My friend A.J. Rossmiller, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, has an excellent piece in TNR today about Afghanistan. He makes a lot of good points, but this is my favorite, as it puts real stress on Gen. McChrystal’s assertion in his assessment that the next 12-18 months will be “decisive”:

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. I will likely have my pundit card revoked for saying so–nothing diverts attention like saying that a situation isn’t at a critical turning point–but it’s true. After eight years of fighting, two things seem clear: First, the insurgency does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose Afghanistan’s central government; and, second, U.S. forces do not have the ability to vanquish the insurgency. It’s true that the Taliban has gained ground in recent months, but, absent a full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, it cannot retake sovereign control. This is not to say that Afghanistan isn’t unstable; it clearly is. That has been the case for eight years, however, and, in the absence of some shocking, unforeseen development, it could be true for another eight or 18 or 80 years. An increase of tens of thousands of troops will not change that fact, nor will subtle tactical changes. Rather than teetering on the edge of some imagined precipice, the situation in Afghanistan is at a virtual stalemate.

The man’s bottom line is that some form of political accommodation with Taliban elements is inevitable, and offers the only way out of the stalemate, so we may as Do It Right. I have to say I find that the weakest part of the piece — not the substantive conclusion, but the punting on what Do It Right will require. There isn’t much disagreement, either within the Obama administration or the Afghan government or McChrystal’s command (“… ISAF must be in a position to support appropriate Afghan reintegration policies”) and associated powerful think tanks. The question is why a Taliban command that feels it has the momentum would reconcile; and that leads to the problem of confronting it. I see no alternative if reconciliation is to be Done Right.

For an example of what it can’t be, a couple weeks ago Yglesias and I were shooting the breeze at the bar and he mentioned that it doesn’t make any sense to kick the hell out of the Taliban in a given province and then offer it to them at the end of the campaign; or, put differently, it doesn’t make any sense to offer the Taliban what it already has. And that’s true. The choices at hand would have to be something like (1) beating the shit out of the Taliban until it’s willing to accept a powersharing deal in Province X in exchange for laying down arms; and/or (2) holding out the hope of national powersharing in exchange for laying down arms and/or breaking with al-Q.

Can this be achieved? I don’t know. McChrystal says it can, and that the path to it runs through fighting them while splitting their “syndicate” — taking their soldiers off the battlefield through economic incentives like jobs or bribes (my word, not his). But I do note that in the awesome Frontline documentary on Afghanistan set to air tonight, McChrystal’s operations director says this is how the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan will end:

We’re going to leave here under shades of gray. We’ll have stability — at least reasonable stability. We’ll have a firm understanding that more has to be done. But in the end, you’ll have an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem. And that’ll be good enough.