Military Financial Behavior

I'm not a fan of blogging. It seems to end up as "blitching" about a gripe or needless cheerleading. It frequently masquerades as journalism which is probably why my more gullible relatives now believe quite a few blatant and incendiary conspiracy theories found floating around posing as legitimate prose. But it's a requirement, so here goes...

A child does what feels good. An adult makes a plan and executes it. I borrowed this maxim from a popular author, but I think it is a powerful metric of a very taboo topic in the military: financial behavior.

I have never received or sought financial advice from a supervisor in the military. Aside from the occasional overheard discussion, finance is an uncommon topic among military coworkers. On the one hand, this make sense. Culturally, finances are taboo. We like to create the image that we make, have and use lots of money, but we don't like to talk about the numbers or methods behind the image. The soaring foreclosure, bankruptcy and other credit default rates in America are a pretty clear indication that the math behind the image adds up to a negative number for too many people. Are some of those people in your unit?

According to one study, money-related strife causes over half of American divorces. It's commonly accepted that half of all marriages end in divorce. Rates in the military are similar, but we don't talk about it. We have regular suicide prevention and PTSD briefings. We're told to watch our battle buddy for signs that he might be depressed. Have you ever been told to watch him for signs that he might be living beyond his means?

Sex is a taboo topic in most cultures. In America, we have grown more comfortable discussing it but it is not hard to find a school district struggling with some parents who still don't want their children to receive sex education. In general however, condoms, birth control and avoiding unwanted pregnancy or disease are mainstream topics in America. In general, Americans have figured out that unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will not go away without education and dialogue. If you knew a soldier in your unit was with a different partner every weekend, would you ask him how he/she prevents disease or pregnancy? Why not? How is this different from self-destructive financial behavior? Does it have less effect on good order and discipline?

After financially "doing dumb with zeros on the end", I have a new definition of the word 'afford'. 'Afford' means I can pay for it with cash from a planned segment of my family's budget. If I want say, a 2009 basic Chevy Tahoe, that'll be about $36K. Add chrome wheels and tires? A conservative extra $2K. Base pay for an 18 year E-6 is just shy of $45K. An O-3 with 6 years: ~$61K. An O-6 with 18 years: ~$104K. Six year payments on that Tahoe at 10%: $700/mo or $8400/yr. Why the math? Have you seen a member or your unit driving a vehicle that in payments alone costs over 25% of his pay? If he/she needs a flashy car, how nice is the house? Toys? Emergency savings? Retirement savings? College savings? Where is he going in that truck, besides trouble?

How is “affording” possible on a military salary? The same as on any other salary – by living within one’s means. As that popular author would say, “Live like no one else now… so that later you can LIVE like no on else.” Don’t be that child that pulls out the plastic to buy things just because they’re pretty or shiny or everyone else seems to have one. Be the adult that tells his/her money where to go, when to go there, how to go there and what to get done. You do this with the tactical actions of your unit? Why not your money? Healthy financial behavior is characterized by lifelong habits of making sound plan for one’s money (not credit), executing it, evaluating it and adapting it.

The bottom line is that financial behavior of many military members, especially younger members, needs attention. Too many of us act like children with our money and it’s a recipe for retiring in disaster instead of dignity. Crushing debt leads to debilitating stress and declining soldier fitness across all domains. If you would intervene in your soldiers’ lives when drug, sex, alcohol or other destructive behaviors manifest, why not help them with their finances?

Brian Oneill
MAJ, USAF
CGSCSG 19A

The Marine Corps' 234th Birthday

In 1921, Commandant, MGen John A. Lejuene directed that all commands publish a reminder to Marines of the Corps' honorable service on its birthday. Consequently, his words have been immortalized in the Marine Corps Manual, edition 1921, and are republished annually as part of the Marine Corps birthday celebrations around the globe. Additionally, at a minimum--depending on capability--Marines conduct a cake cutting ceremony. This ceremony, although short, represents the traditions and honor afforded those who have served before us as well as those currently serving. The cake is presented to the eldest Marine present to signify the honor and respect for experience and seniority. The eldest Marine then presents his or her piece of cake to the youngest Marine present to symbolize the mentorship and leadership provided by experienced Marines to younger Marines. This short exchange serves as a tangible reminder of what it means to be a Marine and the responsibilities willingly incurred.

The Marine Corps' 234th birthday was celebrated by the commanding officer, Col M. McCoy, and the Marines of CGSC as well as numerous veterans at the VA hospital in Ft. Leavenworth. Those in attendance were retirees from a variety of the services, there to honor the Marine Corps' birthday and observe the customary cake cutting ceremony. These retirees, many with physical injuries suffered during their service to this nation, were very enthusiastic about honoring the Corps and the Marines present. Being among Marines--past and present--is what the Marine Corps' birthday celebration is all about.

Each service has its own history and traditions that it honors. Celebrations like the Marine Corps' birthday offer a way to build camaraderie and reinforce our ties to the past. In this way, Marines and all service members can forge a future worthy of the sacrifices of those who have preceded us and the hardships they endured.

D. C. Emmel

Major, USMC

CGSC SG19A

Obama seeks study on local leaders for troop decision

AFGHAN PROVINCES TO BE ANALYZED

Details should help president determine need

By Scott Wilson and Greg JaffeWashington

Post Staff Writers

Thursday, October 29, 2009

President Obama has asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help, information that his advisers say will guide his decision on how many additional U.S. troops to send to the battle.
Obama made the request in a meeting Monday with Vice President Biden and a small group of senior advisers helping him decide whether to expand the war. The detail he is now seeking also reflects the administration's turn toward Afghanistan's provincial governors, tribal leaders and local militias as potentially more effective partners in the effort than a historically weak central government that is confronting questions of legitimacy after the flawed Aug. 20 presidential election.
"This is obviously a complicated security environment in Afghanistan, and the president wants the clearest possible understanding of what the challenges are to our forces and what is required to meet that challenge," said a senior administration official who has participated in the Afghanistan policy review and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it. "Any successful and sustainable strategy must clearly align the resources we provide with the goals we are trying to achieve."
As U.S. forces in Afghanistan endure the deadliest month of the eight-year-old conflict, Obama is weighing a request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, for a quick jump in forces to blunt the Taliban's momentum against concerns that too many new troops could help the insurgency's recruiting efforts.
Administration officials say that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and national security adviser James L. Jones, a retired four-star general, support Obama's request for a more detailed status report on each province that could identify potential U.S. allies among Afghanistan's local leaders, some with less-than-sterling human rights records.
Gates and Jones have pushed McChrystal to justify as specifically as possible his request for 44,000 additional troops, the figure now at the center of White House deliberations. The review group once included intelligence officials, generals and ambassadors, but it has recently narrowed to a far smaller number of senior civilian advisers, including Biden, Gates, Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Administration officials said the province-by-province analysis will be ready for Obama before his scheduled Friday meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House.
"There are a lot of questions about why McChrystal has identified the areas that he has identified as needing more forces," said a senior military official familiar with the review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations candidly. "Some see it as an attempt by the White House to do due diligence on the commander's troop request. A less charitable view is that it is a 5,000-mile screwdriver tinkering from Washington." A range of options
The weeks-long White House review has been shaped by a central tension between the broad counterinsurgency strategy endorsed by the military and a narrower counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaeda that some senior administration officials favor.
McChrystal, who took command of the 100,000 U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in May, is promoting a plan that calls for concentrating forces around urban areas to better protect the Afghan population and pulling back from remote regions. His idea calls for speeding the training of Afghan forces, expanding civilian efforts to improve Afghan governance and starting other long-term programs to win the support of the population that the insurgency draws from.
About half the 44,000 troops McChrystal requested would be sent to take back Taliban sanctuaries in southern Afghanistan. The others would push into western Afghanistan, where the U.S. military has only a slight presence, and reinforce operations in the mountainous east. One brigade would train Afghan army and police forces.
Even after weeks of review, administration officials say a range of options is still under consideration, including whether additional U.S. forces could be deployed in phases. Although Obama had been expected to announce his decision before leaving Nov. 11 on a 10-day trip to Asia, administration officials say he may wait until he returns.
"I think it's important to hear and to get this right," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday.
In reviewing McChrystal's bracing assessment of the war, the president and his senior advisers have concluded that the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a military and political force, regardless of how many more troops are deployed.
The acknowledgment is behind Obama's request for an analysis of which of Afghanistan's 34 provinces can be left to local leaders, perhaps including elements of the Taliban unaligned with al-Qaeda. Administration officials have said that under any strategy, the Taliban would not be allowed to threaten the Kabul government or provide sanctuary for al-Qaeda, whose leaders operate largely from the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan.
"How much of the country can we just leave to be run by the locals?" said one U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy, who discussed the White House request on the condition of anonymity. "How do you separate those who have taken up arms because they oppose the presence of foreigners in their area, because they're getting paid to fight us because we're there, from those who want to restore a Taliban government? How many of the people who we're fighting actually share al-Qaeda's ideology?"
Obama's interest in provincial allies also reflects the administration's growing disenchantment with President Hamid Karzai and his inability to extend his government's authority beyond Kabul during his nearly eight years in office. Provincial governments and tribal structures have long exerted more power than the central government, which many Afghans view as remote, corrupt and ineffective. Another U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy said, "Most of Afghanistan that's stable is under local control."
"The question is: Can you get benign local control in more places?" the official said. "And will that be easier to achieve, and more effective, than trying to establish more central government control?" Refining a strategy
Critics of ceding authority to local power brokers point to Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, where Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai has been given wide latitude to run the municipality and the surrounding province. Security in the area has deteriorated over the past year, while the cultivation of opium-producing poppies has soared.
Some U.S. and Afghan officials contend that Ahmed Wali, who heads the Kandahar provincial council, has been reluctant to crack down on drug traffickers -- and the Taliban fighters who protect them -- because he is involved in narcotics smuggling, an accusation he has repeatedly denied. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Ahmed Wali has been on the CIA's payroll for much of the past eight years.
"Ahmed Wali illustrates the challenge we face across the country," a senior U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy said Wednesday. "Do we pay him off to help us -- whatever help that may be -- or is our goal of improving the government more important than doing these kinds of deals?"
Obama is refining his strategy from several options outlined during more than 15 hours of meetings in the White House, administration officials say.
Some White House officials, including Biden, have advocated a strategy that would focus primarily on counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda. The vice president has argued for preserving the current U.S. troop level of 68,000, expediting the training of Afghan forces, intensifying Predator drone strikes against al-Qaeda operatives and supporting the Pakistani government against the Taliban within its borders.
But the deepening conflict is complicating those plans. For example, administration officials say that sending additional U.S. training brigades to accelerate preparation of the Afghan security forces may not accomplish as much as hoped because recruitment -- and retention -- has gone poorly as the war intensifies.
"It's all part of the endemic problems of illiteracy and security that plague many countries, but particularly this one," said a senior administration official familiar with the review process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it. "You want to increase the number of people engaged in training, but at some point bringing in more and more Americans won't produce quicker results. There's a ceiling."
McChrystal has advocated something far closer to a nation-building project. Some Republican supporters of the general's plan in Congress have compared his strategy to the 2007 "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq, a shorter-term effort that helped pull the country back from sectarian civil war.
But administration officials reject the comparison, pointing out that McChrystal's troop request would require a far longer deployment of U.S. forces and that Afghanistan is in a less dire position than Iraq was at the time of the surge.
Most important, administration officials say, the violence in Afghanistan is directed against U.S. forces rather than among Afghans. In Iraq, much of the pre-surge violence involved Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites fighting for control of the state, which gave the U.S. military a clearer role in protecting Iraqi civilians.
"There are some areas of the country that will fight us and fight the Taliban just because we are there," Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters Wednesday.

