One liner thoughts ("[Obama] is worried that someone won’t read [the terrorists] their rights.”) do not an intelligent policy make. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, as in the USA all over, what is needed is intelligence to blossom, not the ability to not read moose their rights. Ms. Palin seems eminently qualified for more of the same, shooting innocent creatures, and the American people should ponder seriously whether that is what they want again.
This being said, total withdrawal in Iraq within sixteen month is not a solution. And I don't think that Obama is advocating it anymore. It's not much more of a solution than total French withdrawal from, say, Ivory Coast. Civilization cannot just withdraw here, there and everywhere, until it surrenders from the last corner. What needs to be done is a careful maneuver of getting United Nations' approval and military replacement of most of the US force by UN forces, ASAP.
It's true that the Sunnis, or the Kurds, will need help against the Shiah majority for years to come, and that one needs to insure that Sunni Muslim Fundamentalism (aka Al Qaeda) does not come back to provide it again. The Shiah are backed up by a powerful Iran. Iran (population not far from 70 millions, mostly young and many indoctrinated and ready to fight) at some point grabbed the Caliphate, and established it in Baghdad (750 CE). Memories are long in the region, one can expect Iran to keep on pushing. So UN troops should be there to provide the Sunni tribes with help instead of al Qaeda (recruiting UN soldiers in poor Muslim countries should be easy). The US could withdraw to remote high tech bases to provide the UN with ultimate backbone (France is opening a military basis in the United Arab Emirates, with advanced supersonic interceptors; the US could do more of the same in the area).
Now as far as Afghanistan is concerned, the way is indeed to help massively the locals who think basically in a way compatible with civilization. Reward those financially, encourage education, and boost the Afghan army.
The French did this in Senegal during the initial conquest, using 5,000 local soldiers led by a handful of French officers. In the early twentieth century, though, the French stumbled for a while. After fighting a local Muslim prophet, and caging him in Madagascar, they were going nowhere nice. Finally, though, they thought better of it, brought the prophet back, helped him, and he helped them, and France ended up decorating him in the most prestigious way. This is important: the resulting Senegalese Islam is FULLY Western compatible, and is now actually an alternative to Saudi Wahhabism, and its popularity is growing in Western Africa (thus barring Al Qaeda).
By contrast the French mishandled Islam in Algeria (they could have tweaked it and used it in the service of democracy, instead they mostly ignored it).
In the last two decades, fanatical and illegal Wahhabist preachers sent from Saudi Arabia with Saudi money wrought havoc in France (and, much worse, caused a huge war in Algeria, with more than 100,000 killed). French authorities, and in particular Sarkozy, have finally opted for a strategy of promotion of an "Islam de France", fully compatible with the republic. After all, making an Abrahamic religion compatible with the republic was done before, with Judeo-Christianism. If one allowed these two Middle-East superstitions, why not a third? Support means control, of course. After all, the civilization of Al Andalous at its best was resplendent precisely because it was tolerant of all variants of Judeo-Christo-Islamism.
By the way, the official production of opiates for pharmaceutical usage, although saturated in its present very restricted markets, could be extended worldwide to provide the gravely, or terminally ill with comfort. Integrating this in the Afghan economy would solve short term Afghanistan economic problems, and would do wonders with the popularity of the West. In first order, the problem in Afghanistan is not military, so the first order solution should not be military. Unfortunately, as it is, the effort of the West is primarily military, thus destined to fail.
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Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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