Is there a Plan C?

Opinion: March 19, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

President Obama has long been criticized by Republicans for his purportedly inadequate zeal in pursuing the war in Afghanistan. He was criticized sharply from the right for his plan to draw down troops over three years; too fast, they said.

So it’s ironic that Obama now finds himself defending that timetable against GOP critics who want to pull out more quickly in the wake of news that a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred at least 16 civilians.

“We’re risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may frankly not be doable,” Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said last week.

Obama’s logic is that no single incident, no matter how horrific, should be the tipping point in a war we’ve been fighting for more than 10 years. And he has a point.

But Gingrich has a point too. Never mind how weary Americans are of this conflict; even more important, an increasing number of Afghans, including some who were once resolutely pro-American, have had enough.

Genuine crisis

That’s why the United States and its allies face a genuine crisis in their effort to keep troops in Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond. The tragic killings in Kandahar province are only a small part of the problem.

A few examples:

The chairman of the Afghan Senate, whose life has been protected by U.S. troops, said last week that his people no longer see much difference between American soldiers and the Soviet army that occupied their country in the 1980s.

A prominent Afghan American businessman, Farid Maqsudi, said he too has concluded that the Americans should leave sooner rather than later. “The point of no return has been long overdue,” he told the Washington Post.

And then Afghanistan’s most influential council of Muslim clergymen renewed its demand that NATO troops end their search-and-capture night raids, which U.S. officials say have been a major ingredient in the military successes of the last two years.

If the night raids continue, the Ulema Council warned, the Afghan people could erupt in “a wave of anger and revenge ... (and) no one will be able to control it.”

That’s the rub: As long as thousands of U.S. forces are in Afghanistan, ugly collisions between Afghans and Americans will happen.

Before the Kandahar killings, there were attacks by Afghans on U.S. troops to avenge the desecration of a truckload of Korans. Before that, there was a spate of sudden attacks by Afghan troops on their foreign advisers, including one inside the headquarters of the Interior Ministry.

Get Realistic

Both Americans and Afghans need a clearer sense of what their troops can realistically accomplish between now and 2014, and after.

Plan A — turning Afghanistan into a smoothly functioning democracy — didn’t work. Plan B — handing the war over to an Afghan army with U.S. advisers, is under siege. Reassessing a major foreign policy effort in the middle of an election year won’t be a welcome idea for a president seeking to project an image of calm and steady leadership.

But election year or not, it’s time to come up with Plan C.

McManus writes for the Los Angeles Times. Distributed by MCT Information Services.