Obama's Afghan surge is neither right nor wise

That is not just.

Perhaps these questions are not the right ones to ask. Instead of asking the people of southern Afghanistan whether they want our protection we might consider whether the Pashtun population of the region would like the citizens of the western democracies to act to protect them from our governments. That is a legitimate question to consider, but is totally unthinkable.

Another argument that has been made about the war in Afghanistan is that the administration in Kabul needs to be reinforced lest the Taliban once again take power. This is argued on two grounds. First, that the Taliban are fundamentalist despots. Second, al-Qaida would again use Afghanistan as a terrorist sanctuary if the Taliban retake power.

However, we all know that the administration in Kabul is hardly one worth defending let alone killing for. Is it right that scores of children be almost routinely blown apart so that we may prop up the Karzai government? Sure the Taliban are "bad guys", but the alternative regime that is being defended must itself be legitimate.

The administration of Hamid Karzai is no more legitimate than the administration of Mohammad Najibullah that the Soviets propped up after their withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. Like Najibullah, Karzai's rule is dependent not upon the consent of his people but rather upon the overwhelming power of a foreign state.

If it was unjust for Moscow to prop up an illegitimate regime from the likes of Hekmatyar, Haqqani and Mullar Omar then it is wrong for Washington to do the same now. We might try and avoid an application of moral rationality here by invoking the threat of terrorism. Things are different for us now because Afghanistan would be used as a terrorist sanctuary by al-Qaida should Karzai fall. However, the Afghan mujahedin did launch terrorist attacks into the Soviet Union and they did so with the support of the United States and then senior CIA official, Robert Gates. Yuri Andropov was reputed to have stated in Politburo meetings that it was better to fight Islamists in Kabul than in the USSR.

The big argument at this point is the argument due to "the war of necessity". We must prevent al-Qaida from once again using Afghanistan as a terrorist base. To do this requires beating the Taliban on the battlefield or at least preventing them from accruing further gains. Here we must be careful. It is at this point necessary to conjoin pragmatic and moral arguments to reach a full ethical evaluation. In so far as the latter goes even if we assume that the Taliban and al-Qaida have retained a tight relationship, this does not mean we have the right to kill as we see fit and for as long as we see fit.

It is also by no means obvious that the best way to prevent al-Qaida "raids", as jihadi terrorists call them, against the West is by escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. All options short of escalation should be exhausted. War, for it to be just, must always be a last resort. The Obama argument assumes by fiat that it is the only resort.

In the present situation we might try and explore whether an Afghan unity government could be fashioned composing elements of the Taliban's constituency in the South alongside more moderate elements within the broader insurgency. This could include peacekeepers from neutral states overlooking security. Such an administration would be the prelude to a genuine act of Afghani self determination, which may well take the bite out of the insurgency and isolate al-Qaida even further.

One might argue that this approach would not be feasible. Perhaps so. However, this must be demonstrated by testing its feasibility empirically. It would not be proper to simply dismiss it a priori and to therein base a policy of military escalation upon such dismissal.

That is what Obama, effectively, is now doing.

What of the pragmatic side of things? The Afghan surge strategy reportedly is based on the purported success of the Iraq surge. It is dangerous to base a military strategy on faulty assumptions.