"This quick unity and the fear that the sound of stomping instills in the security forces paralyzes the forces for a few minutes, making it harder for them to react." Aren't the security forces going to be reading all these instructions, too?

"That was Gary Farber's complaint," No, it wasn't. There. Is. No. Objective. Source. (Of What Is Fair.) Brett's actual Objective source.

A half a day's drive from Kabul: [...] As the Obama administration moves into a crucial phase of deliberations over the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, residents of a widening arc of territory a half-day's drive from the capital, Kabul, describe daily lives fraught with danger as the militants' foothold becomes stronger. Just beyond the Kunduz city limits, insurgents brazenly tool around in Ford Rangers stolen from the Afghan police. A Taliban-run shadow administration, complete with a governor, a court system and tax levies, wields greater authority than its official counterpart in much of Kunduz province. Traffic is thin and nervously quick on the main highway, where insurgent roadblocks and ambushes have been common, spurred in part by a new NATO supply line running south from Tajikistan. "There's no safety now -- it's war," said Abdul Rahman, an ice cream vendor who is afraid to travel to his home in an outlying district. "The Taliban aren't in the city yet, but they're out there everywhere in the countryside around here. I'm scared." [...] Hekmatyar's fighters frequently stage attacks against Western troops and Afghan security forces in the north. But in what analysts describe as a classic Afghan hedging technique, the commander is making political inroads in the region, even as he keeps up the battlefield pressure. Many think Hekmatyar is positioning himself for possible power-sharing in a new administration likely to be led by President Hamid Karzai. The Afghan leader, facing a runoff challenge from his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, is cementing ties with powerful warlords such as Hekmatyar, ignoring Western discomfort over such alliances. "Hekmatyar is looking for more political influence here," said Habiba Urfan, a provincial council member in Kunduz. In Baghlan, an entire tier of provincial officials, from the governor on down, is allied with Hekmatyar, intelligence officials say. [...] In the north, even more than elsewhere in Afghanistan, Western forces seem at a loss as to how to distinguish friend from foe. "Everywhere we go, they smile and wave at us, and then they turn their guns on us," said Spiering, the German military spokesman. "People want to be on the side of the winner. And they don't know yet who that is going to be."

"What could you possibly have in mind as an 'objective' source?" Exactly. It's not me who was making a claim that there's an objective definition of what's "fair." Brett consistently states his views on fairness as axiomatic. It's not a sustainable position. "My opinion is objective fact" is not an argument.

"As I wrote, we couldn't/camp." Er, couldn't/can't. Still waking up, and I feel like crap, actually, after a huge cough and headache last night, which persist this morning, having added stuffed head to stuffed chest, and otherwise feeling illish. :-(

Thanks for the links, LJ. I appreciate your final clause, too. :-) Heaven's piece seems entirely unpersuasive to me; it doesn't even attempt to address reality in any way; it simply argues that there's a moral duty to fix Afghanistan -- with no discussion whatever of mere means or limits. End question: "But with a possible troop surge do we really need to fantasise?" Yes, because "tropp surge" are not magic words, and as I've written at length, whatever can be done in Iraq isn't answerable with those two magic words. "...and I'm wondering how we could avoid making Karzai look like a puppet while simultaneously dealing with the problems with the election." As I wrote, we couldn't/camp. And that encapsulates the whole problem: an outside power can't legitimatize a government in the eyes of its own people, and an outside power certainly can't relieve that government of the perception that it's a puppet of foreign powers while enforcing the outside powers' will on that government to make sure that government does as it's told. We can't win a civil war, or a counterinsurgency war, for someone else. If the Karzai government can start to legitimize itself with its own people, against the highly downward trend of the last five years, great. But let's start seeing some of that, then. All the focus on what the U.S. or NATO, or other foreign powers, can do, is a focus on the wrong ball. People need to pay attention to what Afghans do: it's their country, not ours.

"If two people walk into a restaurant, it's generally understood and expected that if they order the same meal, they'll get the same bill. This is ordinary, everyday ethics." That's not ethics; that's custom.

Of course, now Karzai appears more the puppet than ever. Anyone interested in discussing any of this?

"Plasma drives are old hat; they used to be called ion drives when I first took note of them somewhere around 1974." Indeed. And when they were referred to in Star Trek's "Spock's Brain" as immensely advanced, I laughed even though I was 9 years old, but I'd read enough about ion drives by then to know how gentle a thrust they'd deliver according to what we knew at the time. But, as I said, I thought the video looked and sounded more like a 1950s science fiction movie than any propulsion system, or test propulsion system, I'd ever seen video of. I don't suppose you know how to fix the font problem, Slart? Advice from you or anyone with Typepad experience eagerly solicited. I'd really like to fix the post and be done with it. I hate to have mucked up the blog. :-(

Oh, wait, that looks very different in IE than in Firefox. Gimme a sec. Not used to Typepad software.

