If our efforts in Afghanistan were a song, they would be the old 1950s favorite: "Something's Gotta Give." A number of important factors suggest significant change is in the offing. War weariness, budget deficits, Karzai's' problems, interagency squabbles, all exist alongside Taliban restlessness. Our European allies are soon to be out of the combat business altogether. We can't make the Taliban quit, and they can't win as long as we are there.

Dashing Dave Petraeus goes into a complex situation with grace and a footlocker full of skills. He will have to shift from expeditionary counterinsurgency to a top priority on security assistance, balancing firmness with a reconciliation movement that is gaining speed. He needs to build Afghan capacity, keep the pressure on the Taliban, beg for help from the Euros, and restore peace to our team of rivals leading the effort. Only the fact that he brought off the Surge gives me confidence that he is the man for this time and place. Time to build an exit strategy, with an accent on the second word. jjc

David Petraeus has been given a hopeless task, not enough men, not enough time, no clear mission other than the ridiculous one of building an integrated Afghan state. At the same time, our Pakistani "ally" apparently continues to support segments of the Taliban array for reasons obscurely the result of their rivalry with India.

Since Petraeus has this hopeless task, it is only fair to give him as much "running room" as possible. I, too, would have preferred a marine, but, for various reasons, we have Petraeus. All right, let's give him Mattis, in my opinion, the best marine around now, as his deputy and lets give him McMaster as his chief of operations. Give McMaster a couple more stars. Why not?

At the same time, lets consolidate American authority in the PakAF theater by replacing the present ambassadors in thise iwo countries with people who understand that they are there to support Petraeus' effort. The same should be true of any special envoys like Holbrooke.

We need a a unified, simple, chain of command. Let's do it!

General McChrystal's insubordinate but perfectly accurate words disqualified him from continuing to command U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Obama is a wimp, Holbrooke is a fool, and Biden is marooned in the Cold War. Still, if you take the king's shilling and you must do the king's bidding, and do it silently. The problem of McChrystral is over and will have no impact on the Afghan War. That war was lost more than a year ago by Obama, Biden, Holbrooke, McChrystal, and Petraeus and their fantasy counterinsurgency policy.

Four months after the first field test of their policy in a place called Majrah District in Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province the forces of the U.S.-led coalition are still fighting an enemy they predicted would be easily removed. It has, however, succeeded in reopening the local market, improving the irrigation system, and building miles of new roads. What they have utterly failed to do is what the counterinsurgency experts -- especially two men named John Nagl and David Kilcullen -- asserted would be easy to do; namely, by "protecting the people against the Taleban" Western forces would win hearts and minds and thereby defeat the small number of Afghans who were Taleban extremists. This failure should come as a surprise to no one.

As a timeless truism one cannot find a better example than the phrase: "Afghans hate and will not tolerate their country being occupied by foreigner infidel." This is verifiable over almost 24 centuries of history by referring to the Afghan experiences of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. It took varying periods for the Afghans to get rid of each occupier -- the Greeks were particularly tough to root out as Alexander created Greek colonies in the country -- but in time each was defeated and left with its tail between its legs. And so will we.

The really wonderful thing about those who designed and pushed the current counterinsurgency policy in Afghanistan is that reality and facts have no impact whatsoever on their fervor for failure. While U.S. military forces and their allies have done virtually nothing to defeat the Taleban, other Afghan groups, and al-Qaeda -- the military's preening over drone kills comes down to merely a body count -- they have succeeded admirably in those things experts like Nagl and Kilcullen tell us mean ultimately victory for the West. More than 3 million more Afghan kids are in school now than in 2001. We have seen numerous Afghan elections; hundreds of miles of roads have been rebuilt; electricity is more generally available; there is more potable water and better primary health care; and the Soviet-destroyed irrigation systems are bein rebuilt. And none of it matters a lick.

