President Obama’s decision on what to do next in Afghanistan turns on the answer to a basic question: How severe a threat does the Taliban pose to America?

Some commentators believe the answer is: very little. America’s real enemy, al Qaeda, is hiding out next door in Pakistan. The implication is that we can live with the Taliban as long as it doesn’t invite bin Laden and company back.

A corollary to this view is that both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are Pashtuns who have historically united to repel foreign invaders from their rugged heartland in the Hindu Kush. From this proposition it follows that, as New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently argued, sending more western troops to Afghanistan will only provoke a wider nationalist uprising.

There’s undoubtedly some truth in that. But it ignores the Afghan Taliban’s roots in the madrassas. The Taliban is defined by its puritanical vision of Islam and determination to impose strict sharia law wherever it holds sway, from Afghanistan in the late 1990s to Swat Valley earlier this year.

The problem, from the standpoint of U.S. safety, is that the Taliban’s Islamist outlook (as well as the bonds forged in the 1980s struggle against Soviet invaders) engenders strong solidarity with al Qaeda. In a fascinating article in Foreign Affairs, Barbara Elias dissects the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship:

The Taliban cannot surrender bin Laden without also surrendering their existing identity as a vessel for an obdurate and uncompromising version of political Islam. Their legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concession to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.

What this suggests, of course, is that a Taliban restoration in Afghanistan could easily lead to al Qaeda’s return. It also means, according to Elias, that the Taliban probably can’t be split or co-opted the way Sunni insurgents in Iraq were.

Recall that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar ignored U.S. demands (punctuated by the Clinton administration’s ineffectual missile strike in 1998) to expel Osama bin Laden and his Arab co-conspirators. Even on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he refused, saying, “We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims…that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again.”

In other words, protecting al Qaeda was more important to Taliban leaders in 2001 than holding onto power. What has changed? After eight more years of joint struggle against the U.S., how likely is it that a triumphant Taliban would bar anti-American terror groups from setting up training camps in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, Howard Altman reports on The Daily Beast that al Qaeda picked its number three man, Mustafa abu al-Yazid, to be its chief in Afghanistan. “And in that role, he has built new and potentially deadly ties to the Taliban – forging alliances that may greatly complicate the Obama administration’s decisions about what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Altman writes.

That’s exactly right. We need to learn more about the ties and mutual interests that bind the Afghan Taliban and what’s left of al Qaeda. But these reports underline the danger to U.S. security of blithely assuming that the Taliban would never again play host to America’s sworn enemies. That’s not a risk progressives should be prepared to take.

This item is cross posted at The Huffington Post.

It looks like the White House is circling in on a new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on protecting major population centers like Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad, and a few other large villages.

If endorsed, it would adopt the major elements of General McChrystal’s proposed counterinsurgency strategy, albeit on a more limited scale that perhaps acknowledges that 40,000 additional troops aren’t enough to effectively pacify the entire country. Or, as the New York Times put it:

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

This strategy would certainly prevent the Taliban from regaining control of the country, thereby denying al Qaeda the petri dish it needs to reconstitute an ability to attack the U.S.

Furthermore, this is a realistic approach about what we can achieve, even with increased — but finite — resources. It may simply not be a sensible use of resources to deploy tens of thousands of American forces to Helmand, a massive southern province that has 20 percent of the land, but only three percent of the population.

However, the fundamental question is whether this strategy effectively cedes control over large swaths of the country to the Taliban where al Qaeda elements could re-enter and rebuild its abilities. One senior administration addressed that point, saying, “We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban.”

But under this scenario in Helmand, field commanders would compensate for the lack of a full-time troop presence by keeping pressure on insurgents with drone strikes, aided by intelligence from local populations about pockets of Taliban. But by ceding control to the Taliban, we could be alienating the local population — the eyes and ears necessary to target the drones.

