First, the George Will column that has conservatives in an uproar:

Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan’s “culture of poverty.” But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many “accidental guerrillas” to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases—evidently there are none now—must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen’s, is squandered.

Let me say that I am not a big fan of George Will.  I disagreed with him on Iraq and I think it would be easy to dismiss him now on the same grounds—which many of my fellow conservatives seem to be doing now.  Be that as it may, one editorialist who I do highly respect on these matters, Ralph Peters, has been saying the same thing for some time now.  In his most recent article:

As Post readers know, I believe that our present approach to Afghanistan is wrongheaded. And more troops aren’t the answer—we should maintain a smaller, ruthless force on the ground that concentrates strictly on killing our enemies.

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Meanwhile, Iraq—which genuinely matters—goes ignored. Make no mistake: Obama’s made Afghanistan the real “war of choice.”

Yet Afghanistan is worthless. Worthless. Repairing Afghan irrigation ditches has zero effect on al Qaeda’s will to win. Killing terrorists is the only thing that works. And there isn’t a single al Qaeda terrorist left in Afghanistan.

As for all those dire warnings that we mustn’t allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven again, that’s why we should maintain a compact, lethal force on the ground that backs our national interests—not a predatory Afghan government that’s turned out to be the Taliban’s best friend.

Instead, we’re squandering blood and treasure to prop up a fantastically corrupt government in Kabul that’s despised by the population. We’ve allowed the Taliban to dominate the information war by bowing to their exaggerated or fabricated claims—seconded by the unscrupulous Karzai government—about civilian casualties from our air attacks.

The Taliban wants to deny us the use of our airpower—and we fell for it. Unable to think beyond the last century’s counterinsurgency theories, McChrystal severely restricted air and indirect fire support to our troops.

I don’t usually like to base my posts off of editorials, but I’m finding the viewpoint that these two are advancing to be incredibly seductive.  Particularly because of a point that Peters makes elsewhere in his article about the nightmare of increased logistics that comes with more troops that would be at the mercy of Russian manipulation and Pakistani instability.

Obama campaigned on an Afghan surge and at the time, I agreed with him.  Unfortunately, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Afghanistan may not be worth “fixing” (how do you fix what never really worked?) and it may not even be possible to create anything resembling a real nation.  I really believe that it’s time we adopt a “less is more” strategy.