Pulling the Afghan Rug

   What to do about Afghanistan has been a burning question for Western powers nearly 150 years. Britain could not pacify the country in the 19th Century, the Russians could not do it in the 20th Century, and the U.S. has been trying for the past 17 years to get the warring tribes to settle down.
   Now the president will tell the nation on Monday evening what he plans to do about American involvement in that country.
   Several policy options come to mind.
   -- Maintain troop strength as it is, and hope Afghan allies can bring peace to that country.
   -- Increase U.S. forces and risk rising opposition from local tribes.
   -- Withdraw entirely.
   -- Reassign the task of pacifying Afghanistan to mercenaries.

   None of the above options seem politically or diplomatically palatable, and each would result in more waste of resources, both fiscal and human.
   The U.S. military has been unable to bring about a victory or even a settlement, so that makes option one risky.
   Option two would likely be unpopular at home.
   Option three would be, to the current president, an admission of failure.
   That leaves option four, which has been discussed at the White House and was touched on in this space several days ago. But would contracting the job to mercenaries, especially to a group headed by a close friend and ally of the president, be acceptable to the American public?
   On Saturday, we speculated that privatizing the war in Afghanistan would involve awarding the contract to Eric Prince, who had been head of the Blackwater firm, which supplied mercenaries to assist U.S. troops in Iraq. Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
   Meanwhile, the president faces other pressing issues, such as preparing and submitting a new national budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. At the same time, the nation faces a potential crisis as government spending nears the debt ceiling of $19.8 trillion. Shrewd maneuvering by government monitors has forestalled that problem for several months, but if the debt ceiling is not raised, and soon, the government may be forced to shut down, for either or both of those reasons.
   In addition, there is the raft of problems this president faces domestically, as violent extremists take to the streets and the president finds excuses for their behavior.
   Finally, could it be that the president is choosing Monday night to distract the nation from the experience of a solar eclipse and refocus its attention to himself?