Partners In Seeking Defeat--Levin And bin Laden

The aging but quite powerful Democratic Senator from Michigan is now linked in his (indirect) call for an American defeat in Afghanistan with the direct call from the reclusive but still influential icon of Islamist jihad, Osama bin Laden. While politics is well known for making strange bedfellows, this combination is rather unusual.

Levin, who for reasons which quite elude rational explanation, is considered a real heavyweight on military affairs in the Senate. His opposition to increased deployments of American trigger-pullers to Afghanistan represents a towering challenge to President Obama. Having successfully evaded any connection to the war in Vietnam either as a fighter or a politician, Levin demonstrated his anti-war propensities with a justifiable opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

While the senator might have been on the side of the angels in voting against the totally misguided Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld adventure in regime change in Iraq, he has abandoned the angels to join with Osama bin Ladin in his insistence that the Afghan national forces be increased and properly trained before any additional American combat troops be sent there.

The Senator has made his opposition to further combat troop deployment quite clear for some while now, so his sharp response to Admiral Mullen's testimony on the subject today comes as no shock. Levin has been joined in his (indirect) demand for American failure by such other luminaries in the area of military affairs as Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha.

Mr Murtha, who is best known for his capacity at earmarking money and adept procurement of pork, makes much of his tour in Vietnam. On the basis of that experience he has concluded that US troops will not make any difference in the outcome of the war in Afghanistan. This, of course, is the same argument advanced by Osama bin Ladin.

The reality which quite obviously eludes all these profound strategists--to say nothing of some media outlets such as the San Francisco Chronicle last week--is that Afghanistan and the war there is not analogous to Vietnam and the American war there. President Obama is correct in rejecting the comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The American goals and methods in both wars are dissimilar. The nature of the opponent is also quite different.

In the American war in Vietnam there was never a well defined goal. Neither was there a relevant definition of victory so that progress to or from the goal could be assessed. Further, the US theory of warfighting was not relevant to the realities on the ground. As if these features--any one of which on its own would have all but assured failure--were not sufficient, American political and military decision makers never understood the nature and character of the enemies (plural) in the war.

The US faced what might accurately be termed a "mixed-state" set of opponents in Vietnam. There were North Vietnamese regulars fighting a moderate intensity conventional war. There were the Main Force Viet Cong who were classic partisan fighters capable of both mid- and low-intensity operations. And, there were the local Viet Cong units which were of the pure insurgent variety waging unconventional war.

Further complicating matters for the US was the insistence from the senior levels of government that while fighting three types of war against three types of enemy the Americans also build a modern western-style nation-state in South Vietnam. Adding this final feature constituted what President Obama warned against as being "over reach."

The pressure placed upon both military and civilian commanders in South Vietnam coupled with the inherent inefficiency of the indigenous military and governmental entities to produce an American take-over of the war. This was, arguably, the single greatest mistake of the entire US effort in Vietnam.

When the Americans shoved the South Vietnamese forces aside and took over the main burden of the war, the US lost its ultimate leverage on the South Vietnamese government--a credible capacity to decommit. It is the believable capacity to leave which gives an interventionary force and the government behind it the real power to enforce necessary changes in the local structures of politics and social or economic organization. We tossed that lever aside with the result that highly beneficial and quite necessary reforms were not undertaken by the Saigon regimes.

At first sight it is tempting to say that Senator Levin and others of his ilk are seeking to protect the source of American leverage on Karzai and company by retaining a credible capacity to de-commit. The temptation can be overcome without effort as none of these Strategic Deep Thinkers has shown in the past the slightest understanding of what constitutes effective leverage on a series of self-organizing groups such as those which jointly constitute Afghanistan and its government.

A second reason for rejecting the kindest possible interpretation of Levin's stance is that the time for developing and demonstrating a credible capacity to de-commit has come and gone. Too much has been invested in Afghanistan for the US simply to up and leave without at the same time acknowledging that it has been defeated by the Islamist jihadists of Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The realities on the ground and in the human terrain which constitutes Afghanistan and its people has been recognized by General McChrystal. His emphasis upon protecting the uncommitted majority of the civilian population from harm at the hands of either the Islamist jihadists or the well-meaning forces of the US and its International Security Assistance Forces represents the sine qua non of successful counterinsurgency.

McChrystal's insistence on carrying the war up close and personal to the strongholds of Islamist jihadism is the second sine qua non of successful counterinsurgency. His approach shows that he understands that counterinsurgency rests on presence--being there, on the ground, up close and persona; persistence--being there over time; and patience--the willingness to accept that there are no easy or certain measurements of success. Clearly, General McChrystal knows and understands the historically valid precepts of successful counterinsurgency.

