From Newsweek (h/t James Joyner)

Joe Biden, White House Truth Teller | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

As Joyner points out, “Biden’s got a point.”

But it isn’t an obscure point.  It’s not something that only one or two people with special expertise might be able to point out.  It is a basic, fundamental, and wholly OBVIOUS point.  And the fact that this simple argument is sufficient to reduce the Sit Room to silence is profoundly telling, and unquestionably puts to lie the notion that our policy toward “Af/Pak” was ever well vetted.

My great frustration is not that many people disagree with me on Afghanistan.  That happens.  It is a complex issue and smart people can disagree on many points, large and small.  My frustration is that over and over and over, it has become clear that it isn’t that decision makers have considered alternative arguments and rejected them, but rather that the process has been so poorly designed that even the most basic, the most simple, the most obvious of questions and objections usually illicit first silence, then a mumbled, “that a good point” followed by a return to the previous talking points without further consideration.

It is maddening.