SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010 GEORGE F. WILL
Futility in Afghanistan An NCO fires off a round of illumination
communications, such as a recent e- mail from a noncommissioned officer (NCO) serving in Afghanistan. He ex- plains why the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are “too prohibitive for coali- tion forces to achieve sustained tactical successes.”
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Receiving mortar fire during an over- night mission, his unit called for a 155mm howitzer illumination round to be fired to reveal the enemy’s location. The request was rejected “on the grounds that it may cause collateral damage.” The NCO says that the only thing that comes down from an illumi- nation round is a canister, and the likeli- hood of it hitting someone or something was akin to that of being struck by light- ning. Returning from a mission, his unit took casualties from an improvised ex- plosive device that the unit knew had been placed no more than an hour earli- er. “There were villagers laughing at the U.S. casualties” and “two suspicious in- dividuals were seen fleeing the scene and entering a home.” U.S. forces “are no longer allowed to search homes with- out Afghan National Security Forces personnel present.” But when his unit asked Afghan police to search the house, the police refused on the grounds that the people in the house “are good people.”
On another mission, some Afghan adults ran off with their children immediately before the NCO’s unit came under heavy small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and the unit asked for artillery fire on the enemy position. The response was a question: Where is the nearest civilian structure? “Judging distances,” the NCO writes dryly, “can be difficult when bul- lets and RPGs are flying over your head.” When the artillery support was denied because of fear of collateral damage, the unit asked for a “smoke mission” — like an illumination round; only the canister falls to earth — “to conceal our move- ment as we planned to flank and destroy the enemy.” This request was granted — but because of fear of collateral damage, the round was deliberately fired one ki- lometer off the requested site, making “the smoke mission useless and leaving us to fend for ourselves.” Counterinsurgency doctrine says that success turns on winning the “hearts and minds” of the population, hence rules of engagement that reduce risks to the population but increase those of U.S.
DAVID IGNATIUS
A trade strategy for Kabul From ‘clear and hold’ to transit and energy
to defeat the Taliban militarily in Af- ghanistan than it is about reaching an understanding with Pakistan that closes Taliban havens there and allows a politi- cal reconciliation among the warring Afghan parties. It’s a Pak-Af problem, not the other way around. Afghan President Hamid Karzai seems to recognize this reality; that’s why he’s holding his peace jirga, meet- ing with Taliban contacts and sacking an intelligence chief whom Pakistan re- gards as an enemy. President Obama seems to appreciate the likely political endgame, but he spends too little time explaining this conflict to a skeptical American public.
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One reason our Afghanistan strategy is so puzzling is that people don’t have a clear picture of what the United States is trying to achieve through its mix of mili- tary and diplomatic action. We know from political science studies that when a strategy becomes fuzzy, political sup- port vanishes. This was true in Vietnam and Iraq, and it’s now happening with Afghanistan. The most useful analysis I’ve seen re- cently is “The Key to Success in Afghani- stan: A Modern Silk Road Strategy.” It was prepared by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Stud- ies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It also had major input from the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war. The Silk Road study tries to visualize the kind of Afghanistan that might exist after U.S. troops begin coming home in July 2011. Instead of being a lawless frontier, this post-conflict Afghanistan would be a transit route for Eurasia, providing trade corridors north and south, east and west. To make this transport-led strategy work, Afghanistan would need to build more roads, railways and pipelines. A hypothetical railway map shows routes that connect Iran with India, Russia with Pakistan, China with the Arabian Sea. It knits together the rising powers of this region and makes Afghanistan a hub rather than a barrier. I first heard discussion of this modern Silk Road idea from Ashraf Ghani, a for- mer Afghan finance minister. He made a powerful analogy to America’s own de- velopment: What secured our lawless Wild West frontier was the transconti- nental railroad in 1869. With trade and economic growth came stability.
