All deliberate speed

President Obama flew in secret today to Kabul, where he signed with President Karzai the strategic partnership agreement that will govern the bilateral relationship with the United States after security responsibility is turned over to the Afghans by the end of 2014.  At best, this agreement marks the final, peacebuilding phase after the longest war in American history.

The President’s speech will be given at 4 am local time, which means it isn’t intended for Afghans.  The target is the American electorate, tired of the war and focused on domestic problems.  It will be hard to make Afghanistan resonate with his fellow countrymen, but he will try.

The agreement, I imagine he will say, is the responsible way to end a war that America undertook in self defense against Al Qaeda and the Taliban authorities who sheltered it.  We have succeeded.  But Afghanistan will need our help and support for long into the future:  it is a poor country that has sacrificed a great deal and will need our continued help to keep extremists at bay even after its security forces take on the primary responsibility.

I am an Obamista, but even to me this is not the full story.  The price tag for the help we provide Afghanistan will be billions per year for the foreseeable future.  Leaving aside the questions of how many U.S. troops will stay and the capacity (or lack thereof) of the Afghan security forces, there are still has a lot of wrinkles that need ironing out:  Pakistan’s refusal to deal Al Qaeda a death blow or to rein in the Taliban, the so far inconclusive negotiations with them, growing Taliban influence in some areas, the corruption that is rife in Karzai’s government, the failure to create anything like decent governance in most of Afghanistan, the shaky economic foundations on which the Afghan government sits, the role of Iran in Afghanistan, and whether some U.S. troops will stay longer than currently planned.

We are not so much getting out of Afghanistan victoriously as getting out before it all flies apart.  Don’t get me wrong:  I wouldn’t want us to stay, and I’ve said it is time to go, without however destabilizing the situation.  We cannot and should not stay to iron out all the wrinkles, but we should at least be aware that they are there and may cause difficulty in the future.

Mitt Romney, John McCain and others will complain that we are not doing enough–that we should stay in Afghanistan until we’ve ensured that things will not come apart, or the Taliban back to power.  But if they think that is likely to be a view popular with the American electorate, they are fooling themselves.  By a wide margin, Americans want out of Afghanistan to take care of priorities at home.

I’ll be happily surprised if ten years from now we’ll be proud of what Afghanistan has become.  But move we must, with what the Supreme Court famously called “all deliberate speed.”

PS:  I haven’t seen the agreement yet, but here is a White House fact sheet.