Obama's Toughest Decision

Two schools of thought on Afghanistan:

Now, as Americans debate whether or not to double down in Afghanistan, it’s striking how opinion is divided not according to left and right, or hawk and dove, but rather by the difference between the Wilsonian “what we must do” and the Kennanite “what we can do.”
Stephen Holmes, a left-leaning law professor at New York University, recently wrote a critique of General McChrystal’s plan that almost exactly echoed Will/Kennan: “Turning an illegitimate government into a legitimate one is simply beyond the capacities of foreigners, however wealthy or militarily unmatched.”

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a hawkish Democrat, has reportedly urged the president to devote less of the country’s energies to Afghanistan in order to apply them where they will do the most good — Pakistan. On the other hand, advocates of the proposed new strategy, like Peter Bergen, an expert on Islamic terrorism, invoke America’s “obligation” to the Afghan people and the strategic catastrophe that would come of ceding the country to the Taliban. One side reasons from the means, the other from the ends.

In the real world, of course, the distinction between these two very different dispositions is a fluid one. After all, in a true war of necessity, like World War II, a state and a people summon the capacity to do what must be done, no matter how difficult. So the objective question at the heart of the current debate is whether the battle for Afghanistan represents such a war, or whether — like those for Vietnam or Iraq — the problem that it presents can be solved by less bloody and costly means. NYT

Former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes, who runs the Arghand Cooperative in Afghanistan, has her own plan for Afghanistan. Chayes says resources should be focused on the people and the taliban should be rendered irrelevant. In this recent speech (in Sept.) at the University of Nebraska, Chayes said she's worried that Afghanistan will get left behind. She says it would be a mistake if the U.S. left Afghanistan. Chayes says the U.S. can't just be there to chase Al Qaeda. She also says Afghanistan needs more troops but they have to be used in a different way.

In August, Chayes said she bought five voter registration cards: