We Need a "Study Group" - for Afghanistan

The impact of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report is already receding. Bush made it obvious in the week prior to its release that, like a recalcitrant child, he wasn't having any of that. Too bad. We could have used those guys and others where their studies might have done some good - Afghanistan.

Our leaders might be no more receptive than Bush to such a report but, as Frederick Kempe argues in Slate, we need answers while there's still time for them to be useful:

"The most poignant moment during the NATO meetings here last week came when Afghanistan's national security adviser spoke of the debt the West owed his country. 'You wouldn't be here if it weren't for us,' Zalmai Rassoul told a room full of old and new Europeans. They knew what he meant. If Afghan freedom fighters hadn't upended their Red Army occupiers, who withdrew in disgrace in early 1989, the chain of events that led to the Berlin Wall's fall, Baltic liberation, and Soviet collapse may not have followed.

"His appeal went further. 'You abandoned us after we defeated the Soviets,' he told me. 'We warned you about the dangers of the Taliban, but you ignored us. You paid for that on 9/11. If you abandon Afghanistan again, you will pay again.'

"It might already be too late to save Iraq from civil war or worse, but there's still time to save the moderate, pro-Western regime in Afghanistan. If the West doesn't address its failings soon, though, its military victories will be overshadowed by extremist attacks from a resurgent Taliban that is funded by a growing narco-economy and abetted by ostensible allies in Pakistan. The likely outcome would be Western fatigue and ultimate defeat as NATO suffers a death by a thousand improvised explosive devices.

Kempe sees a study group as essential to explore issues our leaders are failing to address, much less resolve:

- How to transform Afghanistan's drug economy,

- How to win the 'hearts and minds' battle,

- How to clean up Afghan government corruption and extend central authority,

- How to make Pakistan stop abetting the insurgency.

These are fundamental issues that currently bedevil 'the mission' and, if unresolved, will eventually undermine any chance of success in NATO's efforts. If we don't get usable answers to these questions, the lives we've lost over there will be lives squandered. Worse yet, if there are no achievable solutions to these questions, we're a lot better off knowing that now than letting our people keep dying over there for a lost cause.