I am really, really trying to see the best in the Afghan war advocates.  But I just don’t know what to do with a op-ed like this: Anthony H. Cordesman – A Chance to Avoid Defeat in Afghanistan – washingtonpost.com.

I feel like all of these people — Biddle, Cordesman, Holbrooke, Ricks — whose work I have admired over the years have just lost their way.  I don’t know if it comes from the heady rush of being close to power and wanting to stay there — how many people with good reputations embraced lunacy during the Bush years as well?  Or whether they are so closed off from critical assessments that they are stuck in some sort of groupthink loop.  Or whether they just think the public would be too dumb to understand the strategic logic of their arguments, so they keep dumbing it down. 

Cordesman’s solution to Afghanistan is: throw resources at the problem, eliminate civilian oversight of strategy in the country, and a grand hand wave, “build the provincial, district and local government capabilities.”

To what end?  Apparently either the strategic goals are so obvious or Cordesman so doubts our ability to understand them that he does not bother to explain.

So, we’re left with three possible explanations for this sort of essay — strategic incoherence, unbridled arrogance, or inscrutable ulterior motives.