Since this knowledge and its application have come to the game only quite recently and only after years of improper approaches undertaken by undermanned and under supplied forces, it is to be expected that results will not come quickly, easily, nor cheaply. However, results will come more easily (if not cheaply) now with both a proper theory of war fighting in place and the defining of a clear goal by President Obama--the destruction of the Islamist jihadist groups in Afghanistan.

Provided that President Obama can do three things, there is every reason to conclude that the US will achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of not losing within the next eighteen to twenty-four months. The three requirements for Mr Obama are: Keep to the simple, achievable and relevant goal; drop all the "nation-building" projects and allow the self-organizing dynamic of the Afghan people free reign; keep the members of the Democratic Party like Senator Levin, Speaker Pelosi, and porkbarrel champ Murtha on your reservation.

If the President can accomplish these three objectives, then there is a good chance that the US will avoid the looming analogy between the war in Vietnam and the one in Afghanistan. For the one true analogy can yet come to pass as the congressional ship of fools is blown onto the reef of defeat by the fickle but strong winds of public opinion.

We the People finally turned against the war in Vietnam in the early Seventies. Eight years, a death toll approaching seventy thousand, and no victory in sight deflated support for the war with a sickening suddenness.

The same is happening now with respect to Afghanistan even though the death count to date is barely over one percent of that in Vietnam. We the People do not have the stomach for a seemingly endless war without any prospect of a victory parade in even distant sight. Our disenchantment is evident and rising almost by the week--and even though a successful approach to warfighting has just been put in place.

The fonctionaires in Congress--particularly those of the "Progressive Caucus" who desire to save money in a war so it can be applied to any number of well-intended exercises in expanding public space--will ride the changing winds of the Vox Populi right out of Afghanistan and into the future wars with the emboldened Islamist jihadists of the world. By so doing they will impose a defeat upon both the US and the non-Islamists of Afghanistan identical to that imposed upon the Americans and South Vietnamese thirty-five years ago.

Go to the historical videotape, bucko. When the Saigon regime finally awoke to the reality that the US was pulling out, its army and the government generally became efficient and dedicated to fighting the war effectively for the first time. The irony came in that the Americans had trained the South Vietnamese forces to fight an American style war. A war which was heavy in firepower, mobility, and logistics.

The Nixon administration had promised the South Vietnamese that should push come to shove, we would provide the requisite firepower, logistics, and mobility support. But, when push did come to shove it was Congress which precluded the honoring of the promise. When the North Vietnamese did invade openly as everyone knew they would, the South was left high and dry without the promised support.

When the South shot its last round (which did not take long considering that each artillery piece had only five rounds per gun), its forces broke and ran. The South fell in a matter of days, not because it lacked the will to fight or the support of its people as was alleged by so many members of Congress, but because it lacked the means to fight. The means which we had promised but failed to deliver due to the same Members of Congress.

At the end of the game it was Congress which forced defeat on the South Vietnamese. Now it is Congress--or at least the "Progressive Caucus" in Congress--which seems hell-bent on doing the same in and for Afghanistan. That is the analogy yet to happen. It is the analogy which Osama bin Ladin wishes to see occur.

It is the analogy which Senator Levin and others of his ideological ilk wish to see happen. Worse, it is the one which they, and they alone, can perpetrate.

They will say with the straightest of straight faces that they are only doing the Peoples' Will. That they are only recognizing the reality that the US was in a war which it could not win. That they are only cutting the losses in American lives. That they are only doing the right thing.

This will be base prevarication. The real deal is that Senator Levin and his ideological soulmates are inflicting a defeat on the US, casting the bodies of the Americans who died in Afghanistan on the same garbage heap as those of the Vietnam War, consigning the Afghans to the less than tender mercies of the Taliban. And, far worse, letting loose the dogs of Islamist jihadism on the world for decades to come.

We could afford to lose in Vietnam. The real stakes were not that high. We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. The stakes there are higher than most of us suppose.

President Obama's Looming Losing Streak

No doubt about it. Being president has to be a lot more fun when your winning than when the losses mount. Now, the Geek isn't talking health care here. No, he is simply taking a look at what is happening in the soon-to-come loss column for foreign policy.

More specifically, the Geek is considering Afghanistan and Iran.