As the positive trend line for these "hearts-and-mines" operations has steadily risen in the last several years, the positive trend line for the Taleban-led insurgency has risen even more sharply. The Taleban, its allies, and like-minded groups are now operating throughout Afghanistan, a marked geographic expansion of the war. U.S.-NATO casualties are rising sharply, the Taleban and others strike in the capital of Kabul at their pleasure; and Karzai's government has a constituency only among those who can steal funds from the United states and other donor countries and/or profit from the heroin industry. The reality, quite simply, is that as the Nagl-Kilcullen list of indicators of victory in Afghanistan has been accomplished, the insurgents have become more popular among, supported by, or acquiesced in by the rural Afghan population.

Why is this case? Well let us go back to the above-mentioned truism: "Afghans do not like being occupied by foreigners." Add to that Mao's equally venerable truism that an insurgency dies without popular support, but cannot be killed if it has it, and you see what Obama, Biden, Holbrooke, McChrystal, Petreaus, Nagl, and Kilcullen have given America -- utter failure, a thousand dead and untold numbers of wounded U.S. service personnel, and gargantuan waste of U.S. financial resources. Not to mention putting Pakistan on the road to implosion.

So by sending Petraeus to Afghanistan in McChystal's place, Obama has decided to keep a disastrous counterinsurgency policy in place. He has simply exchanged an indiscreet man who preferred to see our soldiers and Marines killed than the enemy and its civilian supporters, with a man whose attitude is the same but is a past master at selling snake oil. The media, for example, still refer to the "Petraeaus victory" in Iraq although it is now in a slow-but-sure mode of unraveling. Instead of killing the enemy and his civilian supporters, Petraeus will keep flogging the foolishness about "protecting the people from the insurgents," even as those people we claim to be a protecting are supporting those who are killing our soldiers and Marines.

All of this apparently is satisfactory to President Obama's administration -- as it was to Mr. Bush's -- and to most senior U.S. general officers; you know, those vague shadows of their old-fashioned predecessors who went to war to achieve military victory as quickly as possible and placed top priority on bringing home alive as many of their troops they could.

Call me a romantic, but I suspect -- more accurately hope -- that there are this morning Marine generals brooding over the Afghan issue in their bastions of sanity at Quantico, Camp Lejeune, and Camp Pendelton. These men and women know -- perhaps uniquely in today's U.S. military -- that war means fighting, and fighting means killing, and that any other approach to war means wasted resources and lives, and will yield nothing but defeat and the need to fight the same war over again. This is why Obama should have sent a Marine to replace McChrystal. This is also why he did not.

The Afghanistan strategy adopted by President Obam last year is the worst possible blend of two proposals that were before him.

On the one hand he committed to an effort to pacify the country through the application of nation building (COIN). On the other he limited the forces available to McChrystal and placed an unrealistic time limit on efforts to build that nation where none has existed before. In fact, such an effort, if sincerely undertaken, would rquire vastly greater resources and decades to have a chance. His decision last year was a bad decision. McChrystal understandably seems to have resented this and this resentment was reflected in the stupid conduct and remarks of his staff (in his presence) before the 'Rolling Stone" reporter.

Unfortunately, none of these difficulties have been resolved by relieving McChrystal and replacing him with Petraeus. Why? The same foolish strategy with all its limitations remains in place.

No amount of refexive cheerleading will change that.

Think. This thing is not going well. The various kinds of Afghans are not cooperative unless it has benefited their wallets. What will the situation be in December when there will be a major policy review? Let us imagine that there is no significant "progress.." What would Obama and Petraeus do then?

Change the strategy will be Obama's answer.

We went into Afghanistan in 2001 for two primary reasons: to weaken, if not destroy, al-Qaida, and to change the Taliban regime. Democracy and nation building never really entered the equation at that time.

Nine years later we have not destroyed al-Qaida, the Taliban has re-emerged as a threat to the Karzai regime, and we have taken on the mission of building an Afghan nation--something that makes nation building in Haiti (where we have never succeeded despite multiple attempts to do so) look like child's play.

