The Rule of Holes

The NYT’s Alissa Rubin wrote a story this week about the US withdrawal from Korengal Outpost in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, after four years fighting and hundreds of US casualties. This story made me think of the old rule of holes; remember? “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

“Closing Korangal Outpost in Kunar Province, a powerful symbol of some of the Afghan war’s most ferocious fights, and a potential harbinger of America’s retreat, is a tacit admission that putting the base there in the first place was a costly mistake.

“There were never enough soldiers to crush the insurgency, and after four years, it became clear that there was not much worth winning in this sparsely populated valley.

“Fighting for isolated mountain valleys like this one, even if they are hide-outs for clusters of Taliban, was no longer sustainable. It did more to spawn insurgents than defeat them.

““There’s never a perfect answer,” General McChrystal said as he visited this outpost on April 8 for a briefing as the withdrawal began. “I care deeply about everybody who has been hurt here, but I can’t do anything about it. I can do something about people who might be hurt in the future.”

-As far as Ben Franklin was right in saying that “there is no good war or bad peace;” I wonder how many other no-win situations we might extract ourselves from.