First blush...

...on The Asia Foundation's 2008 Afghan opinion poll, the most comprehensive out there: the numbers are encouraging, the trends aren't.

This chart is one example of that.



Two points for the "Support our troops - bring them home!" crowd:

• The security situation is both the main reason respondents give for saying the country is moving in the right direction and the main concern for those who say the country is moving in the wrong direction. The proportion of respondents who cite insecurity as a reason for pessimism has increased by one-fourth in the past year.


• The biggest problems faced by Afghanistan as a whole are identified as security (36%), economic issues including unemployment (31%), high prices (22%), poor economy (17%), and corruption (14%).

Note that the average Afghan's biggest concern is security. Security requires troops on the ground. That means a mix of troops from NATO and our allies in the country, and from Afghanistan. The mix changes towards more of an Afghan face as the ANSF get trained up. Guess who does the training? That's right, our troops (OMLT and POMLT teams)!

Note also that the most concerning issues to Afghans after security revolve around economics. What drives the economic recovery? Well, security is one big factor - you can't trade if your stuff gets stolen or blown up and your people get killed. Our development initiatives are largely economic stimulants on either a long-term (education, legal reform, governance, etc) or a short-term (infrastructure, employment projects, micro-loans, etc) basis. But development doesn't happen without security either.

So those who would yank our soldiers out of Afghanistan yesterday need to understand that their preferred course of action would not only go against the expressed will of the Afghan people, it would unleash the forces of chaos and repression that would trigger what the Afghans fear most.

In other words, it would be a recipe for disaster - precisely the wrong course of action.