In the Grand Scheme of Things, John Nagl and I are on the same “side” of the Afghanistan strategy debate, and I hope he takes this post in the spirit of fair-weather criticism. His op-ed in the Daily News might be more persuasive to the Afghaniskeptic if it dealt with the realistic prospects for (a) eroding the insurgency’s gains in southern Afghanistan over the next year, (b) getting the Afghan government into an institutional position of durable and consistent governance and economic development in that same period, and (c) the relationship between those first two points and the prospects for getting the Taliban to agree to the contours of a peace deal that can secure the absence of al-Qaeda influence in Afghanistan.

Readers here know that I think a) all these things are in the U.S. interest, although perhaps not as “vital” as John writes; b) individually necessary and mostly jointly sufficient (along with constricting al-Qaeda’s operational capabilities in the tribal areas of Pakistan and building a durable Afghan security apparatus) to secure U.S. interests in Afghanistan; and c) the administration’s strategy is probably the best on offer to advance these interests. But I have no idea whether it’s really possible, and I would appreciate a think-tanker op-ed that offered a thorough assessment of all that. John places an awful lot of argumentative freight on displaying “the kind of determination that defeating an insurgency requires,” but that comes awfully close to saying we’ll pull it out if we just want it bad enough. And that’s a fallacy that really ought to be put to rest.