Graveyard of Empires

A Rudyard Kipling poem commemorated the 1880 Battle of Maiwand in which the Afghan followers of Ayub Khan defeated a British/Indian brigade during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The poem:

"There was thirty dead an' wounded on the ground we wouldn't keep -
No, there wasn't more than twenty when the front began to go;
But, Christ! along the line o' flight they cut us up like sheep,
An' that was all we gained by doing so.
I 'eard the knives be'ind me, but I dursn't face my man,
Nor I don't know where I went to, 'cause I didn't 'alt to see,
Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as 'e ran,
An' I thought I knew the voice an' - it was me!
We was 'idin' under bedsteads more than 'arf a march away;
We was lyin' up like rabbits all about the countryside;
An' the major cursed 'is Maker 'cause 'e lived to see that day'
An' the colonel broke 'is sword acrost, an' cried."

Today a NATO airstrike in northern Afghanistan killed more than 80 civilians and Taliban fighters.

Also, today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Can the U.S. Lead Afghans?", Mark Moyar, a professor of national security affairs at the United States Marine Corps University, recommends command of Afghani units by U.S. officers. My response:

"In addition to fighting poorly, badly led troops usually alienate the population by misbehaving and they often desert or defect."

With all due respect to Mr. Moyar, he is mistaken: badly led troops will not alienate the population by misbehaving and desert or defect unless they lack an ideology shared with the population and its government and are devoid of motivation.

As such, the question is not "Can the U.S. Lead Afghans?", but rather "Can Afghans Be Led?" It is not a matter of crunching indigenous troop numbers, but rather determining whether indigenous troops have any willingness or reason to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Mr. Moyar contends that Afghan troops should be placed under American commanders and cites the example of Vietnam. However, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War precisely because a better equipped South Vietnamese Army with air support could not contend with better motivated Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars.

How does the U.S. come out on top in Afghanistan? Bin Laden must be run to ground and al-Qaeda must be prevented from reestablishing residence in Afghanistan, but is this best achieved by way of a massive U.S. ground presence in this country?