What font where?

"So, naturally, the Bush administration concluded that they needed more dots." My own phrasing might be that Cheney, Bush, Addington, et all, saw the best opportunity in decades to grab more executive power, specifically more police and intelligence power, which was helped by the various institutional police/spy agencies desires for far larger legal powers. It was a wonderful opportunity to cut further huge slices out of the bill of rights. (Noticing this is the basis for the unfortunate bridge-too-far "truther" movement.) If one wants to be generous, one can assume that some genuine panic was part of the mix.

"are referring to" would have been a better choice of words, Point, than "actually mean." Sorry about that.

"I'm wondering if the Kabul government needs to be 'effective', in this sense, for it to be legitimate -- after all, prior to the Soviet invasion, the country had a widely accepted, though highly decentralized, government." The uprising against the communist government began significantly before the Soviet invasion; it's what caused the Soviet invasion. I'm going to assume that what you actually mean is either the Mohammed Daoud Khan government which ran from his coup in 1973 until the Saur Revolution of 1978, or to Mohammed Zahir Shah's, the last king/shah of Afghanistan, regime, which ran from 1933 until 1973. tequila: "And for all the relative tolerance of the rank and file for Rohde's singing of the Beatles, the commanders [of the Haqqani network] are the ones who set the tone and give the orders, and they are quite extreme." Yes, I'm sure most of them are.

"Does Karzai's agreement to have a runoff election affect how we answer these questions?" I think it very much remains to be seen how meaningful -- or not -- the election is. I'm skeptical it will be particularly meaningful, regardless of the results. Specifically, if Abdullah Abdullah somehow wins the run-off, I'll be immensely surprised. Even if he somehow did -- and astonished might be a better word for my reaction if he does -- what difference he'd make seems to me a completely open question. Could he somehow, by dint of the very limited powers of the Afghan presidency, grossly lessen corruption, make the government vastly more effective, deal with the powers of the many tribes and warlords, and otherwise make a huge difference? I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it seems to be a considerable stretch to assume that he could do much of that, even if he were to win, which, well, I won't repeat myself. Maybe, if Abdullah Abdullah wins, he could convene another loya jirga, appoint a whole new, strong, supportive, cabinet, change the local governors for the better, make major changes to greatly reduce corruption in Kabul and in the countryside/provinces, etc. Maybe. But I don't know any reason to assume that would happen. Meanwhile, I don't know any reason to think that Abdullah Abdullah would win an honest run-off. So if Karzai wins, after an "honest" run-off election, in which much of the country still doesn't vote, and tribes and clans still remain tribes and clans, is Karzai suddenly going to become much more capable than he's been for the last five years? Is he suddenly going to start cleaning up corruption, and etc., see above? Y'know, maybe, but I'd want to see some evidence of this happening -- some strong evidence -- before I start putting much credence or hope in the idea.

Some opinions about the Taliban/al Qaeda relationship from Anand Gopal.

"Very impressive amounts of research." Not research, actually; research is going out and looking for stuff. I just bookmarked stuff I read, and narrowed it down a great deal to what I could squeeze into something resembling a narrative. As to the question, I think the many different people in the many different factions of the Taliban would do very different things from each other as regards the various factions of al Qaeda. None of them, in my view, seems to call for the U.S. spending trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of soldiers at a time, losing thousands of soldiers per year, and spending many decades, to prevent any of them from happening. Not when we have the rest of the world to pay attention to, as well. Thanks muchly for kind words.

"I assume Bacevich really doesn't like this (and I agree with him) but hasn't this been all the rage among liberal foreign policy pundits for the past couple of years?" It goes back to the JFK administration, actually, and Vietnam, with some earlier roots in the Eisenhower administration and the creation of Special Forces. Robin Moore didn't help. COIN went out of fashion with the end of the Vietnam War, and the U.S. Army institutionally went back to planning for what it always liked best: big set piece battles between conventional forces. Which is completely useless against asymmetrical forces, or in occupying, as opposed to conquering, small countries, or helping other small countries fight insurgencies. So, yes, there's been a renewed vogue for COIN ever since conquering Iraq didn't end with President Bush's exciting visit to the Abraham Lincoln, memorably declaring "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Jim Henley recently described, in his own words, the difference between COIN and counterterrorism. Jim has an even better, classic, post from a few years ago arguing why the U.S. shouldn't be doing counter-insurgency, but I'm a little too tired, and have too much of a headache, neck king, and foot pain, to find it right now. Anyone else is welcome to pitch in with the link you know I want!

