Maybe it’s only because of the holiday weekend (Happy Birthday Abe! You too, George!), but this front-page article from Saturday’s Wall Street Journal has caused curiously little comment. It reveals that the U.S. is developing plans to cut the Afghan Security Forces from 352,000 men today to just 230,000 in 2014 in order to save a few billion dollars in a federal budget of almost $4 trillion. The Afghan Security Forces budget, almost all of it paid for by the U.S., is currently more than $11 billion; the administration would like to reduce that figure to $4.1 billion. While the administration’s desire for cost savings is admirable (were that it extended to domestic programs!), the consequences of this decision, if it’s finalized, are likely to be “catastrophic,” as Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak warns.

Keep in mind the Obama administration is also rapidly cutting the number of U.S. troops–32,000 will be withdrawn by September, faster than commanders had recommended. That will leave 68,000 U.S. troops barring further cuts–but more such cuts are likely. The administration appears determined to withdraw all or almost all of the troops by 2014. That places a great burden on the Afghan Security Forces which are still in the process of being stood up. The current figure, of roughly 352,000, is the minimum necessary to police a country of 30 million; Afghanistan would actually be more secure if it had a force the size of the one in Iraq, where the security forces are over 600,0000.

To then cut the already barely adequate number of troops and police will make it essentially impossible for the Afghan government to control its own territory barring some miraculous decision by the Taliban and Haqqani Network to discontinue their war. But why should they stop fighting when they know that in a few years most U.S. troops will be withdrawn and the Afghan Security Forces will downsize as well?

Moreover, the fighting quality and morale of the remaining Afghan forces, after what is essentially their abandonment by the West, is to be highly doubted. Add in the fact that under this plan the government of Afghanistan will have to lay off 130,000 trained security personnel. Where will they find employment in an economy that is already in rapid decline because of the loss of foreign aid? Many, it seems safe to surmise, may join the other side.

In short, Minister Wardak is not being hyperbolic in warning of catastrophe. Does anyone in Washington notice or care? The answer seems to be no. The political class, led by the president, is so bent on withdrawing from Afghanistan and reducing defense spending that no one seems to be particularly exercised by the fact that this could result in the collapse of all that U.S. troops have fought so hard to accomplish during the past decade, at such great cost to life and limb. I doubt that Lincoln and Washington, who persevered through far costlier and more politically divisive conflicts, would have approved.