Hurricane Katrina Lessons Learned: A Target of Opportunity Missed

The Guest Speaker Program (GSP) at CGSC is intended to expand our knowledge in subjects and problem areas that we are likely to face in the next ten years or so of our careers. Ideally, it gets us to think critically about these topics. If we are lucky, the topics presented by the guest speaker might even nest with the current block of instruction in the curriculum. In this regard, I think we missed a great opportunity to nest the message of LTG(Ret) Honore’s presentation with our study in Full Spectrum Operations.

LTG(Ret) Honore spoke for about an hour, ostensibly about the coordinated efforts to respond to Hurricane Katrina. His talk was entertaining and enjoyable. Indeed, he generated more laughter from his audience than any speaker thus far. However, the take-away from his colorful presentation seemed to me to be: don’t buy waterfront property unless you plan on dealing with a natural disaster one day, stock up on MREs and water, get a weather radio, and buy some tarps. While I appreciate a good-humored talk as much as the next guy (and agree with this preparedness advice), I would have thought that given his position as the JTF Katrina Commander, LTG(Ret) Honore could have focused more on the lessons learned from the Civil Support Operations side of things. How did we respond to this disaster and how should we respond in the future?

Instead, we were provided other nuggets of insight that might only apply to a few officers in the auditorium: you can design the next smart plane, you can build the next smart home-computer to sniff and taste food, or, if you are going to be in charge of building roads and bridges, be sure to build the bridges up over the water. For those of you who see these sorts of activities in your next ten years, I hope that these additions to your kit bag will be helpful.

As for the rest of us who, I think, are likely to have to deal with planning or supporting a response to a natural disaster, our kit bag was left woefully empty. I was hoping LTG(Ret) Honore’s talk would answer some of these questions: What critical planning factors do we need to consider when dealing with local and federal agencies? What issues with command and control were the most problematic? How did you share information and intelligence from across the different agencies to create a common operating picture? The opportunity to hear directly from a former JTF commander about lessons learned from his or her operation is somewhat rare, and we missed it.

