i nheriting a b ad h and 333force based in Afghanistan had infl icted a severe toll on Taliban and
al-Qaeda leadership. ( Th is has continued, culminating in the killing of
Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on April 30, 2011.) Yet decapitation strikes
alone have never stopped an insurgency, and they depend on excellent
information from the local population that in turn requires a signifi cant
military presence on the ground. Collateral civilian losses from mis-
aimed attacks also have infl amed both Afghan and Pakistani hostility
toward the United States, helping recruit new insurgents.
Th e operational alternative, counterinsurgency, had come back into
fashion, but presumed conditions that did not exist in Afghanistan.
During Petraeus’s command tenure in Iraq, COIN methods had con-
tributed to lessened violence. Much of the gain, though, was due to the
Anbar Awakening that saw Iraqi Sunnis reach out to the occupying
Americans as allies against the foreign jihadists. In Afghanistan, as
McKiernan had reported and Petraeus later conceded, nothing
suggested that the Taliban was open to political reconciliation.
Numbers and the political clock also worked against the prospects for
eff ective counterinsurgency. Even COIN advocates admitted that a suc-
cessful counterinsurgency campaign requires a much greater density of
troops in relation to the population than the United States could
achieve in Afghanistan and far more time than the American public
would tolerate. Th e cost would also be prohibitive, perhaps $1 trillion
for ten years, as much as the president’s health care initiative. What
might have been done with a larger U.S.-NATO presence in 2002 or
even 2005 could not be accomplished after 2009. At best, counterinsur-
gency might, by improving population security in key areas of Taliban
infl uence, create an opening in which the Kabul government could
demonstrate improved effectiveness, and some insurgents could be
enticed to lay down their arms.
Diplomatic obstacles that had hampered the war eff ort under Bush
continued to vex the Obama administration, rendering both counterter-
rorism and COIN unworkable. The Karzai government ignored
repeated American pleas to fi ght corruption among its own offi cial ranks
and to improve governance for the Afghan people. So long as the regime
failed to generate economic development in impoverished rural regions,
discontent would swell the ranks of the Taliban. Afghans also turned to
its shadow institutions for protection, to resolve disputes, for permission