he recent Washington debate over Af-Pak strategy has had it back- ward: This war is less about trying
Asian nations understand the ben-
efits they could gain from transit links across Afghanistan. Take the ring road that links Afghanistan’s biggest cities; the United States has pumped $1.8 bil- lion into this and other road projects since 2002, but neighboring Iran has also put up a hefty $220 million. China has built roads connecting its western Xinjiang province with Afghanistan, by way of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the Chinese are building a $50 million roadway in Wardak province. There was a buzz last week because of
a U.S. estimate that Afghanistan could possess $1 trillion in mineral wealth. That’s a pipe dream for now, but what’s real is a Chinese project to invest $3 bil- lion in the Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul. To transport the copper, China has pledged to build a new railway route north, through Tajikistan, and the Chi- nese want to extend this rail link to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Then there’s the energy trade: The au- thors of the report, Frederick Starr and Andrew C. Kuchins, note that the Asian Development Bank is considering fund- ing a $7.6 billion pipeline that would link natural gas reserves in Turkmeni- stan with energy-poor Afghanistan, Pa- kistan and India. Hold on! How can you think of build- ing roads, railways and pipelines when there’s a war going on? Doesn’t security have to come first for Afghanistan, before economic development will be possible? Yes, and that’s why this Silk Road study is so valuable. It explains the longer-term mission that U.S. troops are serving in their battles in lawless areas of Afghanistan. More to the point, it ex- plains why it would be in the interest of all the regional powers — especially Pa- kistan — to encourage a political settle- ment of the war that would open Af- ghanistan and other Central Asian mar- kets to Pakistani merchants. The American public is tiring of an Afghanistan war that lacks a clear stra- tegic framework. I wish that President Obama hadn’t announced his July 2011 timetable, because this could delay the Afghan political deal that will allow U.S. troops to leave. But if we think less about “clear and hold” and more about roads and railways, maybe people in America — and Pakistan, India and China, too — will understand better what’s to be gained from a more stable Afghanistan.
davidignatius@washpost.com
orrents of uninteresting mail in- undate members of Congress, but occasionally there are riveting
combatants. C.J. Chivers of the New York Times, reporting from Marja, Af- ghanistan, says “many firefights these days are strictly rifle and machine gun fights,” which “has made engagement times noticeably longer, driving up the troops’ risks and amplifying a percep- tion that Marja, fought with less fire support than what was available to American units in other hotly contested areas, is mired in blood.” The value of any particular counter-
insurgency must be weighed against the risks implicit in the required tactics. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan in- volves trying to extend the power, over many people who fear it, of a corrupt government produced by a corrupted election. This gives rise to surreal strat- egies. The Wall Street Journal recently reported U.S. attempts “to persuade [President Hamid] Karzai to act more presidential by giving him more respon- sibility for operations inside his coun- try.” Think about that. Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow of the
Hudson Institute who has been em- bedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan six times, says there have been successes at the local and even provincial levels “but nothing that has lasted even a year.” And the election fraud last August that secured Karzai another five-year term was symptomatic: His “govern- ment has become more egregiously cor- rupt and incompetent in the last three or four years.” Last month Marlowe re- ported: “The Pentagon’s map of Afghan- istan’s 80 most key districts shows only five ‘sympathetic’ to the Afghan govern- ment — and none supporting it.” She suggests that Karzai might believe that President Obama’s announced inten- tion to begin withdrawing U.S. troops next summer “is a bluff.” Those Amer- icans who say that Afghanistan is a test of America’s “staying power” are saying that we must stay there because we are there. This is steady work, but it treats perseverance as a virtue regardless of context or consequences and makes fu- tility into a reason for persevering. Obama has counted on his 2011 run- up to reelection being smoothed by three developments in 2010 — the health-care legislation becoming popu- lar after enactment, job creation accel- erating briskly and Afghanistan condi- tions improving significantly. The first two are not happening. He can decisive- ly influence only the third, and only by adhering to his timetable for disentan- gling U.S. forces from this misadven- ture.
georgewill@washpost.com
KLMNO
R
A19 DAVID S. BRODER
A GOP gift in the gulf
BIGSTOCKPHOTO KATHLEEN PARKER
It’s dad, not DNA, that matters
Granted, many children still have in- house fathers, but millions don’t. Some fathers have become alienated through divorce. “Baby daddies” never were invit- ed to the commitment party. Still others are anonymous in the truest sense — mere DNA donors who made a deposit and picked up a check. The latter are the subject of a new study — “My Daddy’s Name Is Donor” — about the offspring of sperm donors. Pub- lished by the Center for Marriage and Families, the report is the first of its kind since artificial insemination and single motherhood came into vogue. Finally, we have enough grown children from such arrangements to ask a few questions and draw some perhaps unwelcome conclu- sions.