Without finding fault, I suppose I will fall back on the “Adult Education Model” taught here at CGSC and figure out for myself what the published lessons learned are and nest those with the current block of instruction. Now I will make a concerted effort to go to CALL and retrieve copies of Disaster Response: Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, IIR No. 06-11, FEB 2006 and Catastrophic Disaster Response Staff Officer’s Handbook, CALL Handbook No. 06-08, MAY 06. I am confident that these documents will provide me with useful information for my development as a field grade leader.

MAJ Christopher McGarry
US Army, AR

CGSC SG19A

Staff Group 19A Engages in First Ever Bloggers Roundtable

On 15 October 2009, Majors from CGSC Staff Group 19A conducted the first ever bloggers round table. The theme of the teleconference was the following; “The experiences of combat veterans and the activities of the U.S. Army Command and General staff College”. The forum served two distinct purposes:

- for U.S. Army officers to engage and interact with the community through an interactive media forum

- for U.S. Army officers to learn valuable lessons in media relations and coherently field questions

The bloggers round table forum is an innovative way for the community and the armed forces to engage in relevant discussion on a variety of topics. Questions brought up during this forum ranged from ROE in Iraq, the different operational environment of Iraq with that in Afghanistan, to the current strategy being utilized in Afghanistan. Bloggers included such participants as professional blogger, Mr. Colin Clark from dodbuzz.com, to Mrs. Dbie Morrison from mysideofthepudle.blogspot.com, a conservative mother with an interest in the U.S. military.

I sensed that participants welcomed the debate and answers given as these were not rehearsed products, rather honest opinions and views from combat veteran junior officers. Engagements such as these are simple to put together and serve as strategic communication combat multipliers, as you can reach a wide audience and are enabled to convey and discuss experiences from the ground level. Transparency is also achieved as the forum in not restricted and all manner of questions are encouraged.

The officers that participated also personally benefited from the media engagement as well. It provided for a non-threatening environment that afforded us the opportunity to learn how to clearly convey one’s message and how to effectively deliver responses. I learned it’s best to write questions down and have a mental strategy as to how best tackle questions. The strategy can involve other members jotting down key points for your use or relaying themes with personal experiences at the tactical and operational level. Another key lesson learned is staying on point within the question being asked with clear and succinct answers instead of long vague responses.

In conclusion, the bloggers round table is an effective forum to engage the public in open discussion. It’s easy to set up and the debate lives on afterwards as bloggers post discussion topics and thoughts on their journals online. Once posted online, this creates more discussion and engages more people as they in turn post comments on the authors’ blogs.

MAJ Sebastian Pastor

US Army, EN

CGSC SG19A

Civilian, Military Officials at Odds Over Resources Needed for Afghan Mission

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 8, 2009

In early March, after weeks of debate across a conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the participants in President Obama's strategic review of the war in Afghanistan figured that the most contentious part of their discussions was behind them. Everyone, save Vice President Biden's national security adviser, agreed that the United States needed to mount a comprehensive counterinsurgency mission to defeat the Taliban.

That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called "a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Preventing al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy."

To senior military commanders, the sentence was unambiguous: U.S. and NATO forces would have to change the way they operated in Afghanistan. Instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents, the troops would have to concentrate on protecting the good Afghans from the bad ones.

And to carry out such a counterinsurgency effort the way its doctrine prescribes, the military would almost certainly need more boots on the ground.

To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.

"It was easy to say, 'Hey, I support COIN,' because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes," said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.

Find the rest of the story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100704088.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009100704286

The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’

New York Times

October 4, 2009
By JAMES TRAUB

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/weekinreview/04traub.html

Over the next few weeks, Barack Obama must make the most difficult decision of his presidency to date: whether or not to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, as his commanding general there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has reportedly proposed.

This summer, Mr. Obama described the effort in Afghanistan as “a war of necessity.” In such a war, you do whatever you need to do to win. But now, as criticism mounts from those who argue that the war in Afghanistan cannot, in fact, be won with more troops and a better strategy, the president is having second thoughts.

A war of necessity is presumably one that is “fundamental to the defense of our people,” as Mr. Obama has said about Afghanistan. But if such a war is unwinnable, then perhaps you must reconsider your sense of its necessity and choose a more modest policy instead.