And finally, a potential side effect of protecting select urban areas is that as the only stable regions, they might be flooded by rural villagers that don’t want to live under the Taliban. Would this increase the burden on troops to the point that their presence has diminishing returns as the cities swell with refugees?

Consider me cautiously optimistic, but nervous.

Though Iranian negotiators accepted a nuclear deal this week in Vienna, we should contain our excitement until the mullahs back in Tehran approve of it and the thing is actually executed.

Here are the logistics: Iran is running low on uranium-derived fuel used in medical facilities (for MRIs, among other things). The country has enough uranium, but it’s not in the right form for medical uses and will run out before Tehran can enrich enough. Therefore, Iran had to look to the international community.

The U.S., France, and Russia proposed that Iran export the bulk of its uranium stock to Russia for enriching to the required medium-grade level (i.e., lower than weapons-grade). Russia then sends it on to France, where it will be fashioned it into fuel-plates.

On paper, the deal is a win-win: Iran gets its fuel but gives up most of its uranium. It will be almost another 12 months before it rebuilds its uranium stock to be able to attempt enriching it to weapons-grade (highly enriched). Or, as Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says, “If Iran ships the uranium out of the country, we’ve lengthened the fuse.”

Note that big “if.” There is the distinct possibility that Tehran is playing for time by negotiating this draft plan to decrease tensions in the short term by stringing along the U.S., France, and Russia. It’s always good to remember that actions speak louder than words.

However, Russia’s involvement in this process is critical — the Kremlin had appeared divided on whether to support sanctions against Iran. Now that Moscow has partial ownership of this deal, non-compliance by Tehran should anger Medvedev and Putin, who might be more disposed towards pressure.

Anne Applebaum theorizes in the Washington Post that NATO is essentially useless:

There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces. …

The fact is that the idea of “the West” has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless “whither-the-Alliance” seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Questions surrounding NATO’s relevance have swirled as the war effort in Afghanistan has stalled. The alliance’s inability to keep members focused and actively engaged in the hard- and soft-power components of the mission is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the Bush administration’s neglectful resourcing of the conflict in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom (a non-NATO mission, it should be noted). And this is something of a tragedy, given NATO’s invocation of Article V — stating an attack on one member is an attack on all members — in the wake of 9/11.

However, it is also true that NATO was not conceived to conduct an Afghan-type mission, particularly one lasting nine years. NATO was born, of course, as a security pact to face down the Soviet Union — a known quantity of traditional military capabilities. The potential threat coming from Afghanistan’s hinterland is a far cry from the Cuban missile crisis.

While Applebaum bemoans the “countless ‘whither-the-Alliance’ seminars,” I’d suggest that such discussions are necessary, if ill-timed. Instead, NATO’s Secretary General, ex-Norwegian Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should squeeze out every possible commitment NATO countries are willing to devote to the Afghan mission in the short term, reminding them that attacks in the United Kingdom and Spain are compelling reasons to take the Obama administration’s refocused efforts there seriously.

When the Afghanistan mission is wrapped up in several years, NATO must sit down and decide when it is appropriate to fight, and what sort of resources its members are willing to commit.

My high school homeroom teacher, Mr. Grescovich, had some twenty homemade signs up in his classroom that extolled various life lessons. They were all home-made; and therein lay their charm. Since I went to what was then an all-boys school, Mr. G. got away with some mild profanity with which the Jesuits took no issue.

My favorite was, “When you ASSUME, you make an ‘ASS’ out of ‘U’ and ‘ME'”.

Such is today’s debate on Afghanistan. Plenty of assumptions are flying around, and the intelligentsia class is debating which to follow, and which to discount.

Richard Haass, the respected President of the Council on Foreign Relations, made a dangerous one over the weekend in a Washington Post editorial:

Al-Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat. Terrorists gravitate to areas of least resistance; if they cannot use Afghanistan, they will use countries such as Yemen or Somalia, as in fact they already are.

