Just like the 2006 Congress hasn't gone anywhere. All of which means we have certain systemic rigidities that are difficult to overcome. And, we have a media that seems both utterly unwilling, and utterly incapable, of reporting what is under their very noses. We'd best forget, then, any ability the media might have to untangle the threads of their own deception, never mind the deception of others. I guess that's job security for bloggers, and homework assignments for blog writers and readers with respect to original source material.

Is this a war? Is this nation building? Is COIN a strategy for one but not the other, or is it the underwriter's laboratory tested approach for both? Give how little territory we actually control in Afghanistan, can we even call it an occupation? Or, have we simply invaded, and like a weak virus we're giving the insurgency a case of gastric distress that won't kill it, but just give it a hell of a stomach ache instead?

Stephen Biddle's testimony to Congress (09.16.09) [1] argues there are two national security premises for our continued presence in Afghanistan. He suggests that the case for preventing Afghanistan for becoming a base for terrorism against the US is the weakest. Of course, that's the premise that's splashed all over the media to keep the populace uneasy and compliant, and vomited up on cue by your trolls.

Biddle's argument for persisting hinges on what he argues is the stronger case; preventing chaos in Afghanistan from destabilizing further an already unstable Pakistan. Pakistan, as we know has nukes. As does its neighbor India. So, our deeper concern seems to be the insurgency within Pakistan that is allied with al Qaeda, and Biddle suggests that Pakistan isn't doing so well in terms of dealing with that insurgency. So, the question, in my mind, really boils down to, if not intervention in Afghanistan, then what are the other alternatives for dealing with the insurgency in Pakistan? That, as I understand it, is the "war" angle.

[1] http://www.cfr.org/publication/20220/

The nation building angle (the Bonn Agreement [2]) seems equally difficult to achieve given that the recent elections are reportedly shot through with fraud. If McChrystal is intent on Giv[ing] the population material reasons to support the Afghan government and NATO. [3], he has a real problem on his hands if the government's very legitimacy is an openly acknowledged question.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn_Agreement_%28Afghanistan%29
[3] http://washingtonindependent.com/60293/its-not-just-resources-mcchrystals-message-to-obama-and-to-the-military

It's not hard to get caught up in the mare's nest, best expressed by Rory Stewart of the London Review of Books [4], where the war angle and the nation building angle seem to intersect and become entangled.

Policymakers perceive Afghanistan through the categories of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, state-building and economic development. These categories are so closely linked that you can put them in almost any sequence or combination. You need to defeat the Taliban to build a state and you need to build a state to defeat the Taliban. There cannot be security without development, or development without security. If you have the Taliban you have terrorists, if you don’t have development you have terrorists, and as Obama informed the New Yorker, ‘If you have ungoverned spaces, they become havens for terrorists.’

[4] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n13/stew01_.html

There is actually much overlap between Stewart and Biddle as I read their two pieces side by side. I get no sense of surety from Biddle although he concludes that persisting is still defensible. I prefer Stewart's position which angles away from either the war and/or nation building positions, and can't hep but wonder if such a long term strategy might not accomplish some of the same objectives, albeit more slowly, over a longer trajectory,

A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the more negative.

Either way, I agree with Biddle, ...there is no easy way out of Afghanistan for the United States in 2009.

re: Wgsalter

I sincerely doubt wg "forgot" to answer them. I suspect it's more likely that wg is hoping you forgot you asked them. Well, heh™ (Shooter242) to all that. ;-)

I've been gone for three days and wg hasn't advanced his/her argument yet? Might be a clue that s/he doesn't have one.

Arne, I suspect Shooter242 and Elephantman, perhaps, find the current crop of trolls embarrassing.

I say, Old Chap, nicely done.

Could_Not_Agree_More.

btw: not Conservationism, but Conservatism

Teach me to type without benefit of my bifocals. :-/