A few other pieces I'd have worked in, if not for already being overlong, but responsive to LJ's comments about agricultural and job training support, and the general need for foreign civilian support. The Civilian Surge Myth: The U.S. needs to stop pretending it can do nation-building: How can we snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Afghanistan? There's one solution that has attracted analysts of all stripes: a "civilian surge," where development and political advisers working for (or contracted by) the State department and the U.S. Agency for International Development flood the country and turn the tide against the insurgents. The logic, at least, is sound: It takes more than military success to defeat insurgents. [...] There is consensus on the problem and general agreement on the solution, but absolutely no sense of how to make it happen. There is little chance that the United States will mobilize enough civilian capability to re-engineer backward states and keep it in the field during a protracted insurgency. It is, as the Pentagon official told me, "a pipe dream." [...] Even a fully funded Civilian Response Corps--the crown jewel of the effort--would theoretically consist of 250 full time members, 2,000 "standby" members from elsewhere in the federal government (which begs the question of how their employing agencies would do without them if they were gone for years at a time), and 2,000 "reserve" member from the private sector and state and local governments (who also would leave their employers in the lurch if deployed for an extended period). Under the absolute best possible conditions, the Civilian Response Corps could send one American adviser for every 42,000 people in a country like Pakistan, or one for every 35,000 in Nigeria, at least for as long as they could be kept in the field. This is a drop in a very large bucket. [...] There are only two solutions. We could belly up and provide the resources for a serious expeditionary civilian corps. But a few hundred or even a couple of thousand people is not enough. We would need many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of advisers with linguistic skills and cultural knowledge willing to leave home and live under risky conditions for years at a time. And we are not talking about 20-somethings paid a pittance and fueled by idealism, but skilled professionals demanding serious pay for their expertise and sacrifice. (The difficulty that the State department had convincing even its hardened professionals to volunteer for duty in Iraq showed what a challenge this is.) Of course, if the pay is high enough, the experts will come. But, at a time of massive government budget deficits and a persisting national economic crisis, this is simply not in the cards. What, then, is Plan B? If we are unwilling to pay the price for a serious civilian capability--and admit that foisting the job of development and political assistance on the military is a bad idea--the only option is to alter our basic strategy. We could find a way to thwart Al Qaeda and other terrorists without trying to re-engineer weak states. We could, in other words, get out of the counterinsurgency and stabilization business. This is not an attractive option and entails many risks. But it does reflect reality. Ultimately, it may be better than a strategy based on a capability that exists only in our minds. See also Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan and Civilian, Military Officials at Odds Over Resources Needed for Afghan Mission.

elm: "The bad: I'm not convinced that the next 12 months are dramatically more important than the prior 12 months (or the prior 8 years, frankly)." One of those various links/articles I didn't work in was this, by A. J. Rossmiller, which includes: [...] The situation in Afghanistan increasingly looks like Iraq did not too long ago. Not the actual political or military circumstances, of course, but the analysis and commentary. Phrases like "We’re entering a decisive period" and "It’s now or never" are being tossed around ominously as the debate over troop increases rages. One can hardly read an op-ed without being told that the situation is dire and that this is a critical time, perhaps even our Last Chance to Get It Right. Most notably, the report produced by General Stanley McChrystal announced that "the short-term fight will be decisive." There is not a single Afghanistan myth more prevalent or more specious than this one. To be at a "critical juncture" implies that one side or the other is poised to decisively gain the upper hand and therefore to win. But the situation in Afghanistan is almost the exact opposite of that. [...] Often when a crisis is invoked, it is to push a particular course of action, to make people believe that a recommended remedy must be undertaken immediately. In other words, warning of an impending crossroads can be a useful bullying mechanism, and that is what is happening now, as proponents of a broad-based counter-insurgency strategy confront those who favor a more focused counter-terrorism mission. [...] If I were to blindly go along with the current discourse on Afghanistan, I would also say that this moment represents our Last Chance to Get It Right. But the reality is that political compromise will happen at some point, and, even if it doesn’t happen now, little will change in the near-term. The question then becomes, how many lives, how much money, and how much strategic energy will we expend in the meantime? Just to expand upon my "good point." :-)

"Noble Prize" Might wish to fix this, perhaps.