Should U.S. troops really spend another 12 years in a bloodied Afghan seige?

"It is too late to try to build ‘Afghanistan right,’" Anthony Cordesman concludes in an exceptionally clear piece for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cordesman ticks off the crippling weak spots that fatally undermine peace with honor in Afghanistan. Without saying so explicitly, he forecasts a best-case return to the pre-9/11 status quo — the Taliban in the center, vying for national power against canton-based local strongmen around the country, anchored by a refortified Northern Alliance.

Cordesman is right as far as he goes. Yet like numerous wise hands weighing in similarly in the wake of President Barack Obama’s weekend accord with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Cordesman is reluctant to draw a line under his stacked-up facts and provide the sum of the parts: There is no further constructive role for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. If American troops leave, Afghanistan is likely to devolve into civil war; if they stay, there will be the same outcome.

But there is an upside of U.S. troops leaving entirely that is absent from the alternative: The mayhem potentially has an endpoint of Afghan-run stability, albeit many years hence probably. With a continued U.S. military umbilical cord in place, that is far less likely.

For those who were on the ground in the first years after the Soviets left, this is easy enough to see. A year ago, on the killing of Osama bin Ladin, this blog suggested declaring victory and getting out. It simply is folly to suggest that the U.S. will avoid the experience of the Soviets, and the British before them. U.S. foreign assistance — for construction and civil support — will be welcome, but not a military presence in any form.

Writing at the Financial Times, Ahmed Rashid laments a stubborn Vietnam-era mentality — "the hubris of the U.S. military, which at the back of its mind still believes there are battles, if not a war, to be won; Taliban to be killed; and at least some success to be gained. They are wrong." Rashid says that the Taliban leadership must be negotiated with, that it fears civil war as much as its opponents.

Rashid is partly right, but veers off-track when he suggests that there is still something for the U.S. to do at the negotiating table. The Taliban may fear civil war, but only to the degree they are in charge in Kabul. If they are not, they will fight that civil war until they are.

In terms of continuing to stage U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 withdrawal deadline, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, echoes Cordesman: "Past sacrifice is a poor justification for continued sacrifice unless it is warranted. The truth is that while the United States still has interests in Afghanistan, none of them, other than opposing al-Qaeda, rises to the level of vital."

Yet Haass too holds back from calling for a full withdrawal. The truth is that an early U.S. military exit will happen with or without an explicit decision. U.S. troops, envoys, aid workers and experts will be harassed, attacked and killed until the harder decision is made to pull out troops completely. As for Karzai, he has no greater a secure future in Afghanistan than do U.S. troops. He will end up hounded, assassinated or in exile.

Cordesman writes that the truth is not pleasant. But the whole truth is even less so.