It’s a mistake to assume that al Qaeda – the only group that ever had both the intent and capability of conducting a massive attack against the United States – has perfect mobility to just pick up and move from the AF/PAK border region to Somalia, Yemen, or Kalamazoo. It’s not that easy.

Al Qaeda is ensconced in that region and will remain so. It’s true that the group is much weakened from previous incarnations due to the ongoing NATO/Afghan offensive. But weakness doesn’t increase mobility: if faced with the choice of: a) riding out the counterinsurgency while hoping to reconstitute itself in Afghanistan/Pakistan after a delay, and b) picking up and moving to Africa or the Saudi peninsula, then it isn’t even close.

In fact, the second option simply isn’t possible. Even if al Qaeda is limited to some 100 full-time fighters, I’ve got a crisp $20 bill that says a good percentage would be captured trying to cross any significant international border (excluding, of course, the one between Afghanistan and Pakistan). Do you think UBL has a passport? Do you think he wants one?

What’s more, a hunk of usable real estate is a critical component to preparing a massive terrorist attack against the United States. While the London and Madrid bombings required nothing more than a few apartments in Leeds and Leganes respectively, the scale and complexity of those attacks – quite small in comparison to 9/11 – mirrored their planning environments. Furthermore, those groups had neither the intent nor capability to attack the United States.

But al Qaeda used to, and can again under the right circumstances. Free from the watchful eye of a competent local security service and protected under the veil of an amicable local government, a plot can be planned and rehearsed to increase its complexity, scale, and range by several orders of magnitude.

Therefore, Afghan real estate is a highly valuable commodity. And we need to permanently deny Al Qaeda access to it.

Michael Crowley expresses shock over a new Pew poll finding that 61% of Americans would favor military action to prevent Iranian development of nuclear weapons if other options fail.

I’m less shocked.  In the run-up to the Iraq War, the belief that Saddam Hussein had developed or was rapidly developing WMD, including nuclear weapons, was a pretty important factor in the robust majorities that favored military action.  And the discovery that he actually didn’t have WMD helped turn Americans against the war once his regime had been toppled.  Since evidence of an Iranian nuclear program is far better established, it’s not that shocking that Americans would react now as they did in 2002 and 2003.

But the other big thing that obviously turned Americans against the Iraq War was the immense cost and difficulty of consolidating the initial military victory.  In the Pew poll, respondents are asked if they favor “military action.”  It’s entirely possible that many of those answering “yes” are thinking in terms of some “surgical strike” that will destroy the nuclear program without a wider war.  Should negotiations and/or sanctions fail and we are actually contemplating military conflict with Iran, it will more than likely become apparent that eliminating Iran’s nuclear program will require an actual ground war aimed at regime change.  It’s at that point when the lessons of Iraq will truly begin to sink in, and support for “military action” will go down.  But we haven’t had that debate yet.

What the Pew poll does show is that Americans don’t seem to buy the argument that a nuclear Iran is deterrable (by the United States or by Israel), just as the regimes of Stalin and Mao–and for that matter, Hitler, who had stockpiles of chemical weapons he didn’t dare to use–were deterrable.  Perhaps that means that Americans, like many Israelis, view the current Iranian regime as uniquely dangerous, or at least frighteningly irrational, and capable of inviting unimaginable casualities in a nuclear exchange with Israel or the U.S.   Or perhaps they simply think a nuclear Iran would permanently destabilize the world’s most fragile region.  But deterrance is inevitably a matter of calculated risks.  Had it been possible during the Cold War to “take out” the Soviet Union’s or China’s nuclear capacity without a calamitous war, a majority of Americans would have supported doing just that.  Once the costs and risks of war with Iran are fully aired and debated, some Americans now favoring “military action” may decide that Iran is deterrable after all.

The fact remains that we haven’t yet had the full debate that will ultimately shape U.S. policy towards Iran.  In the meantime, it’s fine by me if Tehran reads about this Pew poll and reconsiders its current drive for nukes.

This item was crossposted at The New Republic.

