Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

LOGISTICALLY, America is holding back the Taliban with only auxiliary help from Europe. And that, for now, is the limit of U.S. ambition. The strategy is to pin the insurgency back to a few areas, hoping to buy enough time for some kind of indigenous political process to set down roots in the rest of the country. …
Progress, however incremental, has been made in restoring basic civil rights to ordinary Afghans.
But there are signs that the limits of liberalization have been reached. To shore up his position ahead of elections later this year, President Hamid Karzai recently backed a law giving men of the country’s Shia minority total dominion over their wives, legalizing child marriage, rape and incarceration inside the home. Even if, as seems likely, pressure from NATO leaders forces Mr. Karzai to withdraw the law, questions remain over whether or not he can be trusted to uphold the country’s post-Taliban constitution. …
The west cannot support civil rights in Afghanistan without local support. But by definition the Afghans whose rights are most under threat are those who are least able to show support for the occupation. Yet they would be betrayed if NATO lost the will to fight on and the country descended into chaos.
So Mr. Obama is right that the war must continue. But NATO must be clear that it is fighting to uphold the constitutional order of Afghanistan, not just whoever happens to oppose the Taliban at any moment. As long as a stable political process under that constitution remains a credible aspiration, alongside anti-terror operations, NATO has the chance to maintain legitimacy for its occupation. But once it is perceived to be backing just one set of oppressors against another, its mandate is effectively over.