In light of the Abdullah withdrawal, over at the Windy, I wrote that CNAS’ Nagl and Fontaine really won the day here, by convincing Obama that there was an alternative between getting out of Afghanistan and uncritically embracing Hamid Karzai. As their CNAS colleague Andrew Exum worried that the Karzai theft might come to be seen as the day that the U.S.’s fortunes in Afghanistan irrevocably turned sour, it seemed to me like hardly a forgone conclusion. That’s not a normative endorsement, however, as I’ve had my criticisms of their proposal to focus on sub-national governance.

Gregg Carlstrom over at The Majlis fleshes out the critique by taking up the two CNAS experts’ Iraq analogy.

Nagl and Fontaine are right. The U.S. achieved increased security — despite the weakness of the Baghdad government — by focusing on local institutions.

But they gloss over an important point: National governance still matters! Iraq’s feckless central government is on the verge of shattering the fragile gains of the last few years.