I was away this weekend, so I only just got around to reading The Weekly Standard’s cover story on Afghanistan by Max Boot, Frederick Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan. It’s a textured and important essay, in part because it is contrary to so much of the media coverage of Afghanistan.

Boot and the Kagans spent eight days in Afghanistan. “What we found,” they write, “is a situation that is cause for concern but far short of catastrophe — and one that is likely to improve before long.” Among their findings are that much of the north, center, and west remains relatively secure; the capital, Kabul, is remarkably peaceful; and impressive progress is being made in Jalalabad, a city of perhaps 400,000 in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province. The Afghan National Army (ANA), which consists of 80,000 soldiers, is among the most trusted indigenous institutions in the country, ethnically balanced, and has performed well and bravely. In addition, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have very little popular support among the people of Afghanistan. “Sunni and Shiite insurgents in Iraq enjoyed far higher levels of popular support in their respective communities at the height of the violence,” Boot and the Kagans write.

At the same time, we face significant problems in Afghanistan, including the area located along the long, mountainous eastern border with Pakistan, which provides safe haven to a variety of militant Islamic groups. Officers and commanders speak about an insurgent “syndicate,” comprised of nine different groups, from al-Qaeda (whose stronghold is located in Pakistan and who does not play a leading role in Afghanistan) to a complex, multifaceted insurgency that includes but is not exclusive to the Taliban. According to the authors, these insurgent groups:

are concentrating attacks on coalition and Afghan security forces in the countryside, hoping to drive them into the major cities and besiege them there. Eventually they hope to inflict enough pain on the coalition to force public opinion in Europe and North America to demand a withdrawal. Once the coalition is gone, they figure the government of Afghanistan will fall like rotten fruit.

Commanders on the ground, we learn, are confident they will be able to beat back the insurgency with the additional U.S. troops now flowing in (there are 38,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan; they will be joined by 17,000 more this summer, thanks to the authorization by President Obama). In addition, there will be a major increase in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets and a doubling of rotary airpower. “This represents a significant change in the correlation of forces on the battlefield,” according to the authors, “and coalition commanders expect that it will allow them to take the fight to the enemy in ways that were impossible before.”

In terms of what needs to be done, the authors argue that (a) we need to go beyond our current goal of building a 134,000-man ANA by the end of 2011; (b) government corruption needs to be dealt with; (c) NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) needs to take on the corrosive drug trade, which is funding the insurgency and undermining the legitimacy of the Afghan government (going after the drug trade is beyond the ISAF’s current mandate); (d) we need to promote better governance and economic and social development; and (e) order needs to be imposed on our currently schizophrenic command-and-control arrangements (the current international coalition command structure is unwieldy and often ineffective). In short, we need to pursue a full-spectrum counterinsurgency strategy.

The essay also directly refutes a popular argument about Afghanistan: Those who say that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan without fixing Pakistan have it backwards. We cannot begin to improve the situation in Pakistan without improving Afghanistan, and it is possible to do that no matter what happens in Pakistan because, for all the cross-border support it receives, the Afghan insurgency remains largely homegrown.

“Even under the best of circumstances,” Boot and the Kagans add, “the coalition will face a long, difficult fight in Afghanistan. But it is hardly a mission impossible. It is not even as difficult as the war in Iraq, where the insurgents were better organized and more deadly. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that bringing a measure of stability to Afghanistan will require considerable expenditure of blood and treasure over a number of years. Is it worth it?”

The authors argue that it absolutely is, since a victory for the insurgents in Afghanistan would have horrible consequences, from providing a major morale boost to militant Islamic groups, to dealing a devastating blow to American credibility, to allowing Islamists a major terrorist base camp, to significantly undermining the government in Pakistan. “It is fully in the power of coalition forces to prevent that dire outcome,” the authors conclude, “but only if they have the popular support back home to finish what we started in 2001.”

Iraq and Afghanistan are very different countries, and our approach to the Afghan war needs to take into account the circumstances that are unique to that nation. General Petraeus and our other commanders understand that. But the two wars are similar in that a defeat in either one would have terrible, radiating effects, both geopolitically and morally.

Fortunately the gathering pessimism about Afghanistan isn’t nearly what it was at the low point of the Iraq war. But one can sense a weariness and fatigue among many people, including commentators and pundits who would have given up on Iraq. It turns out there are many more people eager to champion wars at the outset than there are people willing to see those wars to a successful outcome. A successful outcome is what we must attain — and the good news is that such an outcome is achievable. But it will be a long, hard, and very tough endeavor, requiring the right strategy and dedication of will and purpose. That is almost always the case in war, of course. And as in past wars, in this instance we really have no other responsible choice — and a great nation wouldn’t opt for one even if we did.