Modest goals for the other war
What can we do? Intensify what we’re already doing: Rely on intelligence, special operations and selective airstrikes for now. As long as we throw well-aimed punches and leave, Pakistan’s government will complain publicly but will accept our actions privately — and be glad of them.
The Taliban, or something like it, will always have a constituency in backward areas and among severe Islamists.
We shall never see a fully peaceful Afghanistan — not even with the long troop presence a durably positive outcome will require. Nonetheless, if the Pakistan haven problem can be solved, all the other problems can be managed. We won’t stop terror completely, but we can help the Afghans build a state that terror can’t reclaim.
