In a response to your Sept 24 blog, a reader sighed: 'COIN as operational art has to be continually reinvented'.

How true! Will anyone ever learn this most basic law? If it worked yesterday, it won't work today, because the other guy also took note of how that encounter worked out. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Mr. Biden has shown himself to be an honorable person able to think for himself, whereas you disband old loyalty to realists like the honorable Mr. Stephen Walt, when you in this typical journalist fashion switches side now to support an interventionist idealistic intervention in south East Asia. A journalist can report anything, he can describe anything - that is what he does. That is his trade. But for him to issue any deep understanding or sovereign own thought -that is rare - whereas all of them steals with arms and legs everything that others have written.

You had some good punch-lines on CNN and other places when you vehemently critised the Iraq war, but this defense of the Afghan Campaign is just pathetic.

When is the last time Joe Biden was right about anything? Well he was dead-on about Iraq. Prior to the invasion he predicted the breakdown of ethnic religious groups leading to civil war. NOBODY ELSE saw THAT coming, did they? The guy does his homework. Give him a break.

Here's a journalist who can think for himself.

THE INDEPENDENT, 11 October 2009: Robert Fisk: Obama, man of peace? No, just a Nobel prize of a mistake

by Robert Fisk

Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America had to fight – not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush rashly invaded. He'd forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even announced that Pakistan was now America's war, too. The White House produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa'ida? Or yield to General Stanley McChrystal's Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite each other, Mr Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his battledress. The rabbit and the hare.

No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it's also true. The Afghan government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords – paid by Karzai and the Americans – ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan civilians. But it's much bigger than this.

The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any idea why? Does he realise that Washington's decision to support India against Pakistan over Kashmir – symbolised by his appointment of Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit to discuss divided Kashmir – enraged Pakistan. He may want India to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan's military intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act fairly over Kashmir – recognising Pakistan's claims as well as India's – is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir, no security for US troops – or the Indian embassy – in Afghanistan.

Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks, the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart" of Israel if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians – who understand the West much better than we understand them – have another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack, they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I'm told, to target instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before their Israeli masters.

For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not to strike at Iran. And why Israel's leaders – including Mr Netanyahu – were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is Mr Obama more frightened of Iran's retaliation? Or of its nuclear capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel's possible aggression against Iran?

I supported Kerry in 2004, but with real reservations about the 1991 vote - which most other Dems including Biden opposed.

Just what did they expect Saddam Hussein to respond to after engulfing Kuwait and making ominous moves towards Saudi Arabia?

Opposing the "bush doctrine" shouldn't meaning opposing any use of military power - and hopefully Obama understands this.

His idea of fighting an insurgency entirely with remote-controlled planes was pretty dumb, but as far as vice presidential foreign policy expertise goes, things could have been much worse.

Well said, Tom -- that pretty much slams the nail right on the head. It's about time that someone told the vice president that he's talking beyond his area of expertise. (I also enjoyed the rather snippy response from his office in the NY Times. ;)

If you read Baker's work regularly, you'll know that he hasn't included a single quote in opposition to escalation in Afghanistan, so he had to eventually get around to you.

Still, he tried to peg you as leftist to provide "balance." I loved the "founded by Democrats" line. Yeah, so? Neocon-ism was founded by Democrats too.

Cheers (all in good fun, right? When I stop commenting, I've stopped caring)

PS Is there something in the water at the WaPo that breeds hawks?

CAPTCHA - "one dominion" I hope that's not a reference to the goal of CNAS!

take a look at the four Marines photographed in the NYT today "Stanley McChrystal’s Long War" - look at their faces, they were in mid elementry school, when Washington was joyfully with vengence, trifectas, hubris,...this is a boy's club distraction.

I am heartened that they are seriously making considerations and accepting differing points. I have a grandson who now is the age these Marines were when it all started.

Mr. Ricks,

I understand you disagree with the VP but it seems that he has plenty of company who agree with his position including Rory Stewart.

And Rory Stewart has plenty of experience with the country and the region.

Don't you think they have a point?

The problem is that just because you're wrong on some issues doesn't mean you're wrong on the next one. He could be wrong on every issue since he was a third-grader, but dead on when it comes to Afghanistan.

Now I'm no fan of Biden, but this discussion is pretty silly. Any one who acts as if they have international relations figured out probably knows little of the subject.

"NEW YORK The U.S. military in eastern Afghanistan recently changed its media embed rules to ban pictures of troops killed in the war."

Information warfare in action. Its amazing to me how our Army is becoming so much like the Red Army.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004022471

Mr. Ricks,

Is not President Obama's "public dithering" and VP Biden's withdrawl plan going to cause some pause on our allies in Nato about their own troop levels? Why would any of our hesitant Nato allies send more troops, if the Americans themselves are hesitant to send more troops? It seems the White House has created the perfect opportunity for our allies not to send any more troops. Nato is always looking for an excuse, with President Bush it was that he was very unpopular and now with President Obama that he is unsure about the war. The war of necessity, becomes the war of circumstances.

"Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent.