Common sense out of the Pentagon? Who would have thought that? Why did no one listen?

It's good to know that there's an official US government report that documents what so many us felt had to be true - that US policies were causing terrorism and not rooting it out.

I'd never heard of this report before - presumably it was disappeared because it was not what the government wanted to hear?

...if a bunch of guys who worked for Rumsfeld could write such a report.

Seriously. Think about that for a second. Donald Rumsfeld is signing your checks. You know what he wants to hear. But you end up writing this report anyway. Either the authors are the most honest and upright guys ever to serve on a government commission, or there was simply absolutely no way to avoid about the conclusions they drew.

Let us "hope" that Mr. Obama doesn't consider himself a modern day Jimi Hendrix who can handle this feedback with panache.

Stop feeding the hatred.

I find it very surprising that Rumsfeld allowed this report to become public, but I find it even more surprising that we don't find members of the usual neocon moron parade (eg Michael O'Hanlon, et al) packing the membership of the working group that put the report together. Here is the list of participants in the study, from page 99:

Chairman

Mr. Vince Vitto C.S. Draper Laboratory

Executive Secretary

Mr. Mark Ellis OUSD

Members

Dr. Anita Jones University of Virginia

Mr. Bran Ferren Applied Minds, Inc.

Mr. Bruce Gregory George Washington University

Mr. Dan Kuehl National Defense University

Dr. Joe Markowitz Consultant

Mr. David Morey DMG, Inc.

Mr. Robert Nesbit The Mitre Corporation

Dr. Michael Vlahos Johns Hopkins University

Government Advisors

Mr. Joel Fischman Department of State

Mr. David Jakubek DDR&E

Mr. Chris Lamb National Defense University

Mr. John Matheny Department of Defense SO/LIC

Mr. Lloyd Neighbors Department of State

Mr. William Parker Department of State

Mr. Robert Reilly Department of Defense

On first scan, I didn't recognize a single name on the list, including the gummint members of the group. Why wasn't Wolfowitz or Dougie Feith in the group?

Only one conclusion comes to mind--Rumsfeld intended to bury and ignore this report from the start, so it was okay to pack the group with competent, lesser-known experts who could analyze the situation without the baggage of a pre-set political orientation.

the Democratic party has a major purge. The whole upper echelon of the party is riddled with chickenhawks who spent years cynically pimping the Afghan war as the CENTRAL FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM, Barack Obama being one of the worst offenders. Until this element is drastically pared down the war will grind on. Use Accountability Now to threaten the worst chickenhawks with primaries. If you can't remove them, you can at least scare them.

Bear with me.

There seem to be two conflicting schools of thought around the terrorism argument for staying or leaving Afghanistan.

There's your argument, presented here, saying that our presence in places like Afghanistan inflames opinion against us.

Then there's the conventional wisdom argument that leaving Afghanistan in will hand the Islamic extremists a victory (you know, it will "embolden" them). I heard Zalmay Khalilzad go through it recently, and from someone with his credentials, it is persuasive.

And honestly, the two sides carrying these two arguments seem forever to talk at cross-purposes and past each other, because I think both sides carry a valid point. The way I see through it is to use a model favored by Francis Fukuyama, where he describes Islamic extremism and its influence in a concentric pattern.

(From the embedded file below, see page 93 for a full description.)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18658888/Fukuyama-Francis-America-at-the-Crossroads-Democracy-Power-And-the-Neoconservative-Legacy-Yale-University-Press-2006

The inner core of extremists, per the Fukuyama model, are the people that Khalilzad et al are focused on. Greenwald et al I think are looking at the outer rings of people drawn to extremism, but probably many of whom are capable of being drawn away.

So to use a clever sounding military phrase, where is the "center of gravity" in the battle against terrorism? If you think it is the hard core, you are going to want to stay in Afghanistan; if you think it is the broader Muslim population, and they are less apt to be swayed to extremism without our being in Afghanistan (something supported by pretty strong evidence), then you advocate the other way.

So the question is, how do you persuade the Khalilzad's of this world that our strategy should not be focused on the hard core? I don't know for sure, but I do think that when the argument is for a tactical change - to win hearts and minds, of course - then it's worth pointing out that leaving might be as good a way as any to win hearts and minds.

But I'm pretty sure however that if you just say - "look, our presence in these Muslim nations is counterproductive, here's the evidence", a lot of people still look at you like you are talking a different language. Fukuyama's model is quite helpful in bridging the divide.

In a post about messy comparisons between Viet Nam and Afghanistan at Digby's yesterday commenter johnsturgeon (@ 10:29) had a lengthy rebuttal to those who find the discussion a waste of time. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/song-remains-same-by-digby-i-generally.html Worth the time to read his 29 points making a strong case that our "Best and Brightest" are willfully ignorant of failed military strategies or stupid. I'll go for ignorance believing that the generals, having over the years convinced Congress to shovel tons of money their way, need to try out those fancy weapons on the battlefield. Sturgeon's ending says much:

The overwhelming set of evidence about American behavior and choices in both sets of conflicts exhaustively detail a common set of mistakes, choices and local conditions/national contexts. To point to differences isn't just to split hairs, it's to split the hairs on the back of a red herring. Sure, it's a hairy red herring, but you get the point if I have to bean you with a mackerel.

But Yglesias' announcement that 'I'm really not sure there's anything to learn from Vietnam' is just beyond the pale. It's plainly obscene. Sure, from the rotted heart of an empire in decline, he can say what he likes. But that does not make it so.

Right now, somewhere in Afghanistan there are a few 9-year-old children in the crosshairs of a Predator drone, just as a few children once crouched in a ditch just outside of My Lai.

And Matt Yglesias sits down to blog. ul>

It's time for Democrats to start calling out their own.

The Secretary of State still refuses responsibility for her Iraq vote. Now she is in lockstep with Gates on AfPak buildup.

Why are Democrats and Eurotrash like Bono praising her rather than demanding an explanation?

So to use a clever sounding military phrase, where is the "center of gravity" in the battle against terrorism? If you think it is the hard core, you are going to want to stay in Afghanistan

Even leaving aside the fact that this "hard core" isn't in Afghanistan, how does staying in Afghanistan address the problem of this hard core? By killing them? Isn't the obvious lesson of the last 8 years that you can keep killing them, but the more war you wage, the more replacements you create for them?

Also, the whole point of the Report is that nothing helps the "hard core" more than creating sympathy for their propaganda and arguments among Muslims generally.