Abu Mugawama presents a pretty positive picture of things on the ground in Afghanistan. COIN working great, Special Op’s and conventional guys now love each other, intelligence top notch (apparently guy claiming to be a Taliban commander and was negotiating with the ISAF and turned out to be a goat herder or something was an outlier) and killing lots of what are presumed to be bad guys.

Just a few small hitches like a corrupt, incompetent and untrustworthy Afghan government and bureaucracy but everything can’t be perfect. Andrew XM’s report could have been copied almost word for word from a dispatch out of MACV forty-two years ago. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

As I wrote on Exum's site, his take on the Afghan war mystifies me.

He is very clear about the small things we are getting right after nine years of operations, and about the big things (governance, enemy sanctuaries in Pakistan) concerning which we are stuck deep in the mud and are likely to remain so. He concludes from this that we're on track to pursue counterinsurgency at the level we're doing now until 2014, at which point we may be able to switch to counterterrorism if local conditions permit. In other words -- and they are his words, not mine -- he is optimistic, and convinced that the counterinsurgency campaign decided upon last year was the right choice.

I don't have the personal connections with military officers serving in Afghanistan that Exum does. None of them are important to my career in the way some of them have been to his. Nor is my store of intellectual humility such that their opinion or commitment to the mission placed in front of them would be likely to make much of an impression on the way I evaluate the situation in Afghanistan or America's way forward there.

I don't know Exum well enough to understand whether all of these things, or none of them, explain his drawing conclusions about Afghanistan so painfully at odds with the facts he himself acknowledges. That he does, is the important thing.

But no heresy to the Washington Rules must ever be uttered by those "smart" people who "get it." Less COIN and more CT will ruffle the feathers of a few super hawks like Max Boot and Eliot Cohen. But most of the in-crowd will be happy to support a war based upon 30k troops in perpetuity.

Never any discussion of disengagement.

Everyday that I read this site and find the ubiquitous Northrup Grumman advertisement, I am reminded of who calls the shots. The empire makers, politicians, courtiers, (Ricks is courtier uber alles).

I am heartened the Capt. Pritchard had his conversion experience. Now - can we make that a principle: Afghanis have to define the approach - and apply it to the problems of governance?

We've got our own ideas about what a state is, how it hangs together, what people want out of government, how government should be structured, what legitimates power. We're offering these as solutions to Afghanistan's problems without considering that they may not work in the local context, or that they may not be the solutions the Afghans want.

Let me call on Kilcullen for a minute. Mr. Kilcullen, you studied insurgency campaigns in places with a history of having state-level societies. Afghanistan was always too poor to sustain a state or a central government. What historical examples apply here? What traditionally have Afghani villagers and tribesmen expected out of their king? What do they want out of Kabul now? More services? More security? Or to be left alone?

We've got a nation-building effort being run by the military, and on the civilian side by naive actors so habituated to the Western status-quo that they can't imagine anything else, like fish who never notice the water they swim in. Until the rest of us have our Capt. Pritchard moment, we're pouring water into a sieve.

How about 'improves its standing as the second most corrupt nation on earth - to something like 3rd or 4th most corrupt.' We are pushing a rope.

From time to time these days Mr. Ricks, King Davids horse holder roles out his roving COIN Carnival show of shows! Step right up ladies and gents! I gotta a dooooooozy for ya dis time! Just a nickle gets ya behind the tent.

Mr. Ricks

I know your Captain in Khost believes the pendulum may have swung in turning the mission over to the Afghan partners. However, there are still way too many Colonels and Generals who are convinced they are going to win the war and bathe themselves in glory. Who consequently are taking it upon themselves to make decisions they should be forcing their Afghan counterparts to make. Something too few (to include the media, certain military leaders, the American public and politicians) understand is this is not about America or NATO or ISAF winning the war. It's about getting the Afghans to win it. Until that mindset changes there is zero chance of success.

yea, How brilliant! Who cudda thunk it? This guy must be the next Clausewitz.
massagistas