All y’all can save your Peter Beinart hatred. The man gave me a job right out of college, promoted me twice and gave me tons of opportunities. I would probably not be here if not for him. So I remain loyal, as I will ever be.

That said, this Daily Beast piece from Peter misses the mark substantially. He argues that it’s a mistake for Obama to provide a timetable for ending the war, calling it “an effort to appease the doves in his party.” Why’s it a mistake? Because it’ll reduce American leverage, Peter argues: “After decades of anarchy and war, Afghans have learned that survival requires backing the side that’s likely to win.” Ultimately, Peter says, providing a timeline for concluding the war successfully is “all too clever by half.”

The Iraq experience is instructive in this regard. In 2006, the Bush administration doubled down militarily with the surge. Then, once America’s increased military commitment (along with other factors) had strengthened Iraq’s government, the Bushies appeased nationalist hostility by setting a timetable for withdrawal.

But Peter’s argument is cleverer than it is wise. For one thing, by most accounts that have leaked so far, the exit strategy that’s going to be in the speech will look like this, as an anonymous official told the NYT:

“It’s accurate to say that he will be more explicit about both goals and time frame than has been the case before and than has been part of the public discussion,” said a senior official, who requested anonymity to discuss the speech before it is delivered. “He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down.”

So not really a timetable — David Dayen finds this more problematic than I do — and more like a time horizon. Congratulations, Peter, you’ve won the day! More seriously, I will put money on the proposition that the ultimate exit of U.S. military forces is conditioned on the readiness of the Afghan Army and police. Basically, what Peter uses as a cudgel to contrast with his expectations of Obama’s Afghanistan approach.

More substantively still, Peter is conflating two different things: military commitment and political commitment. If we leave Afghanistan at some point and yank away our political commitment wholesale — meaning diplomatic engagement, economic ties, and regional sponsorship — then, yeah, the whole thing will fail. (And, in fairness, Obama can be justly criticized for an approach to Iraq that looks too much like that.) But if we take away our military commitment after beating the shit out of the Taliban and sustain that political commitment, then that looks like a sane and sustainable path to success. Contrariwise, if we have a primarily military relationship with Afghanistan without paying due regard to the development and governance and security root sources of Afghan active or passive support for the insurgency, then the mission is as hopeless as it is open-ended. And yet Peter doesn’t give any attention to that. He’s envisioning for a longer war without any regard for a successful one.

In fairness, that’s a mistake that pretty much everyone in Washington has made about Afghanistan since 2001. “Success” is instantiated as nothing more concrete than “keep fighting.” That’s an enormous error, and one that, with luck, Obama will correct tomorrow night.

A new Charlie Dunlap article! I’m excited.

First, some backstory. The Air Force is trying to figure out what its role is in an era of ground conflict, close air support and unmanned aerial vehicles. For a quick and probably incomplete overview, see this post of mine, which contrasted a widely-read monographed penned by Dunlap, a two-star Air Force general, with some thoughts from a young Air Force captain who served in Afghanistan, Daniel Magruder. It was a debate between someone who said that ground combat ought to adapt itself to the Air Force’s way of warfare and someone who said that the Air Force ought to adapt itself to ground combat.

Anywhoo, Charlie is back for more. His argument is that the Air Force’s concept of “airmindedness” — “an attitude that focuses not upon any one dimension of military power, but rather aims to holistically leverage America’s technological advantages across multiple domains, especially (but certainly not exclusively) in air, space, and cyberspace. At its core, it unapologetically tries to substitute machines for the bodies of young Americans whenever possible” — is relevant for Afghanistan. He writes:

Doubt me? Consider that Operation Allied Force, an “airminded” solution to what was then one of the formidable challenges in NATO’s history, is all but forgotten. Different from Afghanistan? Sure, but maybe not as much as some think.

In fact, the official Pentagon description of Operation Allied Force sounds amazingly similar to what we see in contemporary Afghanistan. It insisted, for example, that Kosovo was not a traditional military conflict but rather one where the enemy used “indirect means.” These means included, the report said, not only hit and run tactics against coalition forces, but also terror tactics against the helpless Muslim population.

Like today’s Taliban, the Serbs sought to “exploit the premium the alliance placed on minimizing civilian casualties and collateral damage” by dispersing “themselves among civilian populations” and then engaging in a “disinformation and propaganda campaigns.”

I dunno, there really do seem to be critical differences with Afghanistan. The Serbs had a political center of gravity — Belgrade — where NATO could drop bombs until such a time that they said to pull back from Kosovo. What’s more, it’s, to be generous, debatable how much the bombing impacted Milosevic’s decisionmaking. When the Russians ultimately told the Serbs to put an end to their Kosovo ravages, a product of diplomacy more than the bombing,  the Serbs capitulated. That’s not to minimize the role of the bombing, since without it the objective would not have been achieved, just to put it in context.

The broader point, however, is that these conditions don’t apply in Afghanistan. Even if we accepted that we ought to conduct an air campaign in Afghanistan, ignoring the effects that the inevitable civilian casualties have on such a war, where would we set our targets? Lashkar Gah? Kandahar? North Waziristan? Charlie makes a good case that airmindedness can contribute significantly to a supporting role in Afghanistan, but not that it can contribute to a central one. What I’m waiting for is the case for airmindness’ utility to a population-centric strategy. Give me that, and I’m on board. Without it, we’re back to Capt. Magruder.

Still, I can’t help but notice Dunlap’s jibe at Gen. Petraeus:

[A]n “airminded” approach does not equate with “Air Force”, per se, but rather reflects a philosophy that seeks to avoid the bloody close fight.

Shots fired! Anyone who’s heard Petraeus talk is familiar with his description of the “brotherhood of the close fight.”

Juan Cole writes aptly and plainly about a Swiss decision to ban minarets. Imagine being told your congregation couldn’t build a steeple or display a cross.

Not to get all Lee Greenwood on you, but I never feel more American than when Matthew Yglesias returns from one or another of his European vacations and tells me about the casual — even cheery — racism and xenophobia displayed by important European functionaries. I might be mangling this story, but I think he told me about being shown around some German neighborhood before being told that a small proportion of the residents were “real Germans,” as opposed to Turkish immigrants. Obviously, we get that here as well. But we also recognize — or should — that to express a sentiment like that is to misunderstand what it is to actually be a real American.