For all the intellectual effort that we on the left occasionally expend on the U.S.’s geopolitical blunders, missteps and counterproductive maneuvers — a healthy and worthy thing, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — it’s not a critique we often extend to other international actors. I wonder if that’s a built-in perception bias*: in other words, if we didn’t implicitly assume that most states and non-state actors know what they’re doing, understanding international affairs might be impenetrably complex. Even if that’s what’s going on here, it’s no excuse. Most people make mistakes and do a poor job of clearly understanding their own interests. Our desire to believe something is true, or our desire to see something become true, interferes with our ability to perceive what is true. Even if we are in fact able to properly perceive our interests, there’s the added complication of producing the desired outcome. The world is an evil place. Toward a heuristic of counterproductivity!

This is all by way of saying I read this Greg Miller piece about seeming Pakistani military successes against the Taliban-led-insurgent-syndicate (that’s me using my McChrystalisms right there) and continue to marvel at the tendency for al-Qaeda’s allies to overplay their hands. If ever I got to interview an al-Qaeda detainee, I’d simply ask the guy: Don’t you understand that your attempts at imposing your unpopular blend of zealotry is doomed to fail? You make tactical gains — in Anbar Province, in the Swat Valley — and then you alienate your allies and play into your enemies’ hands. There’s a book called The Accidental Guerrilla that you might consider reading, since it applies to you as much as it applies to us. In Iraq, we were really lucky to have as a principal enemy a movement that managed to make strategic mistakes that surpassed ours.

Now, it could be that Miller’s sources are too optimistic. I want to see the Pak military hold the areas they clear — and some Pakistani agency build off of the areas the military holds — before judging the effort a clear success. But part of me wonders if the real definition of the victor in insurgency/counterinsurgency context boils down to The One Who Fucks Up Least-Badly.

*But of course what’s really going on here is that we on the left are implacably and dishonestly opposed to any exercise of American power on the world stage, and we’ll take any argument to advance that case. MUHUHAHAHAHA

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