The conservative pundit George Will suggested as much in a recent column in which he argued for a reduced, rather than enhanced, American presence in Afghanistan. Mr. Will cited the testimony of George Kennan, the diplomat and scholar, to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Vietnam in 1966: “Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country. ... This is not only not our business, but I don’t think we can do it successfully.”
Mr. Kennan’s astringent counsel has become piercingly relevant today, as Americans discover, time and again, their inability to shape the world as they would wish. Indeed, George W. Bush’s tenure looks in retrospect like an inadvertent proof of the wisdom of restraint, for his ambitious policy to transform the Middle East through regime change and democracy promotion largely ended in failure. The irony is that Mr. Obama, who as a candidate reassured conservative critics that he had read and absorbed the wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr, Mr. Kennan and other “realists,” is now himself accused of ignoring the limits of American power, like Mr. Bush or Lyndon Johnson, in his pursuit of victory in an unwinnable war.
The idea that American foreign policy must be founded upon a prudent recognition of the country’s capacities and limits, rather than its hopes and wishes, gained currency after World War II, possibly the last unequivocally necessary war in American history. At the war’s end, of course, the global pre-eminence of the United States was beyond question. But Mr. Kennan, Mr. Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau and others tried to imbue their sometimes-grandiose fellow-citizens with a rueful awareness of the intransigence of things.

“The problems of this world are deeper, more involved, and more stubborn than many of us realize,” Mr. Kennan said in a 1949 speech to the Academy of Political Science. “It is imperative, therefore, that we economize with our limited resources and that we apply them where we feel that we will do the most good.”

The realists won that debate. Mr. Kennan argued that a policy of confrontation with Stalin’s Russia, advocated by the more fervent anti-Communists, would be neither effective nor necessary; the Soviets, rather, could be checked by “intelligent long-range policies” designed to counter — to contain — their ambitions. Of course he lost in Vietnam, where the nation-building dreams of a generation of cold war liberals came to grief. The neoconservatives who came to power with George W. Bush were just as dismissive of the cautionary sprit of realism as the liberals of an earlier generation had been, and thought of themselves as conservative heirs of the idealistic tradition of Woodrow Wilson.

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.

Americans broadly agree that their government must at all costs prevent major attacks on American soil by Al Qaeda. But there the consensus ends, and their questions begin: Do we need to sustain the rickety Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in order to achieve that objective? If so, will a combination of overwhelming military force and an accompanying civilian surge not only repel the Taliban but make Afghanistan self-sustaining over the long term?

The leaked McChrystal plan argues both that we must and that we can, and that a more modest effort “will likely result in failure.” Critics like the military analyst Andrew Bacevich insist, by contrast, that we cannot and that we need not — that Americans can contain the threat of jihad through such measures as enhanced homeland defense. Others have argued for a middle course involving a smaller troop increase and less nation-building.

George Kennan was right about the cold war. But the question now is whether “containment” is also the right metaphor for Afghanistan, and for the threat of Islamic extremism. Containment (Mr. Kennan also used the imagery of chess and the pruning and pinning of trees) is a metaphor of geographical contiguity. Soviet ambitions could be checked here, conceded there. America’s adversary was not, Mr. Kennan insisted, a global force called Communism; it was Russia, an expansionist but conservative power. By that logic, the United States could lose in Vietnam with no lasting harm to itself.

But Al Qaeda, and jihadism generally, is a global force that seeks control of territory chiefly as a means to carry out its global strategy. It has no borders at which to be checked; its success or failure is measured in ideological rather than territorial terms — like Communism without Russia. Mr. Kennan often suggested that America’s own example of democratic prosperity was one of its most powerful weapons during the cold war; and plainly that is so today as well. That is one weapon with which the threat of Islamic extremism must be challenged; but it is only one.

The question boils down to this: How grave a price would Americans pay if Afghanistan were lost to the Taliban? Would this be a disaster, or merely, as with Vietnam, a terrible misfortune for which the United States could compensate through a contemporary version of Mr. Kennan’s “intelligent long-range policies”? If the latter, then how can Americans justify the immense cost in money and manpower, and the inevitable loss of life, attendant upon General McChrystal’s plan? How can they gamble so much on the corrupt, enfeebled and barely legitimate government of President Karzai? Why insist on seeking to do that which in all probability can not be done?

But what if it’s the former? What if the fall of Kabul would constitute not only an American abandonment of the Afghan people, but a major strategic and psychological triumph for Al Qaeda, and a recruiting tool of unparalleled value? Then the Kennanite calculus would no longer apply, and the fact that nobody can be completely confident that General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy will work would not be reason enough to forsake it.

In that case — and perhaps only in that case — Afghanistan really would be a war of necessity.