Afghanistan: The end is nigh

India’s initial response to Washington’s deal with Pakistan was to announce that India will not withdraw its workers and diplomats from Afghanistan. The second response came swiftly afterwards.

Last Friday New Delhi signed five deals in Moscow to purchase over $7 billion worth of hardware and expertise from Russia, including an aircraft carrier, a fleet of MIG-29 fighters, defense and space technology, and at least 12 nuclear reactors. American manufacturers were tipped to win the critical fighter aircraft competition, but now it looks like Northrop Grumman will have to downsize the big New Delhi office they opened in 2007 in anticipation of the fighter contract. Of course, one of the invisible 800 pound gorillas in the room with Russia and India was China, their mutual antagonist of old. But the Afghanistan deal between Washington and Islamabad was in there too.

Even as Indians and Russians were getting ready for caviar and vodka, more pieces of the Afghan puzzle appeared. We were treated to the incongruous photograph of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, still in his Pentagon pin-striped suit, sitting in a military helicopter with Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahman Wardak on 10 March. What was Mr. Gates learning about the Afghan situation in a helicopter that he could not better learn at his Pentagon desk? Nothing, of course. He was there to make a statement that would sound much more credible delivered from Kabul than if he said it in Washington.

The Gates message was that things look so secure, U.S. forces could start leaving the country even before President Obama’s announced withdrawal date of July 2011. There is no general election in 2011 however, so a few hours after Secretary Gates’ statement congress got into the act.

Like other Americans, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are mighty worried about their jobs. They want to appear patriotic these days. So when a resolution came up to set a timetable for withdrawal by the end of this year, they defeated it, 356-65. Despite this momentary confusion between Washington’s legislative and executive branches, we can be sure withdrawal will be well underway, if not completed, by the presidential election in 2012.

Meanwhile, we are still fighting on that miserable Afghan battlefield with the mission and role of our soldiers dictated by political wrangling inside the Pentagon and out in the field. When two four-star generals, McChrystal and Petraeus, and lots of other stars are managing a war involving only 100,000 troops, the result is constant wrangling, rivalry and gamesmanship that is complicated by the presidential aspirations of Petraeus. Added to which, no senior policy-maker, civilian or military, wants to wipe out the insurgents. That would mean lots of troops, firepower and collateral damage. What is wanted is the appearance of victory. That is what the deal with Pakistan will provide, and the subsequent withdrawal will become the ‘October surprise’ of the 2010 elections.

Finally, whether U.S. troops are slogging through opium poppy fields or not, history teaches us that endless war will continue in Afghanistan until a ruthless strongman appears and seizes leadership. Who in the White House or Pentagon is wise enough to identify the man best suited to the American national interest?

Chet Nagle is the author of IRAN COVENANT.