Does that mean Afghanistan is not important? Or that we should pull up our tents and leave? I would argue, "not yet." We cannot afford to enable the Taliban to resume power in Kabul; al-Qaida will not be far behind. Of course, some will argue that if al-Qaida rebuilt its training camps, we could always hit them with cruise missiles. Perhaps. But just as the Iranians learned from the Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor that it was important to disperse and harden their nuclear program, so too al-Qaida is likely to avoid creating a tempting target for American cruise missiles. But you can be certain that the training camps will be back; the safe haven will be restored. And that is simply something America and the West cannot afford to let happen.

So, for the time being, we should continue with the counterinsurgency strategy that General Stan McChrystal was pursuing, especially as the "father" of that strategy, General Dave Petreus, is now in charge of Afghan operations. Give him time to see if he can succeed in Afghanistan as he appears ot have done in Iraq.

At the same time. the Administration should announce that it is dispensing with its plan to withdraw forces next year. What that announcement has done is terrify Karzai, embolden the Taliban, and give hope to al-Qaida. The announcement effectively tied one of McChrystal's hands behind his back. Petreus never had that constraint in Iraq; he should not have it in Afghanistan either.

It is time for leadership, and the making of a president. The president must finally take responsibility for this war, declaring that we are in to win, or that we will pull out as quickly and responsibly as possible. It is his war and he must lead a team that is committed to one of these two courses of action. Splitting the difference is no strategy at all.

Indeed, the comments of General McChrystal’s staff are nothing compared to the leaking of classified cables by the staff of the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, let alone the public differences on the President’s staff regarding the timing, pace, and size of America’s July 2011 “withdrawal” (see Vice President Biden vs. Secretary of Defense Gates).

General McChrystal deserves, at least, a serious reprimand. But America deserves serious leadership.

Whatever course of action President Obama takes, he should appoint a civilian overseer—perhaps a retired military officer, as was the case in Malaysian counterinsurgency effort—who has daily and direct control of all the elements of U.S. power as they relate to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the region. The situation is far too serious to do otherwise. Besides Afghanistan, the future of Pakistan, NATO, and the regional geo-polinomic balance is at stake. Even more vital, in the long run, is the possibility of creating a context where Muslims tolerate the theological differences of other Muslims.

My advice: Keep McChrystal, give him—and all the other elements of U.S. power in the region—a long-term and empowered boss to coalesce U.S. efforts on a daily basis, and take-away the July 2011 withdrawal date.

Finally, let’s get serious about how we educate and train all U.S. government personnel for complex operations, as I wrote back in 2003: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0503/052003db.htm.

The passions generated by a Washington scandal like the McChrystal affair fix our attention so completely on personalities and their behavior that it is easy to overlook the insights that they may convey about the thinking of our leaders and how they approach momentous issues. So it is with this latest scandal. I offer a short list of things that we have learned or can infer from the McChrystal quotes in Rolling Stone and subsequent commentaries by persons who have observed the administration in action.

