I watched Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad give a speech and take questions today at the Johns Hopkins’ Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He is a good spokesman for his government. But he brought up something that has been troubling me for quite a while and that has become an acute concern now that Obama has decided to make an extra commitment in Afghanistan.

Ambassador Jawad mentioned that the Afghan Army was originally intended to be no larger than 32,000 troops because there is no way for such a poor country to pay for anything larger. It was later adjusted up to 79,000, and is now supposed to be something closer to 150,000. Now, his point was that we are making a better investment when we pay for a larger army and for their equipment than when we spend $1 million annually for each American or NATO troop. Obviously, with Afghanistan being larger geographically and more rugged than Iraq, an army of 32,000 is totally inadequate to secure the country. If we ever want to leave, we’re going to have to build a bigger Afghan Army. But, as he pointed out, they cannot even begin to pay for such a large force by themselves.

And, I think, unfortunately, this is where the issue of Afghanistan being a narco-state comes into play. With opium production being such a large part of the economy, it’s militarily crazy to allow all that money to be controlled by the enemy. Where is the government supposed to get the money to compete? When elements of the Karzai government (his brother, for example) have control of narcotics, they not only have money to throw around, but they deny that money to the insurgents. What do you think is going to happen under those circumstances?

Now, I am not a purist who thinks you can operate in a place like Afghanistan (as the indigenous government or as an expeditionary force) without getting your hands dirty. I understand that. But these are the kinds of choices we wind up making when we get ourselves so deeply involved and invested there. It’s one more reason why we need to question the true costs of what were trying to accomplish versus what we stand to get out of it.

When we talk about standing up a 150,000 strong Afghan Army, and we know that they can’t afford such a large force, then we’re pretty much guaranteeing that they will rely on revenue from narcotics, especially when our level of aid tapers off later on down the road. We talk about how corrupt the Karzai government is, but we don’t really think about why.

In my opinion, we’re going about this the wrong way. Rather than training up a huge force with modern weapons and conventional tactics, we should focus on creating a force that is light and nimble, like the guerilla forces they are facing. Above all, it should be able to arm and feed itself with little outside assistance. Yes, they need heavy artillery and helicopters, but not much more.

But, really, I just question whether we can do what we want to do at an acceptable cost and in a reasonable time. We’re going to try, and I don’t see the effort as immoral. But if they had asked me, I would have advised against it. I would have advised some strategy that would be affordable for the Afghan government with little outside financial assistance. If we had been smarter in the beginning, maybe we would have had time to help build a government with the capability to raise sufficient revenues to compete with a narco-funded army instead of being one itself. I think that it is now too late.

In spite of all this, if we are going to make the effort, I hope we are successful in both rolling back the gains of the insurgency and being able to bring our troops home beginning in July 2011. But, as Ambassador Jawad said today, their own plan calls for them to be 100% capable of protecting their own security in five years. I’ll believe that when I see it.