Thoughts on Af/Pak

As glad I am to see serious ink spilt on American purpose in Af/Pak, I'm both a little torn on my own position and a little surprised at the ambivalence expressed. Had you asked me even two months ago to characterize opinion on the US policy towards Afghanistan, I would have said both the commentariat and the vox populi were glad and supportive that attention, priorities, and resources had been shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan. For the right, it meant they didn't have to talk about Iraq any more and could start hopping on pop over health care. For the left, it was a vindication that we were finally paying attention to the "right war". So, I've been rather confused where all this sudden ambivalence and hesitation has come from.

To be sure, the Administration hasn't done itself any favors by being so mute in describing its goals. They let the news stories guide the discussion, so I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked when the narrative of any length out of Af/Pak have been drone strikes kill people good, and Joes are dying. Without any effort, the antiwar effort has their message constructed for them, the moderates are able to grasp at that godawful placebo of a straw that is the strategic air power fallacy, and the right can say "we gotta make those sacrifices worth it" (paraphrase). Leave it to people to connect the dots on their own and don't be surprised when they're doodling all over the map because you couldn't tell them there was a dragon underneath all that.

I'm still digesting the cacophony, but my general thoughts are: (1) we broke it, so we bought it; (2) drone strikes alone are an awful idea; (2.5) supporting drone strikes alone is either an inadequate read of history or just simple grasping at straws (see fallacies 3 and 7); (3) counterterrorism alone as a policy will only breed new terrorists, even if they are based in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan, and even as a managed chronic illness, that just begs for another black swan; (4) screw Al Qaeda, they're a legitimate threat, but not our "mortal enemy" (even we are theirs); (5) we need to massively increase our funding of development assistance; (5.5) and they need to be something more intelligent than: "here's a soccer ball, vote American"; (6) we can't support a corrupt government and hope to win; and (7) when you have the Taliban spraying acid in girl's faces just for trying to go to school, saying "reduce our troop footprint, but throw more money at education and agriculture" is going to us look ineffectual when we can't deliver (or complicitly corrupt), impotent when we can't defend it or the aid workers, feckless as a general rule and will only get Afghans killed (Kristoff and the NGOs, I'm looking at you).