1. Obama’s handling of Afghanistan is a prime case of how not to make and execute foreign policy – especially one that involves a large military commitment. It is undisciplined, it encourages personal rivalries, it leaves obscure lines of command and direction, and it never brings into sharp focus the core issues. It substitutes restless motion for action – mental as well as physical. In addition, there is no evidence of a monitoring mechanism. Let us recall the 50 measures that the White House was going to apply in order to assess progress and make adjustments. Their disappearance suggests that it was a meaningless cosmetic gesture while the lack of a replacement that is more orderly and cogent reinforces the impression that this leaderless team with seven pilots is flying blind.
2. Obama is described as ‘intimidated’ by his senior generals. This rings true because it conforms to what we know about how he deals with the barons of Wall Street, the barons of the health industry and (until last week) the barons of the oil industry. Remember this was a President whose critical breakfast meeting at the White House with seven leading bankers was marked by the absence of Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs who called during the meeting to say he couldn’t make it due to ‘fog in the channel’. Obama expressed his appreciation for the courtesy of a call. We don’t know if he offered to reimburse Blankfein for the cost of making it.
3. A ‘disengaged’ Obama. How is it possible for a super energetic man whose 150 IQ is often on display in parsing the recondite permutations of technical issues fail to master the particulars of Afghanistan? Well, IQ is no substitute for insight and interpretive wisdom. Remember, too, that Obama expressed ‘shock’ a few months ago when the story broke that the Afghan Army in which we’d invested $26 billion was a shambles – despite months in endless meetings with his ‘team.’ Apparently, his concentrated attention was directed elsewhere than on “the war we have to win.”
4. McChrystal is correct that there is a disconnect between the mission and the resources provided. Logically, you cannot get there from here – even if you judge the goal itself as realistic and the effort worth making. The hocus-pocus of a surge with a deadline to leave appended to it was political driven sham from the outset.
5. Surmise: McChrystal is more honest in his assessments than either Obama or Petraeus. The President is accustomed to throwing the mantle of success over failure through glib talk and spin. Petraeus, the most political general we have had since McClellan, obviously recognized all this since he was the master spinner of the Iraq surge and its main beneficiary.
6. Surmise: McChrystal may have been led to believe by Petraeus that once the surge offensive got underway Obama would have to accept an expansion of the forces and a time extension. Petraeus may have believed it and, in that, may still be correct. The difference is that he and his staff have kept their mouths shut.

As of this writing we don’t know whether Obama will either accept McChrystal’s resignation or fire him. My bet is that he will do neither.

Trust the Commander

The top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, meets today with President Obama. At issue is an article that quotes McChrystal as joking snidely about Vice President Biden and other senior administration officials. Like many journalists, I have heard various generals, senators and even a president offer uncomplimentary off-the-cuff quips. Most journalists do not gratuitously report such gossip.

McChrystal’s should not have trusted a reporter he didn’t know, and his staff should have set strict ground rules. As a result of this gossipy article, every reporter in the war zone will find it much harder to get candid information.

The administration could have shrugged off the general’s verbal gaffe. It’s the diplomatic, not the military roles that need to be straightened out. The administration’s command structure on the civilian side is decidedly rickety. Instead, the White House raised the stakes unnecessarily, as if it reflected insubordination or lack of respect.

For that reason, Obama may relieve the general. His replacement then would be either the respected Corps Commander in Afghanistan, LtGen David Rodriquez, or the Joint Forces Commander, General James Mattis, who is a legend among the troops. LtGen John Allen, deputy to General Petraeus, also has a fine track record.

While there are qualified replacements and it does look grim for McChrystal, he should not be relieved. Our enemies would gloat about such headlines, while Afghan President Karzai, who has leapt to McChrystal’s defense, would feel rebuffed. Although I’m among those who believe the current counterinsurgency strategy is too ambitious for our budget and too restrictive for our troops in the long term, McChrystal is confident he can stop the momentum of Afghan insurgents in the short term. That is the first order of business in this war. Our field commander should be judged on what happens in the field.

The incident has already tarnished the effort in what Obama has called “the war that has to be won”. Let’s hope the president gives the general a ringing endorsement of trust and sends him back to the front to prevail. McChrystal is a fighting commander who has Karzai’s confidence and the leadership skills to continue to lead our troops.

The import of these events is great, yet there is no element of surprise. To my mind, this is just confirmation of what we already should have understood about the situation and the personalities.

1. Obama is a weakling who lacks political and intellectual courage. Audacity of ambition is not courage. He has no convictions about anything and he tacks to the political zephyrs.

2. Obama defers to any strong, willful establishment leader. He's been led by the nose by Petraeus who is the orchestrator of the so-called Afghan 'surge.'

3. McChrystal is little more than Petraeus' emanation. A warrior monk by temperament, he is unsuited for the job he has. He is not a hearts & minds leader, and he is a loner. We can suppose that he was still seen by Petraeus as the best instrument available.