Perhaps you’ve heard something about the case of Najibullah Zazi, the 24-year-old Afghan immigrant arrested in Colorado under suspicion of nearing the “execution phase” of a terrorist plot, purportedly against a target in New York City.

Then again, maybe you haven’t.

And that, my friends, isn’t a terrible thing. Zazi’s case illustrates the Obama administration’s shifting approach to protecting the country in a relatively discreet manner that doesn’t score political points with every arrest:

 

“The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States,” a senior administration official said. “It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates.”

It’s also an approach that stands a better chance securing convictions of the arrested suspects. Ever heard this old joke: What does F.B.I. stand for? Famous But Incompetent.

That’s starting to change. It looks like the Bureau is a little less Famous And More Competent: Instead of preemptively arresting Zazi before getting the (court admissible) goods, the FBI has shown a more patient, discerning attitude in tracking him. They didn’t just jump in and arrest him the first day he popped on the radar, as they would have years hence. Rather, they watched him for several weeks, and as a result, the Bureau has better evidence of his movements, contacts, and terrorist activities.

And best of all:

 

With Zazi’s arrest, administration officials said they had a renewed sense of confidence that they could approach security threats in a new way. “The system probably worked the way it did before, but we made a conscious decision not to have a big press conference” about Zazi’s arrest, a senior official said. [emphasis mine]

We’re all safer and less paranoid because of it.

This looks like a trend. Back in May, the FBI arrested an unrelated cell of anti-Semities in Queens that looked to be on the verge of conducting attacks against Jewish targets in New York. Here too, the Bureau patiently waited to collect mounds of evidence, and as a result had better information to build a real court case.

Why the shift? Well, I’d like to take all the credit for this paper I wrote last year called “Getting Intelligence Reform Right”, but I’m not sure ALL the kudos go to lil’ ol’ me:

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — the agency charged with collecting intelligence on al Qaeda (and similar groups) within U.S. borders — remains mired in an organizational culture focused mainly on throwing bad guys in jail rather than preventing terrorist attacks in the first place. To a layman, the difference may seem inconsequential, but it drastically impedes the FBI from completing its counterterrorism mission.

As an aside, I’d like to make a final note in the wake of the Guantanamo debate. Congress just passed a non-binding resolution saying they didn’t want to dangerous inmates of Guantanamo to be transferred to detention facilities within the US. But Najibullah Zazi is as dangerous – if not moreso – than just about anyone housed in GTMO. Arrested in Colorado, Zazi will be tried and imprisoned on American soil.

So why can’t we do that with the GTMO detainees again? Paging Dr. Backbone … Dr. Backbone… you’re wanted on the House floor.

It’s no secret that Democrats are uneasy with sending more troops to Afghanistan.

But here’s something I found rather interesting – with or without troops, all Americans – Dems included – understand why we’re there, and their preference is to keep the country safe from another terrorist attack.

Here are some numbers:

A late September USAToday/Gallup poll says 50 percent of all Americans oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan (a number supported by just about every other poll), the figure is even higher amongst Democrats—62 percent.

But more importantly, all Americans place a premium on securing the country. Though not a majority, more Americans (47 percent) believe we are doing “the right thing” in Afghanistan than those (42 percent) who believe we shouldn’t be involved, according a late September New York Times/CBSNews poll.

Furthermore, 76 percent (including 76 percent of Democrats), according to a Pew Research Center poll, believe that if the Taliban took over Afghanistan again, it would constitute a “major threat” to American security. This is an important point for progressives, who should acknowledge that the Taliban made itself America’s sworn enemy when it gave shelter to al Qaeda in the first place, over the repeated protests and ineffectual warnings of the Clinton administration.

Finally, President Obama’s goals are sinking in with the country: a combined 72 percent, according to New York Times/CBSNews, believe the goal in Afghanistan is to defeat the Taliban and/or eliminate terrorism.

Americans may not like the strategy, but they know we’re in Afghanistan to keep America safe. Democrats should support the goal, not the strategy.