Tales from the Trail

Disengaging from Afghanistan is the option President Barack Obama is the least likely to adopt as he closes in on a new strategy in the eight-year war he calls one of “necessity.”

But on Thursday, at one of the countless policy conferences in Washington to discuss the president’s choices, some experts suggested withdrawal was the best route — and they said it would not necessarily impact efforts to fight al Qaeda.

Harvard University’s Stephen Walt called the argument for disengagement “fairly compelling,” while conceding it was not the most popular.

His tally of the costs: $225 billion since the Sept. 11 attacks, with more than 850 U.S. soldiers killed and thousands wounded.

“The costs are going to be large at a time when the American economy is not exactly robust,” he told the Capitol Hill conference organized by the Rand Corporation.

On Monday, the State Department sent out its no. 2 official to tout how it was managing to get U.S. civilians out into the field in Afghanistan, with nearly 1,000 expected to be in place by year-end.

A day later, it was in damage control mode after the resignation of one of its star employees was plastered on the front page of The Washington Post and on the Internet.

In an emotionally-charged four-page letter dated September 10, Matthew Hoh said he was quitting because he had lost confidence in the war effort and whether it was worth the blood spilled there.

A war of words over U.S. policy on Afghanistan is heating up between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill as they await President Barack Obama's new strategy.

"This kind of partisanship in the middle of a war I find to be really out of place," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, said.

He was responding to House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner's statement that "the current political uncertainty should not be used as a pretext for the White House to back away from the counter-insurgency strategy the president announced in March."