4. McChrystal's behavior is apiece with what he did last Fall in leaking analyses supporting Petraeus' position and lobbying publicly for it. We've seen nothing like this since MacArthur.

5. Obama, his administration and the country are in utter disarray about Afghanistan - strategically, diplomatically and politically. Their public declarations have never been coherent from the first, aims left fuzzy and means confused. Ulrimately, it's the President's fault.

6. It's time to bring a halt to all the fantasy island discourse in and around Washingon as to what's achievable in Afghanistan. Enough's enough.

7. One wider implication. Obama doesn't have the stomach for taking tough decisions or undertaking risky actions with implications that he can't spin. He'll never muster the courage to attack Iran. He could embolden the Israelis to do so.

Sorry for the rough edged language. The stakes are too high to continue the game of make-believe.

Normally I'd wait until later in the week to update the topic, but this morning brings an extraordinary barrage of bad news on Afghanistan and the region:

US commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal is recalled to Washington after publicly apologizing for his own and aides' caustic remarks about their interagency peers and political superiors in a forthcoming piece in Rolling Stone;

The House Oversight Committee slams US supply operations for subsidizing warlords, criminals, and even the Taliban;

and US and allied deaths in Afghanistan for June are on track to break records.

The important question, of course, is not whether the past nine years of warfare in Afghanistan has been worthwhile (in this, as in other conflicts, we need to resist the natural tendency to treat sunk costs as some kind of investment) but rather whether still more years of warfare will be worthwhile. The fact, however, that we have accomplished so little in the past years—in stabilizing Afghanistan or improving its governance, in stabilizing Pakistan or making it more cooperative, in putting Iran in its place, or in getting closer to establishing a situation that would permit greater exploitation of those fabled natural resources—ought to be a major source of doubt about how much the next nine years (or however long one thinks it will be) will accomplish.

The one clear accomplishment came in the opening weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom: rousting the al-Qa’ida leadership from its home-away-from-home in Afghanistan, while ousting its Taliban hosts from power over most of Afghanistan. This accomplishment reflects the reason U.S. troops are in Afghanistan: counterterrorism, and more specifically responding to 9/11. None of the other rationales that have since been voiced on behalf of this expedition would ever have led, logically or politically, to a U.S. military intervention. Other than counterterrorism, everything else is mission creep.

Since that initial accomplishment, the counterinsurgency we are waging in Afghanistan has not been advancing the counterterrorist objective. I have expanded elsewhere on the reasons for this, including that al-Qa’ida is barely even in Afghanistan, that the Afghan Taliban are not transnational terrorists, that the Afghan Taliban would be unlikely to welcome al-Qa’ida back to the kind of situation it had before 9/11, that the al-Qa’ida leadership would see no particular advantage in crossing back over the Durand Line, that if al-Qa’ida did try to re-establish a physical presence in Afghanistan we would (unlike before 9/11) bomb the heck out of that presence even if we had no troops on the ground, that if a new haven were important to al-Qa’ida it has other alternatives, and that terrorist safe havens are not all they're cracked up to be anyway. The main impact the counterinsurgency has been having as far as counterterrorism is concerned is the counterproductive one of sustaining the extremist narrative about the United States being out to kill Muslims and occupy its lands.

As for what happened after the Soviets evacuated Afghanistan in 1989: yes, the United States was unjustifiably inattentive once we had helped the mujaheddin to push the bear out. But to speak of our policy “letting” Afghanistan lapse into instability is to apply an all-too-common assumption that the United States has more power to control events anywhere overseas than it really does. Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s was one continuous story of instability, from the insurgency against the Soviets to another three years of war against the Soviet client Najibullah, to two years of civil war among the warlords who deposed Najibullah, to more civil war between the Taliban and its adversaries in the north. If the United States had stepped in militarily to replace the Soviets as the occupier du jour, today’s quagmire would simply have started several years earlier.

