Is it finally time to “finish the job” in Afghanistan?

In October 2002, Barack Obama — then a relatively obscure Illinois state senator — made a speech against the Iraq war. “I don’t oppose all wars,” he told a Chicago crowd in words that soon became famous. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. ... You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.”

As Obama moved to the presidential campaign trail, the pledge to “finish the job” in Afghanistan became a central part of his foreign-policy platform. As politics, it was effective. But as policy, it no longer looks like such a no-brainer.That’s not because Obama is wrong when he insists that we ignore Afghanistan at our peril. The problem with “finishing the job” in Afghanistan is that it’s no longer entirely clear what the “job” is, or what it would mean to “finish” it. As the Bush administration rushed to war in Iraq, Afghanistan became America’s orphaned war. With too few ground troops, the US-led coalition began to rely more and more on close air support (in 2005, there were 7,421 close air support missions; in 2008, there were 19,603). But the increase in aerial bombing dramatically increased unintended civilian deaths. Civilian support eroded further.

As NATO redoubled its efforts to drive the Taleban and Al-Qaeda from the Afghan mountains, militants operating in Afghanistan took refuge in neighboring Pakistan’s ungoverned border regions. From there, they increasingly staged cross-border raids into Afghanistan, disrupted NATO supply lines between Pakistan and Afghanistan and carried out attacks on targets linked to the unpopular Pakistani government.

As a result, the US war in Afghanistan gradually bled into Pakistan. The United States has responded to militant attacks from within Pakistan with intermittent airstrikes against targets in Pakistani territory, but these also have caused unintended civilian deaths, increasingly radicalizing the Pakistani population and further jeopardizing the future of Pakistan’s shaky secular civilian government. So at this point, how we “finish the job” in Afghanistan isn’t clear anymore.

Send more troops to Afghanistan, as President Obama intends to do? With more and more of Afghanistan falling back under the control of the Taleban, additional troops clearly are necessary in the short term just to protect major population centers from Taleban predation. More ground troops also will reduce the need for close air support, which will help minimize civilian casualties.

But without a broader strategy, extra troops alone won’t help in the long run. Eradicating the Taleban and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan does the United States little good if Pakistan (with its nuclear prizes) solidifies as the new staging area for regional and global terrorism. But the United States can’t add a full-scale war in Pakistan to the two wars we’ve already got.

In the longer run, a better strategy would be to deny the militants the popular support they need to survive, by helping both the Afghans and the Pakistani people get the roads, schools and economic and governance infrastructure they need. But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: A military solution won’t work without substantial investment in the civilian sector, but civilian reconstruction projects can’t get done in the midst of terrible insecurity.

In 2002, “finishing the job” in Afghanistan would have been a (relatively) feasible plan. Today, just keeping Afghanistan and Pakistan from sliding jointly into chaos will require a comprehensive approach, melding military and development strategies and addressing the broader regional dynamics at play. But that doesn’t mean the administration won’t be able to make progress in Afghanistan. Obama is doing what he should in these first weeks, calling for a comprehensive strategy review and listening to experts whose views differ.

Meanwhile, probably the best thing his team can do is finish off the “finish the job” metaphor. We’re nowhere close to finishing, and there’s no single “job.” Restoring stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be a long, multifaceted process involving many players in addition to the United States — and that process is just getting started.

— Rosa Brooks is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. E-mail Brooks at [email protected]