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Researchers assembled a representa- tive sample of 485 adults, ages 18 to 45, whose mothers conceived them with do- nated sperm. They compared their atti- tudes and sense of self to a group of 562 young adults who were adopted as in- fants and 563 young adults who were raised by their biological parents. By large percentages, the sperm-donor children suffered more depression, delin- quency and substance abuse than chil- dren who were adopted or raised in a home with their two natural parents. Al- most two-thirds agreed that “My sperm donor is half of who I am.”Half were con- cerned that money was involved in their creation. The only surprise in these findings is
that we never questioned: How could it be otherwise? And how did we ever convince ourselves that fathers aren’t essential? I tried to answer those questions in my book, “Save the Males,” a few years ago and, in fact, interviewed Karen Clark, one of the co-authors of this study (with Nor- val D. Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt). Clark found out at age 18, when her non-biological dad died, that she had been donor-conceived. It wasn’t until she had children of her own that she began to pursue her biological father’s identity and became a donor offspring advocate. One of my most passionate interview
subjects was a British doctoral student, Tom Ellis, who learned at 21 that he and his brother had been donor-conceived. Though raised by two loving parents, El- lis was devastated and embarked on a
t’s that time of year when America celebrates the donor we used to call “Dad.”
crusade for identity. “It’s absolutely necessary that I find out who he is [in order] to have a normal existence as a human being,” he told me. “That’s not negotiable in any way.” As this recent study indicates, not all children suffer from being donor offspring. But enough do that we should seriously re- consider the notion, now popularly em- braced, that children can adapt to any old family configuration. The zeitgeist already is richly endowed
with myths and fantasies that support this essentially pro-feminist, anti-male posture. Three movies this year — “The Switch,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “The Back-Up Plan”— advance the moral that donor kids turn out just fine. Except not all do. It isn’t necessary to blame mothers for their decision to seek impregnation through sperm donation to now wonder if we may have been mistaken in some of our assumptions. We are naturally sym- pathetic toward the woman, who, having reached 40 and despaired of finding Mr. Right, turns to a sperm bank as a last re- sort. Forfeiting motherhood is a high price to pay for unlucky timing. But whether a woman has a right to seek self-fulfillment may not be the most important question. More compelling is whether children have a right to two par- ents — a mother and a father. Again, the zeitgeist is the enemy of due
diligence. We’ve long ago given up the idea that marriage should be a prerequi- site to pregnancy or that single mother- hood is anything short of virtuous. Social scientists, meanwhile, have devoted con- siderable energy toward proving that fa- thers aren’t necessary, despite volumi- nous research demonstrating that father- less children suffer a host of pathologies. Though some children do splendidly with just a mother or just a father or some other variation, the overwhelming evidence confirms what we know in our hearts. Fathers are kind of nice to have around. The adult voices of donor offspring are
a welcome counterbalance to an array of cultural forces aimed at further margin- alizing fathers. At the very least, as this study implores, it is time for a serious de- bate on the ethics, meaning and practice of donor conception. Fatherhood is more than a drop of
DNA.
kathleenparker@washpost.com POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
JONATHAN CAPEHART
Green light for Alvin Greene
In what might be the best decision that South Carolina has made in, well, ever, the executive committee of the state Democratic Party voted 5 to 1 to reject a call for a new Senate primary. This should have incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint (R) smiling broadly, but it was the right thing to do. I feel for Vic Rawl. The Democratic former
state representative and former circuit judge is eminently qualified to represent the people of the Palmetto State. And yet, 59 percent of Democratic primary voters chose Alvin
Greene. He’s the unemployed guy who some- how paid the $10,400 filing fee, who has been discharged from two branches of the military and who faces felony obscenity charges. Greene’s recent media interviews, particular- ly those with The Post, Keith Olbermann and Time magazine, have fueled speculation that he is a Republican plant. But, as we learned Thursday, Greene is the beneficiary of elec- toral ennui and an alphabetically advanta- geous name.