And yes, the region is important for geostrategic reasons. But Americans make two common errors in approaching these geostrategic questions. One is to look at maps and to be enticed into thinking narrowly in spatial terms, seeing influence and instability as things that ooze across borders, or seeing the region as if it were literally a chessboard or the board for a game of Go, or maybe a tactical battlefield. So we talk about one power outflanking another. (I'm waiting to hear someone talk about how the Wakhan Corridor is a dagger pointed at the heart of China.) The United States, with its military in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has certainly outflanked Iran. But the net effect on Iran has been to increase Tehran’s regional influence.

The other, related, error is to equate attention and the exertion of influence with the deployment of military forces. The Russians, in not rushing troops into Kyrgyzstan despite Bishkek’s request, seem to have been smart enough not to fall into this error. We could learn something not only from them but also from their imperial predecessors and the latter’s opponents in the British Empire. Afghanistan exists because those contestants in the earlier Great Game came to realize that a buffer state, not under either’s sway, in that part of Asia would help to limit the costs of that game. Afghanistan still can play a similar role.

I'm tempted to say that Afghanistan's strategic value isn't the key issue, because you can't win a hearts-and-minds campaign when your local partner is a corrupt government that stole the election. But I won't press that argument because the logic would be flawed: the defects of the Karzai government don't negate our need to be there, they simply raise the threshhold on how much must be at stake if we are to justify continuing the commitment.

It seems the standard practice in making such calculations is to look at a regional map and exclaim, "Jeepers, Somalia lies athwart the southern approaches to the Suez Canal!" or "Holy Cow, Vietnam is right on the main oil route between Japan and the Persian Gulf!" Well, I have a different way of looking at the map, because being superfial I prefer to look at the whole globe rather than some detailed regional map.

What I see is that Afghanistan is precisely on the opposite side of the world from the American heartland, which means it is about as far as you can get from the U.S. "sphere of interest" while still being on the same planet. Now, there was a time about ten years ago when some zealots might have thought it was our manifest destiny to claim the whole world as our sphere of interest, but back then our economy was nearly a third of global GDP. Today, it is less than a quarter, and yet we continue to sustain half of all global military outlays in order to pursue hapless adventures like the pacification of Afghanistan.

This isn't going to work. Anybody who has studied Afghan history can sense that America is just the latest in a series of fleeting foreign players with no staying power. The locals will have to learn to get along without us because we don't have the resources to stick with the fight for the amount of time it would take to make a real difference. Maybe there are things in or around Afghanistan that we might wish to control, but those things all matter more to the locals than they do to us.

Now that we know Al Qaeda is capable of mounting attacks from places other than Kandahar or Waziristan, it's time to scale back our efforts in Afghanistan to whatever is required to finish off Osama. Joe Biden had it right last year. If President Obama doesn't listen to those who share Biden's doubts then he will suffer the same fate as other chief executives who failed to grasp the limits of intervention.

Sydney poses questions of formidable complexity. It is opportune to consider them since they are implicit in the United States' progressive engagement across Islamic Asia. Yet, the broad strategic issues have not been enunciated - much less given serious answers. While it may not be quite accurate to say that we are trying to build a sphere of influence in a state of absentmindedness, a more reasonable depiction is that we have allowed ourselves to become party to the affairs of distant places of no obvious consequence for our core national interests. Our exposure is far greater than our influence or control. That risky state of affairs stems from a foreign policy of disjointed incrementalism that has no visible means of strategic or intellectual support.

We find ourselves out on several shaky limbs due to the two driving passions animating American foreign policy for the past decade: the terrorism obsession, and the Iran obsession. Their lazy, highly dubious fusing into justification for a relentless campaign against demons actual or imagined has led us to trace Alexander's footsteps into realms previously known only as colorful settings for National Geographic specials. How to make sense of a foreign policy as perpetual motion that could have possibly momentous repercussions when clearly we have little idea of what we're doing, why or - most certainly - what dire implications might await us?

