By Brigitte L. Nacos

Recently, when former Vice President Richard Cheney attacked President Barack Obama for “dithering” over a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he urged him to “do what it takes to win.”

The problem is that nobody can be sure “what it takes to win” in Afghanistan. Worse yet, nobody seems sure what “winning” and “succeeding” means in this context. Neutralizing Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders that hide in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas—not in Afghanistan? Installing a non-corrupt government in Kabul that wins over leaders in the fragmented country?

There are no encouraging answers as long as the U.S. and NATO are dealing President Hamid Karzai’s regime or a similarly unreliable and corrupt one and as long as the CIA continues to have Ahmed Karzai, the president's brother and a suspected player in the country’s booming opium trade, on its pay-roll as it has had since the beginning of the war eight years ago.

No wonder that Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent writes, “At this point, everything about the U.S. policy toward the Afghan drug trade — from tolerance to eradication during the Bush administration to an evolving approach to cultivating alternatives — now ought to be questioned….CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?”

And then there is the news that the defense bill President Obama signed into law this week contains the authorization to pay Taliban fighters to renounce and quit the insurgency.

The record on buying the support of Afghan war lords and their fighters did not work well at the beginning of the war shortly after 9/11. While open to the dollar bonanza at the time and seemingly helpful to American forces, when push came to shove the leading  Al-Qaeda and Taliban figures managed to flee into Pakistan—hardly without the assistance of some of those war lords.

On today’s “Morning Joe” show, Lawrence O’Donnell, an MSNBC analyst who is more knowledgeable and thoughtful than most of television’s talking heads, made a remarkably candid statement with respect to Afghanistan. “I don’t know what to do next,” he said. And O’Donnell, for sure, is familiar with the various options that President Obama and his national security advisers are considering.

Nobody, including General Stanley McCrystal who has requested at least 40,000 more U.S. troops and additional forces from European NATO allies, argues that military might alone has a chance to succeed in Afghanistan.  You may want to read the general’s 66-page, leaked memo on this count.

As Bob Woodward, who broke the memo story in the Washington Post, put it, “McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory. Most starkly, he says: "[I]nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced."

But as the Soviet’s learned in the 1990s, even a combination of stick and carrot—and mostly carrot—does not work in Afghanistan. As Victor Sebestyen writes in today’s New York Times, “Over the years, the Soviets changed their tactics frequently, but much of the time they were trying and failing to pacify the country’s problematic south and east, often conducting armed sweeps along the border with Pakistan, through which many of the guerrillas moved, as the Taliban do now.”

Matthew P. Hoh, an American military veteran who was the top civilian officer in Zabul Province, and recently resigned from his post, gave a bland and worrisome summary of America’s failing strategy in Afghanistan in his resignation letter. Most importantly, he wrote, “I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights on for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.” Furthermore, “The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. “

So, if the presence of military forces strengthens the insurgency, what are the other choices? Can anything be achieved without military force?

If you aren’t familiar with or don’t remember details from the fascinating book “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time,” take a few hours to read or reread the volume. I did a little while ago and was reminded this morning by Nicholas Kristoff of the accomplishments of one man’s incredible peace mission. As Kristoff writes in his column, "Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now build 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons)."

Not surprisingly, Kristoff argues, “instead of sending 40,000 troops more to Afghanistan, how about opening 40,000 schools?”

I know that many so-called realists consider such suggestions utopian and idealistic without utility in real life.

I actually think that that Vice President Biden’s position—no additional troops and a focus on fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban most of all in their strongholds in Pakistan on the one hand--and substantial financial support for initiatives to build schools and training facilities and roads and bridges rather than trying to buying Taliban fighters and drug lords on the other hand may be a more promising road than beefing up the military presence and thereby the pro-insurgency sentiments.  

Has President Barack Obama committed an unforgivable offense against gender equality by playing hoops with male members of the administration and congress only?

Two weeks after ABC News reported on an all-male game of basketball on the White House court and comedian Jay Leno enlisted Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services and a former college basketball player, to poke fun at the president for excluding women, the New York Times revisited the president’s alleged faux pas and its larger meaning in today’s edition.

According to reporter Mark Leibovich, the issue transcends that one particular all-male basketball game in that the “technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions.”

And not enough with Obama’s preference to play hoops with the guys, the Times mentions also that according to “Mark Knoller of CBS, the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women…”

Is it true or a figment of media hype that at a time of pressing foreign and domestic policy  problems and issues—just think Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, health care reform, economic woes, etc., etc.--, the people in the White House are concerned about this so-called gender issue?

In spite of Hillary Clinton at State, Valerie Jarrett as the closest Obama adviser in the White House, Sonia Sotomayor as pick to join the Supreme Court, and a number of influential women in White House and cabinet, were are told that Obama’s White House is a bastion of male power and according to the Times “rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities…” 

While I am not sure that female members of the administration and congress would want to play basketball with the guys, there are probably enough female golfers who would love to give the president and the guys a run for their money.

As I have pointed out repeatedly on this blog, the New York Times sports pages in particular reflect a gross gender bias against female athletes and their sports—including women’s professional golf and basketball. Moreover, last summer I commented,

One perceptive reader wondered, “Couldn't it just as much be a lack of popular interest (and thus lack of sponsorship) that causes the reporting gap?

Certainly, this comes down to the old chicken-or-egg causal dilemma and the question whether lack of media coverage depresses public interest in female athletes or lack of public interest discourages news coverage of women’s sports.

While both dynamics figure into plausible answers, there is no doubt that more extensive and more prominent coverage of women’s sport would stir more interest among the American public and corporate sponsors.   

P.S. Yesterday, Melody Barnes, chief domestic policy adviser in the White House, became the first woman who played a round of golf with President Obama in his group of four. 

Regrettably, the news media failed to examine claims by the anti-reform forces that Europe’s health care insurance system does not work. For starters, investigative reporting would have found that in European countries with mandatory health insurances private insurances exist and fare well side-by-side with public insurances. Furthermore, fact checking would have shown that contrary to the propaganda of fear the so-called “socialized medicine” systems are working very well for patients, physicians, and other health care providers.