Stripping Greene of the Democratic nomi-
nation because he’s probably the worst candi- date ever to grace a ballot would have been an abuse of power. It would have reversed the will of the people. And if the people want to make dumb mistakes, well, they’re just going to have to live with the consequences — and perhaps another six years of DeMint.
Joe Barton of Texas that BP had been the victim of a White House “shakedown” tells you everything you need to know about their need to change the subject from the problems confronting the Obama administration. For weeks, it has appeared in- creasingly likely that voters will use the midterm elections in No- vember to signal their unhappi- ness with the lingering effects of the Great Recession, the threat of uncontrolled deficits, the stale- mate in Afghanistan and the con- tinuing tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico by inflicting serious loss- es on Democratic candidates. Unless. Unless one Republican after another steps into the limelight, apparently eager to show that however bad the Democrats look, the opposition could be worse. The parade of horribles that began with GOP Senate nomi- nees (borrowed from the Tea Par- ty movement) in Kentucky and Nevada challenging accepted wisdom on everything from civil rights to Social Security reached a new height with Barton’s wildly mistaken decision to defend the world’s most unpopular oil com- pany from a fictitious strong-arm assault. Barton, a longtime advocate of the oil and gas industry, seized a microphone right after President Obama had extracted a promise from BP executives that they would create a $20 billion trust fund from which to compensate families and companies victim- ized by the accident on its off- shore drilling platform. While almost everyone else
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congratulated the president for nailing down the commitment that gave force to BP’s pledge to satisfy all legitimate claims, Bar-
Rep. Joe Barton judged BP’s $20 billion damages fund to be a terrible threat to free enterprise.
ton discerned in the transaction a terrible threat to the free-en- terprise system, calling it a Chi- cago-style “shakedown.” The leaders of the Republican
minority on Capitol Hill had managed to swallow without gagging the musings of a Ken- tucky candidate who criticizes the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and a Nevada nominee who has prob- lems with the Social Security Act of 1935.
But when Barton — on the very
day BP’s chief executive was dem- onstrating his political inepti- tude to derisive Republicans and Democrats on a House energy subcommittee — appointed him- self defense attorney for Big Oil, it was more than even the GOP leadership could tolerate. House Minority Leader John Boehner and his lieutenants summoned the Texan to his chambers, ordered him to recant and apologize — which he promptly did. But not before White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had issued a stern rebuke on behalf of the president, followed swiftly by virtually every Democrat on Cap- itol Hill in reach of a camera, fax machine or phone. To hear them tell it, Barton was not a solo malefactor but the guy who had given away the secret Republican command: Go forth and pollute. We’ve got your back. Barton was the best thing that has happened to the Democrats in months. All of a sudden, they were not defending the undersea gusher they don’t know how to cap; they were charging that the opposition was in bed with the corporate bad guys. Why so eager? Because in the
past few days, they had read elec- tion analyst Stuart Rothenberg’s forecast that five of their Senate seats are leaning Republican and two others now under their con- trol are toss-ups. If Democrats lose all of them, their Senate mar- gin would be down to four seats. A similar House analysis by academics Alan Abramowitz and Larry Sabato projects Republi- can gains of 32 to 39 seats. The latter number would be just enough to make Boehner the speaker, replacing Nancy Pelosi. These numbers will change as the campaigns unfold. But you can see why the Democrats pounced on Barton, and why Boehner & Co. might want to hand out muzzles to their members.
davidbroder@washpost.com
he eagerness with which Democrats pounced on the foolish comment of Rep.
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