Let's begin with interests - as always. Apart from terrorism, there are two American interests in the broad region: hydrocarbon fuels, and Indo-Pak nuclear relations. Stressing the first distorts our estimation of the latter two while skewing strategic choices. I am of the school that believes our massive interventions, military and political, to eliminate all manner of terrorist threat is ill-conceived and counter-productive. The danger is grossly exaggerated, our methods unsuitable and the consequences augment the very threats we seek to erase. Islamic terrorism that targets the United States is essentially a police and intelligence problem - as Pat Lang and others have argued. As for Iran, it previously targeted Americans stationed in the Middle East, not in the United States. It no longer does the former. Moreover, there are better ways to deal with the Mullahs' regime - including talking seriously with them about the entire spectrum of both sides' security concerns.

Hydro-carbons in Central Asia? Valuable, certainly. Do we have to own them or control the governments of producing states? No. How important is preventing China or Russia from doing so? Somewhat. To deny either a major direct stake there is to set ourselves another impossible dream. Furthermore, the global oil market's integration makes all oil fungible. The geo-strategic fears voiced in some circles have an oddly stale smell about them, redolent of early 20th century intrigue. Still, it is worthwhile supporting the domestic stability and autonomy of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the modest degree that we can. The relative stability of the first two, we should note, correlates with the absence of major American involvements of a tangible kind. By contrast, Washington’s meddling in the roiled politics of Kyrgyzstan to protect its stake in the Manas air base (promoting disgraced ex-president Bakiyev) has contributed to the bloody civil strife. Following our current course has the potential only to undermine rather than strengthen such stability as exists in the region.

Nuclear weapons? As to Iran, some reflection leads to the conclusion that the only productive course open to us is engagement - however odious the regime and its workings. A barrage of self-serving denunciations of Tehran as spoiling our magnificent work in Iraq and now Afghanistan is a diversion and obstacle rather than an assist. This is especially so since the charges have never been documented and, in any case, their alleged foul deeds pale when compared to the injuries that we have inflicted on ourselves. Sending Special Forces to stir up Baluchis in southeastern Iran is a futile game of ‘push-back’that also could backfire when it is linked to a serious separatist movement in Pakistani Baluchistan, adding to the general disorder in that Taliban riddled province.

As to Pakistani nuclear weapons, three questions arise. One concerns the risk of atomic war with India due to miscalculation or error. Technical help and addressing Kashmir are the keys to diminishing that risk. I fail to see how anything we now doing in other spheres contributes anything whatsoever to that constructive approach. The second is Pakistan's former commerce in nuclear relevant technology and hardware. It now seems to be under control - thanks to traditional diplomacy and suasion unconnected to the 'war on terror.' Finally, there is the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the danger of their falling under the control of some Islamist group or junta in Pakistan proper. The risk here probably is overstated. To the extent that it does exist, that is a factor pointing towards policies diametrically apposed to those we are now following. If you want to provoke a radical, violent fundamentalist force in the Punjab as well as in NWFP that makes inroads into the military establishment and security services, then we need just keep doing what we're doing. If you don't want that to happen, then its time to cease and desist from the self indulgent game of avenger that we’ve been playing for nearly nine years. Outrage is not a foreign policy.

Our compulsive terrorism obsession has had the enervating effect of draining time, energy and brains from the deliberative processes of devising strategy and executing it. The Obama team would be hard put to meet the requirements for addressing novel developments in the international environment under the most temperate conditions. They are obviously incapable of even thinking through those challenges (e.g. accommodating the rise of China’s presence and influence) while trying to square circles in AfPak with one eye on the electoral calendar at home.

Finally, it would help us to regain perspective and proportion if we could cultivate a sense of the absurd and ridiculous. Perhaps, we then could see ourselves as Michael Caine and Sean Connery in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” straggling back from their misadventure in the mountain fastness while clutching a dead GPS receiver in one hand and a tattered copy of Rand’s COIN mega study in the other.