In the course of clucking his teeth at me despite not substantively disagreeing, Matthew Yglesias writes something very precise that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves:

The idea is to strengthen the Karzai government and deal the Taliban some military defeats in order to shift the incentives and make Taliban members or affiliates interested in political reconciliation. Our hoped-for endgame, basically, is a big meeting at which the US will demand certain things vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, Karzai’s crew will demand certain things regarding their power and perks of office, and Taliban affiliates will have demands of their own.

Yeah, basically. With some exceptions. First, the U.S. isn’t going to be pushing Karzai to share power with the Quetta Shura Taliban. If Mullah Omar ends up taking Karzai up on his entreaties, then I doubt the U.S. will stand in the way. What the Karzai government, the Obama administration and McChrystal’s command agree on is reconciliation in the near-term with mid-level Taliban fighters (never really adequately defined, but meaning “below the Quetta Shura in importance” generally), probably directed by the Afghan government.

Still, two points. First: people need to reconcile themselves to the implications of seeking an endstate in which Taliban elements rejoin the government, even if it’s on the government’s terms. For the right, that means abandoning the fiction of moral clarity. For the left, that means… well, the same thing, including the prospect that there will be some backsliding on human rights. But Taliban influence is still different than and preferable to Taliban control, from a human-rights and women’s-rights perspective. We’re drawing some dark distinctions here, but still distinctions with a difference.

Not that I think the war is justifiable in terms of a human-rights or womens-rights rationale! As I’ve consistently written. That’s my second point. (Which is why criticizing me here is rather strange.)