechanized invasion of Somalia that briefly unseated the ICU and resulted in a bloody, two-year war — a war that did nothing to boost anti-al Qaeda operations. In fact, the disastrous, U.S.-supported invasion only stoked anti-Western sentiment in Somalia and empowered the country's major insurgent group, al-Shabab.

In time, the ICU and other insurgent groups fought off the Ethiopians. The resurgent ICU subsequently subsumed a U.S.-backed secular "transitional government" this January. The ICU is now back in charge in Somalia, albeit under the transitional government's name, and has regained some of the momentum it had before the Ethiopian invasion.

The Obama administration has reversed Bush's policy and now embraces the ICU's moderate brand of non-democratic, Islamist government. It is, after all, what most Somalis want. And the relaxed relationship between the two countries has only made counterterrorism easier. In early September, a U.S. strike killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al Qaeda agent suspected of orchestrating the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan hotel, who was hiding in Somalia at the time. The ICU was mute about the whole incident — as close to an official approval as one can expect.

Somalia's lesson for Afghanistan is that regime change, and democracy, are not necessary for counterterrorism. Propping up President Hamid Karzai's Western-style government in Kabul does not make operations against al Qaeda any easier or more successful. If anything, it distracts from the conceptually simpler task of finding and killing terrorists.

Without U.S. and NATO protection, Karzai's regime would, sooner or later, probably fall to the Taliban. But U.S. observers should not equate that eventuality with "losing" the war. The war is against terrorists, not Islamist governments. The United States should be prepared to make peace, and amends, with a resurgent Taliban — and to encourage the group to excise its more extreme elements. As Somalia demonstrates, Islamist governments can be greatly encouraged to reform their extremist fringes, rendering these regimes no more amenable to terrorist groups than any other country.

U.S. military operations against al Qaeda, still clinging to life in Afghanistan, could continue. In fact, the blueprints for an effective counterterrorism approach have already been drafted from the initial U.S. invasion in 2001. Small Special Forces teams working in conjunction with local militias can assemble quickly, move with ease through the difficult terrain, and strike effectively and cheaply at "real" enemies whenever they raise their profile.

Such small-scale operations, making use of Special Forces and other covert means, as well as the CIA and FBI's close cooperation with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies, have lead to the greatest successes scored against al Qaeda since 9/11 — the snatch-and-grab operations that netted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the support interface between the 9/11 operatives and al Qaeda.

Instead of increasing troops, then, the United States should scale back its military presence and adopt more limited objectives. Rather than trying to protect Afghan villages from the Taliban, the United States should concentrate on dismantling al Qaeda cells in Pakistan through discrete operations, promoting intelligence sharing and collection, and committing to surgical missile strikes when necessary.

Over the past eight years, the United States has confused an operational doctrine — population-centric counterinsurgency — with the strategic goal of keeping the country safe. But the strategic objective of protecting the United States from terrorism should define its operational methods, not the reverse.