Colonialism in a place like Afghanistan is really VERY expensive. We are not dedicating the resources necessary. I don’t just mean money. We would have to put in a large proportion of our very best people full time to help givern the place. Some for pretty much their whole career.

I don’t assume that SWJ endorses the views of everyone, or even most, of the authors on their site. They post material primarily to spur discussion. Take, for example, their recent posting of Gant’s article. It was met with a fair amount of skepticism by most readers and I don’t have any reason to believe that the editors buy his argument (but maybe I’m wrong – do they?). Also consider that Gian Gentile, who is portrayed as “anti-COIN” (really he’s just anti-foolishness), is welcome to post there, despite perceptions that the site has a COIN fetish on par with that of Abu Muqawama.

Much of what they post is fairly non-controversial. I’m thinking, in particular, of their daily feature: the SWJ roundup. Every morning, Dilegge or someone else at SWJ wakes up at about 0400 and pulls all of the national security related articles from the major rags and summarizes and links to them. It’s like a human news aggregator.

I didn’t meant to, reader, and I’m sorry if my comment – which was too strongly worded and glib, I think – sounded that way. I am always skeptical of everything and maybe that blinds me.

Excellent point, the US can’t fix these problems for deep structural reasons all its own. Moreover, I find it strange that MidWestern congressmen like Dick Lugar or Sam Brownback continue to take such an interest in C. Asia when their own backyard is starting to look a little too much like Gaza employment-wise. I suspect the attitude is its easier to fix, or to appear to be fixing, problems “over there” then “here.” The problem is this attitude, both cynical and naive, fixes problems in neither place. Combine some pseudo Calvinistic American exceptionalism, high profit margins, easy Chinese credit, a willingness to take risks with the lives of foreigners of dusky visage, the need to appear macho to the folks back home (not just rubes btw; soccer moms as well) and you have the makings of one nasty little cake. The icing on the cake must be changed from time to time, too much Americana and macho, turns some partyers off, so now we have a slightly more ethnic, fiesta themed cake. But it’s the same cake, just with different icing.

Regarding the military. I wouldn’t call them hapless victims. The Pentagon needs wars to justify its budget, and you can’t tell me that every soldier goes forth with head hung low wishing that he/she didn’t have to fight. There is that small percentage that want to “git sum.” As one person said, war is a force that gives us meaning.

The commentors and the “Council” discussions are interesting at SWJ, and, if you are a layperson, not a bad introduction to certain material. From there, you can move on to other sites, such as, say, Registan? As for the amount of influence the site holds, well, I’m just a small person out here in the hinterlands and from this vantage point I see lots of bad ideas take hold in D.C. and its environs. An awful lot of those bad ideas come from academia and academic consensus formers, too. Not talking about Afghanistan, but more my area… .For Afghanistan, I think the biggest problem is that, somehow, people in positions of power can’t see the region clearly. Or won’t. But, really, the fault is with the policy planners and the goal of unstable endstates. The military is stuck. What are they supposed to do in the middle of all that madness?

Yes, I don’t agree with many of their views presented on Iran and Afghanistan (a recent essay by a certain Pakistani major comes to mind). Nevertheless, I still browse the site regularly, if only to comment on certain weaknesses I come across in their postings.