In the U.S. debate on Afghanistan, virtually all experts agree that it's not within the power of the American military alone to win the war. For that, Afghanistan needs its own military and police force, one that is truly representative of the people, and one that is not hopelessly corrupted by drug money and the selfish concerns of the Karzai government in Kabul.
The conundrum is that any Afghan military created by outsiders - and America, despite our image of ourselves, is naturally seen by most Afghans as a self-interested outsider - is apt to be viewed as compromised and illegitimate.
Committing more American troops and advisors only exacerbates this problem. The more U.S. troops we send, the more we're "in the face" of the Afghan people, jabbering at them in a language they don't understand. The more troops we send, moreover, the more likely it is that our troops will take the war's burdens on themselves. If history is any guide, we'll tend to push aside the "incompetent" and "unreliable" Afghan military that we're so at pains to create and celebrate.
We have a classic Catch-22. As we send more troops to stiffen Afghan government forces and to stabilize the state, their high-profile presence will serve to demoralize Afghan troops and ultimately to destabilize the state. The more the U.S. military takes the fight to the enemy, the less likely it is that our Afghan army-in-perpetual-reequipping-and-training will do so.
How to escape this Catch-22? The only answer that offers hope is that America must not be seen as an imperial master in Afghanistan. If we wish to prevail, we must downsize our commitment of troops; we must minimize our presence.
But if we insist on pulling the strings, we'll likely as not perform our own dance of death in this "graveyard of empires."
A little history. Some two centuries ago, and much like us, the globe-spanning British Empire attempted to extend its mastery over Afghanistan. It did not go well. The British diplomat in charge, Montstuart Elphinstone, noted in his book on "Caubool" the warning of an Afghan tribal elder he encountered: "We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood; but we will never be content with a master."
As imperial masters, British attitudes toward Afghans were perhaps best summed up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition (1875). The Afghans, according to the Britannica, "are familiar with death, and are audacious in attack, but easily discouraged by failure; excessively turbulent and unsubmissive to law or discipline; apparently frank and affable in manner, especially when they hope to gain some object, but capable of the grossest brutality when that hope ceases. They are unscrupulous in perjury, treacherous, vain, and insatiable in vindictiveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own lives and in the most cruel manner .... the higher classes are too often stained with deep and degrading debauchery."
One wonders what the Afghans had to say about the British.
The accuracy of this British depiction is not important; indeed, it says more about imperial British attitudes than it does Afghan culture. What it highlights is a tendency toward sneering superiority exercised by the occupier, whether that occupier is a British officer in the 1840s or an American advisor today. In the British case, greater familiarity only bred greater contempt, as the words of one British noteworthy, Sir Herbert Edwardes, illustrate. Rejecting Elphinstone's somewhat favorable estimate of their character, Edwardes dismissively noted that with Afghans, "Nothing is finer than their physique, or worse than their morale."
We should ponder this statement, for it could have come yesterday from an American advisor. If the words of British "masters" from 150 years ago teach us anything, it's that Afghanistan will never be ours to win. Nor is an Afghan army ours to create. Like the British, we might fine-tune Afghan physiques, but we won't be able to instill high morale and staying power.
And if we can't create an Afghan army that's willing to fight and die for Karzai or some other government we consider worthy of our support, we must face facts: There's no chance of winning at any remotely sustainable or sensible cost to the United States.
Nevertheless, we seem eager to persist in our very own Catch-22. We may yet overcome it, but only by courting a singularly dangerous paradox. In Vietnam, our military spoke of destroying villages in order to save them. Will we have to destroy the American military in order to save Afghanistan?
For that may be the ultimate price of "victory" in Afghanistan.
Having said this I understand the intrinsic weakness of our war/occupation of that country. Our administration is waging that war/occupation at the end of a long and dangerously vulnerable supply line, a situation a la Stalingrad. It is waging a war in a country that has not had a truly national government, national army, or national police force for many generations. Most of these considerations seem to spell disaster but spelling is not a certainty.
http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2009/10/30/why-afghanistan-is-the-new-post-cold-war-berlin.aspx
A minor point: You're right, of course, about "Afghani" referring to the currency. But several dictionaries I consulted say that "Afghan" and "Afghani" are synonymous and can be used interchangeably.
Finally, no insult was intended by referring to Afghanistan as the "graveyard of empires." In a way, I would argue that this phrase is meant as a compliment to the independence and fighting spirit of the Afghan people: a warning to foreigners not to try to occupy and dominate Afghanistan.
Still to paraphrase somewhat - where the Army goes, logistics will follow.
And besides the new Afghan plan dictates moving into population centers from remote outposts, substantially mitigating the costs and efforts of the logistical tail.