The Iranians have made it abundantly clear that the open-handed approach of the Nice Young Man From Chicago is a non-starter. The mullahs and their frontmen have brought forth their latest proposal for Making The World A Better Place. The Iranians have presented the West with a collection of soft, warm fuzzies dealing with high-minded and lofty sounding banalities. The Geek would love to quote them at length, but given the demonstrable Iranian record in sponsoring terrorism, bloody suppression of internal dissent, and rabid pursuit of strategic weapons, to do so would force him to engage in projectile vomit.

A proper comparison would be that of Stalin's government issuing a call for world reconciliation right after the NKVD had imposed collectivization on the peasants of the Ukraine or Hitler's regime calling for world peace on 3 September 1939. Suffice it to note that the Iranian five page proposal for nuclear disarmament, "Palestinian" rights, and expanding the UN Security Council are in that league when it comes to base hypocrisy and utter cynicism.

No sooner had the Iranian exercise in ignoring the issue at hand--the mullahs' pursuit of nuclear weapons--hit the desks of the Security Council permanent members foreign ministries than the Russian ForMin, Sergey Lavrov, opined that there was no need for further sanctions, let alone the use of force, as the Iranian proposal gave much reason for hope and grounds for discussion.

Lavrov helpfully pointed out that Iran and Russia were "partners" and that Iran had never done Russia any harm. The two states are partners in that Russia has not only sold arms--and a heavy water reactor suitable for producing plutonium--to the mullahs but has run diplomatic interference for them in every conceivable international forum. While the Chinese have been silent to date, there is no doubt but that Beijing will follow Moscow this time as it done previously.

In a move that is not surprising, the US State Department immediately branded the Iranian letter as being "not really responsive." You have to love diplomatic speech. "Not really responsive" is a lot nicer than simply dismissing the five pages of softly sentimental claptrap as a "mess of caca."

Of course the Russians are hoping for a little bit of the old quid pro quo from Tehran. The nature of the exchange desired by the Kremlin was buried in ForMin Lavrov's statement. He noted with pleasure that Iran was interested in "what positive role it could play in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the region." By "region" Mr Lavrov was thinking of some places far closer to the hearts of the Russian leadership than Iraq or Afghanistan. Places which fall under the general rubric of North Caucasus. The Kremlin hopes without any basis in fact that Tehran can exercise some moderating influence on the Islamist jihadist leaning nationalist insurgents in Chechnya and surrounding territories.

The mere reality that the Iranians have no more influence upon the insurgents of the North Caucasus than Obama has on Tehran is no reason for the Russians not to hope to the contrary. Hope is a lot easier to hold than effective operational dominance oriented counterinsurgency is to develop.

Of course the combination of the Iranian demarche and the Russian response does kick the can back to the Americans. President Obama set what seemed to be a deadline for a constructive and realistic stance by the Iranians as occurring some time this month. Depending upon the interpretation the deadline can be either the opening of the UN General Assembly or the meeting of the G-20 in Pittsburgh. Both are coming down the pike in the next couple of weeks. And, no matter how one parses the Iranian letter, it is neither constructive nor realistic.

Israel is getting nervous. Reports out of the country indicate some real fear that Obama is going to move the goalposts further down field. Say until the end of December. Or, even more alarming, that President Obama will concede that the Iranians can continue enriching uranium as long as they promise, really, really promise that they will not make a bomb out of the stuff. This sort of policy shift would allow the president to claim that he had not backed down, that he was not acceding to an Iranian bomb, but was acknowledging the country's right to possess peaceful nuclear technology.

Of course, such a distinction does not constitute a meaningful difference--regardless of international inspections or mullah promises. Once enough low enriched uranium is on hand, the time and effort needed to upgrade the stuff to weapons grade is marginal. And, there is little if any doubt that Iran now has sufficient low enriched uranium on hand for the rapid production of anywhere between one and three weapons of modest yield.

Worse, give sufficient time (say somewhere between three and six months), the Iranians would not only be able to distribute their low enrichment stockpile to several hardened sites but also divert centrifuge production to the making of high enriched uranium. Time is on their side. Period.

The rubber will hit the road for the Israelis before the Spring Equinox. Assuming no improvement to the Iranian air defense capacity, the Israeli Air Force with some assistance from the navy can hit successfully the majority of the critical, identified Iranian nuclear facilities. But, the time frame available for this is limited--quite limited. To have a good chance at success, the attack(s) will have to take place during the next 120 to 180 days.

This means that the rubber will hit the road for the Obama administration as well. While it is in keeping with Israeli history for them not to seek American permission before launching an attack as in the case with the Iraqi nuclear reactor nearly thirty years ago, it is not likely that this would be the case with an attack on Iran. The stakes for both Israel and the US (to say nothing of the rest of the world) are simply too high for a launch-now-tell-later approach.

The same time frame applies for the situation in Afghanistan. To accomplish the goal stated by President Obama last month--the defeat of al-Qaeda (and by implication, Taliban)--will need more American trigger pullers. Not trainers and advisors. Not rear echelon wallahs. Trigger pullers. Men who kill up close and personal. Men who take risks. Men who die.

At a minimum the US must put another twenty thousand right index fingers on an equal number of triggers. Obama's fellow "progressives" are against this idea. Senator Reid is against the notion. So is Speaker Pelosi. So is an increasing number of We the People.

All of this implies that President Obama will have to demonstrate an amount of intellectual and moral courage which he so far seems to lack. He has to be what he pronounced on the campaign trail that he did not want to be--a wartime president. He has to show leadership, real, honest to gosh leadership. Not the milksop sort he has been addicted to over the past year and more, a pose of nice words, lofty phrases, fine sentiments.

President Obama has to convince the American people--and more importantly his soulmates within the Democratic Party's "progressive" element that the US effort in Afghanistan is not only a task of world historical importance, but that our goal of obliterating the Islamist jihadist entities there is achievable. The president must articulate what is at stake in that hell hole of mountains and deserts, Islamism and tribal loyalites.

What is at stake is not the building of a modern nation-state in Afghanistan. That is both irrelevant and potentially counterproductive. The stake is far more important and far closer to home. On this eighth anniversary of the most deadly attack ever delivered to the continental United States by a foreign enemy, it is critical to remember that Islamist jihadism can only be countered, defeated, removed as an ever looming threat by the obliteration of the Islamist jihadists in Afghanistan and along the Pakistani border. And, by so doing, provide an object lesson to all future governments everywhere what the consequences of harboring a hostile group will be.

Only by the infliction of condign and salutary punishment on al-Qaeda and Taliban can future Islamist jihadist groups and governments which sponsor, support, or offer "Islamic hospitality" to these bad actors be deterred. Only by this exercise in punitive military operations can future American national security be protected.

This is what is at stake in Afghanistan. Not the Karzai government. Not "full and fair elections." Not women's rights. Not the notion of creating a Western style bureaucratic state with all the paraphernalia of post-modern statehood. None of these.

President Obama must make it clear to all of We the People--and members of his own party in particular--that it is future American lives and national security which is being fought for by the trigger pullers on the ground. He must do what Bush and Cheney never did--make the goal clear, the cost honestly appraised, and the consequences of failure apparent to even the most ideologically blinded "progressive."

Unlike the war in Vietnam, the American war in Afghanistan is one we cannot afford to lose. The consequences would be too great, too long lasting for us to shrug off defeat along with the lives of those Americans killed in Afghanistan.

Death is a terrible price to pay. But, a much, much worse price would be a future lived in fear. A future filled with terror both actual and potential. The only way to have the chance to prevent future 9/11's is to fight it out now in Afghanistan. Fight and win.

Obama faces two possible defeats in the next few months. If he is defeated by either the mullahs or the Islamist jihadists, his loss will be shared not only by all of us alive today, but by those Americans yet to be born.

Sometimes being president just isn't any fun. And, it will get even less fun before the first flowers of spring pop thorough the snow next Spring.

(Illegal) Drugs And Insurgency II

Insurgencies at every step of their development from the coalescence from inchoate political discontent all the way to the final stage of armed conflict are both self-organizing and emergent systems (in the definitions generally employed in chaos theory.) This means that each and every insurgency, or, to err on the side of accuracy, each and every group which mounts an insurgency, has a very real weakness. A weakness which, if noticed by the counterinsurgent status quo and properly exploited, means the insurgents will lose.

It's worth mentioning in passing that the same weakness exists in partisan movements such as the French, Norwegian, Dutch, and other resistance groups during World War II. The only exception to this general rule was the Yugoslavian forces under the command of Joseph Broz Tito.

Self-organizing emergent systems have very real advantages in the waging of political or armed conflict against a more tightly structured opponent such as great flexibility, a willingness to innovate, faster reflexes when confronted with new challenges, and a widely distributed leadership echelon. All of these pluses have been on display in Afghanistan and are responsible for Taliban's increasing tactical sophistication as well as its impressive physical growth over the past few years.

Also on display, but not so widely noticed by both civilian and military observers, has been the weakness shared by all insurgent entities. The weakness is both simple and inherent to the dynamic of self-organizing emergent systems. Taliban, like all such groups throughout modern history, is subject to perturbation because of its lack of a command and control system which exists independently of personality.

Structural integrity is achieved only painfully and slowly in all insurgent movements. The merging of components, the acceptance of individuals as leaders, the maintenance of either loyalty or obedience to the leadership structure are neither quickly or easily developed. Once in place these are not retained let alone strengthened without great, continuous effort--and a fair amount of bloodshed.

One of the often overlooked facts of insurgent life is the amount of effort expended in movement consolidation and purification. The lurching progress of all precursors of insurgency along the track from latent political discontent to armed conflict is marked by two interlocking phenomena.

The first is the gradual emergence of evermore extreme positions on the part of leaders which brings with it an evermore extensive agenda, evermore expansive goals and an increasing unwillingness to compromise with the status quo. The second walks in tandem with the first. The increasingly expansive goals of the insurgent movement demands greater commitment from all the movement's adherents. As a result movement consolidation is reinforced by movement purification.

The less committed, the less willing, the less extreme members must be eliminated. Groups which do not share the totalistic agenda of the emerging leaders must be purged. Those who waver, those who say, "yes--but," those who are willing to accept, even search for compromise with the status quo must be eliminated lest they poison the political will of the hard core.

These twin phenomena are the reason that many, if not most, insurgent entities kill more people within their own natural constituencies of support than among the supporters of the status quo. Bluntly, insurgent movements must consolidate and purify their central structures if they are going to last in the field against the status quo forces. Insurgencies eat their own young.

Insurgent movements which emerge in the context of traditional tribal societies riven with ethnic or linguistic differences are more likely to have great difficulty establishing the minimum necessary degree of command and control structure. This is paralleled by evident problems in establishing and maintaining a committed consensus upon goals and means beyond some sort of hazy, vague overarching and typically symbolic end.

This implies that the status quo and its supporters are not fighting one monolithic insurgent group with a generally accepted chain of command and a universally supported goal. Instead the status quo is seeking to counter a large number of insurgent groups each with a slightly different set of motives and goals, each with its own organic leadership.

This dynamic presents a set of clear vulnerabilities wide open to exploitation by the status quo. It is important to see these deep and exploitable features as being separate from but aligned with the other, contextual divisions which can be exploited by the status quo. These, the contextual divisions within the contested population, have been considered in earlier posts and will be put aside here.

The essentially and necessarily fragmented nature of self-organizing insurgent groups has been recognized at least in practice in a number of earlier counterinsurgent campaigns. The government of the Philippines went for the wedge between various components of the Huk insurgents with a varying degree of success. American special operations and clandestine service personnel did the same in South Vietnam with the Quang Ngai Special Platoon program and some aspects of Operation Phoenix.

In these campaigns as well as others, there was no theoretical basis for the operations, but rather they were ad hoc efforts at divide and conquer. The absence of a unifying theory helped assure that these efforts at organizational perturbation were not integrated with other aspects of the counterinsurgent strategy. As a necessary consequence, results were limited in both space and time and were finally defeated by the insurgent's self-organizational roots.

Afghanistan provides an almost ideal theater in which to focus on organizational perturbation, to take advantage of the fatal weakness which exists in the self-organized nature of Taliban's many, many component parts. The Taliban is a loose congeries of local groups, each of which has self-organized from the unique human context of its home turf. Not all are wedded to the extreme, austere version of Islam which marked the Taliban of Omar. Not all are even slightly interested in taking power in Kabul.

The leaders of many, perhaps most, Taliban constituents are looking for the best possible deal. The best possible deal for themselves personally as well as the best possible deal for the folks back on the home turf. For some the "best possible deal" includes some sort of Shariah, but for others it does not.

Hamid Karzai understands the fundamental reality of Taliban in Afghanistan, even if we do not. He understands that playing fifty or sixty different forms of "let's make a deal" are more important to his retaining power than the sacred (to the West) ritual of elections. He has telegraphed his priorities by stating that he will talk peace with those Taliban leaders who are willing to accept the "constitution of Afghanistan."

Karzai apparently also understands that there are limits to coercion when facing self-organizing emergent systems as your political-military opponent. There are places for coercion, but it is not a universal solution since pressure, particularly lethal pressure, consolidates a group long, long before it fractures the group's political will to continue. Karzai's offer of talks, more importantly the way this offer has been nuanced each of the several times it has been made, indicate that he properly, even if intuitively, appreciates the nature of organizational perturbation and its "good twin," co-option.

Hamid Karzai may be a very unpleasant and difficult person. He may be corrupt personally, given to vote fraud, nepotism, lining his and his relatives pockets, but there is a critical role for him to perform if we are going to eliminate al-Qaeda and the Islamist jihadist contingent within Taliban. He is the warm fuzzy in comparison to the cold sharpies of our forces taking the war to the most committed of Taliban and other Islamist jihadists.

Our role is to protect the civilians of the uncommitted majority, assist in demobilizing the soft core support for the Islamist jihadists, and to kill those of the hard core, the True Believers of the Taliban groups. Our role is to demonstrate the very undesirable alternative to the "big tent" which is being offered by Karzai.

It must be recalled that self-organizing entities respond to the environment in which they exist. Think of it as evolution in action. Those Taliban components which have evolved in the direction of Islamist jihadism must go extinct. That is up to us and our allies. Other components of the Taliban which are less committed to martyrdom must be encouraged to form a "separate peace" with the central government of Hamid Karzai.

Because the process is non-linear, it is impossible to predict in detail what will finally result from the combination of the Karzai Peace Offensive and the McChrystal Doctrine. In broad brush terms it is possible to forecast that the outcome will not be a Western style liberal democracy with separation of mosque and state, an independent judiciary, free enterprise, a free and open media, women's rights, and all the other features so rashly promised by the neocons of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Because the process of self-organizing from the bottom up which is what is going to happen in Afghanistan regardless of the intents and plans of foreigners is inherently messy, about all that can be predicted is that Afghanistan in the near to mid-term will become more stable than Somalia but less so than, say, Bangladesh. Over the next few years Afghanistan will be far less Islamist, far less inclined to the jihadist than it was under the unified Taliban of Omar, but far less secular than, say, Pakistan.

But, even this less than optimal outcome will be impossible unless and until the outside actors, including, most importantly, the US realize the limits of coercion and the unpredictability of organically self-organizing groups which move from the bottom up, from the local to the central, from the private space to the public. This is a very difficult paradigm shift for Westerners, particularly Americans to make right now.

It requires that we set aside the past seventy-five years of increasingly centralized government, ever more expansive public space, and think back to the "horse-and-buggy-days" of our earlier history. It requires that we place our faith, not in experts, in lawyers, in economists, in authorities on government operations, human rights, and all the other paraphernalia of our post-modern institutions and orientations. It means we must place our trust in people, a culture, and a context alien from our own and often quite incomprehensible in our terms.

A tough task to be sure, but one we must undertake successfully. The alternative is a Taliban victory under one guise or another. And, that means living with more Islamist jihadist terror.

(Illegal) Drugs And Insurgency

Hang on, bucko, the Geek is not going to do a replay of all the bloviation on the relation between the opium trade in Afghanistan and Taliban's financial base. Nor is he going to blather on about how FARC is really a narco-trafficking protection racketeer or the similar joining of the renewed Shining Path and the cocaine trade in Peru.

No, siree. Not a chance. Been there; done that.

Today, kids, the focus is on the identity of dynamics between the emergence and development of drug distribution networks and that of insurgent groups and the movements which arise from these. The point of commonality between these two disparate, equally illegal, types of entity is that both are self-organizing, dynamically stable, and far more inherently flexible and adaptive than the social, political, and legal structures which seek to confront and defeat them.

The Geek first noticed the commonalities when he came back to the world after a fun filled multi-year tour in a far away country experiencing armed political turbulence. He had the chance to live for some time in a small city in southern New Mexico which was not only convenient to the international border but possessed a moderately large university with a diverse student body including a number of people from Mideast countries.

As was (and is) so often the case, New Mexico lagged behind the rest of the country in social trends. The Summer of Love had long since come and gone. The "Hashbury" out in San Francisco was overrun by Gray Line buses filled with camera toting tourists, and the hippies had departed for other pastures of plenty. Only then when even Fargo, ND had experienced an influx of drug use did the town where the Geek temporarily lived find the joys of LSD, pot, hash, and other such substances.

Where a demand exists, a supply will surely follow. Adam Smith's "hidden hand" exists to assure that. The Geek watched as the HH went to work.

Several distribution networks emerged in the Fall and Winter of 1968. Of the "big five", three developed among locals, two of these were of middle class Anglo nature with one forming in the Mexican-American contingent. The other two emerged from out-of-state students at the university.

Importantly, all of the "big five" self-organized within social groups comprising people who either had or wished to have psychedelic experiences. The first stage of self-organizing was simply the sharing of stashes and expressing a desire for more of whatever, usually pot, 'shroom, LSD, or, less frequently, speed.

Within each group--groups which were united primarily by a taste for drug use and place of primary residence and little else--one or more individuals showed themselves willing to acquire more for the benefit of the group. It was really rather like the tune done by New Riders of the Purple Sage--the one where Henry goes down south of the border to meet the man "who has it growing from the ground."

After the preliminary couple of trips down south or out to Los Angeles, the intrepid specialists in procurement self-organized into a loosely coordinated "importers association." This allowed for both economies of scale and specialization in procurement. For example, one person ran the speed connection out of LA. Another was oriented toward the acquisition of hash from North Africa coming through Lebanon. Yet others worked the rat line into the interior of Mexico for both weed and 'shroom. Yet another couple of individuals had firm contacts for acid made in labs both in Arizona and California. (For the sake of being complete, peyote was available locally. All one had to do was go out in the desert southwest of the valley and take a look--and harvest.)

The import association assured there was little chance of the "whole town is dry." It also made certain that profits were equitable and greed was restrained for mutual advantage.

Importantly there were no guns involved. (OK, one dude liked to go around strapped, because he had a real macho thing, but his piece was always unloaded.) Neither was there any aggressive marketing. No one hung around the local high schools or middle schools saying, "the first one is free. Heh, Heh. Prices on the street were low, lower than in larger cities such as Albuquerque, Tucson, or El Paso.

The reason for the low prices was quite simply the lack of risk. The movers and shakers of this town had no clue that there was an emergent system in their midst. The low profile, self-organizing nature of the drug distribution network coupled with the absence of violence or spikes in crimes against property as well as the lack of aggressive marketing assured that the emergent system flew below the local radar.

Law enforcement had no priority on counter-drug efforts. The city, for example, had but one drug cop. This man was unambitious and liked to sit in his unmarked car eating Cracker Jacks to an extent that the back seat was so overflowing with the empties that it would have been impossible to put a prisoner in it. Anyway, everyone knew who he was, where he was, and saw no reason to worry.

After a year of development, the multi-group, two tiered network was well developed. Everyone involved seemed quite happy with the arrangement. Well, they went around with quiet, knowing, and pleased smiles on their faces. It looked as if a satisfactory stasis had been achieved.

To the Geek it was all quite similar to the opening phases of the multi-stage process by which latent political discontent slowly evolved toward a political movement with vague goals and hazy leadership. In the area of political discontent and the progress of self-organization toward insurgency, the initiative always rests with the status quo. The Geek suspected it was the same in the evolution of drug distribution networks.

So events of Spring 1969 proved. The precipitating incident was small, even trivial. The results were totally non-linear. That is the output was disproportionate and unpredictable on the basis of the input.

The precipitating event was the discovery by a parent of some pot in the possession of her high school age son. The kid had taken some from the stash of his elder sister as he admitted to dear old mom.

Mom was an activist in the local Democratic Party. She went to a man who was not only a state senator but the president of the biggest bank in town and a genuine heavy hitter in state Democratic circles.

This man saw an opportunity. And he took it. The banker was one of those people who wondered often, loudly, and boorishly about "what the hell is wrong with the kids these days?" Tossing his considerable political weight around, the banker forced the formation of a multi-agency task force to end the drug menace in the county.

The country sheriff as well as the county district attorney was a man with lofty political ambitions. Both had watched enough TV to know that an anti-drug crusade would be beaucoup important to their futures. So they joined the banker with a will, a whoop, and a holler.

Because the banker was head of the relevant Senate committee, the state police joined the effort. Not to be outdone and suspecting an "international" connection, both the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (as DEA was known back then) and the Border Patrol/ Customs joined the wolf pack.

In no time at all an inter-agency task group deployed a flood of undercover officers and sought to recruit informers by the bus load. The banker was pleased. His efforts had created a coalition of city, country, state, and federal lawmen which had a total roster of over sixty sworn personnel and, ultimately, over seventy-five informants. The law enforcers outnumbered the aggregate import association and local dealer assemblage by nearly ten to one.

The high point of the state's reaction to the self-organizing system was a pre-dawn raid conducted by more than two hundred badge wearing men. Over a dozen (fourteen to be precise) dangerous drug dealers and narco-traffickers were arrested. The front page of the local newspaper was filled with pictures under the screaming end-of-the-world size type headline "Handcuffed and Waiting!"

The status quo's exercise in coercion resulted finally in either acquittal or overturning on appeal of all but two of those arrested. More embarrassing to the status quo was the simple fact that virtually all of those arrested were good products of good homes of a solidly middle class and primarily Democratic families. None were the scourge of humanity criminals TV convinced many were at the root of America's drug crisis.

It deserves mentioning that the state's mis-fired attempt to end the drug "menace" only had an impact on two of the "big five" groups and then only in part. The day after the big raid, those who wished to purchase a no-no substance had no difficulty doing so.

In the years following the Great Drug Bust the nature of the drug distribution networks changed. Prices went up. Aggressive marketing tactics were employed. Turf battles occurred. Opiates and cocaine replaced lower profit items. Guns were carried. And used. The new self-organizing systems became more structured, more hierarchical, more, in a real sense, professional, more businesslike, more Mafia like.

Over the next thirty years or so the Geek spent a fair amount of spare time beavering away in archives, old police records, and other documentary sources to get a handle on whether or not what he had observed in the small New Mexico city was standard. He found out that it was.

Starting in the Fifties and ranging forward in time to the Nineties, the pattern was repeated in town after town, city after city, even those cities with pre-existing criminal syndicates. The pattern was simple.

All drug distribution networks are self-organizing. All start at the bottom and organize upwards. Where law enforcement is lax, prices are low, violence is absent, secondary crime (crime committed to obtain habit maintenance resources) low, aggressive marketing nonexistent, as are turf battles. Enhanced law enforcement measures drive evolution of the networks in the direction of greater structure, more aggressive recruitment of new customers, more violence, and all the the other high profile consequences.

At the same time, the enhanced law enforcement is ineffective because the networks never lose the self-organizing capacity with its inherent flexibility. At bottom, enhanced law enforcement is an evolutionary challenge. The new stresses, the increased risks, drive a process of adaptation in which the initially self-organizing dynamic of the network gives it an advantage so that the law enforcers can never, have never, gained and retained the initiative.

In a race between the ponderous structures of the state and the bottom up, self-organized networks, the latter always have the advantage. Indeed, the record suggest that the networks have such an inherent advantage that while some are caught, some are killed, the network will continue--and expand. The proof of this contention rests in the constant dollar cost of an effective dose of whatever illegal drug. Because of improvements in technology which have resulted in ever increasing potency and purity, the average cost of a user's "effective" dose of drugs as disparate as pot and smack have dropped consistently over time.

It is fair to conclude that the state's attempts at coercion have not only failed, they have been counterproductive. As the price of drugs has dropped and availability increased, the consequences of increased pressures such as greater violence and more aggressive recruitment of new customers have grown. From the perspective of the law enforcers it has been a lose-lose situation--for them.

The Mexican government has been learning this lesson in a particularly bloody way in the past two years. So are others albeit in less sanguinary fashion.

Now, bucko, you might have the question, "What has this got to do with insurgency?"

Well, the Geek suggests that you look in tomorrow or the next day. Thunderstorms make the Geek's postings a bit unpredictable right now.

The Saudis Go Over The Edge--Again

Prince Turki al-Faisal has written recently that the US is "dependent" upon Saudi oil and as a result the American relationship with the feudal House of Sand will continue forevermore. The prince, who is a definite heavyweight among the reactionaries running the Saudi shop, is of the view that the gluttonous use of energy by the American economy and military will never be satisfied without the oil under the dunes of the Arabian Peninsula.

The position taken by Prince al-Faisal proves that the Saudi, not unlike the French generals of World War I, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Thirty plus years ago, the Saudis were the parade marshals for two rounds of oil embargo directed against the US.

The first one caught us unaware and not motivated to be either flexible or inventive. We groused, spent forever in lines, underwent rationing, bit down and paid more--a lot more.

The second big Saudi blockade had a different result. That time around We the People, our enterprises, our inventiveness had a positive and very real effect. The upshot was a major trajectory of energy efficiency in all areas: industry, private residences, transportation. Our conservation efforts paid off handsomely, even though the government funded efforts to make oil shale and tar sands competitive came a cropper.

Indeed, as the Japanese found out in the Eighties, challenging the US, knocking the American eagle off his perch so that his beak sticks in the eagle dreck on the bottom of the cage, doing a Japan, Inc endzone dance could and did prove quite counterproductive. The decade of Ronald Reagan was also the decade of "rightsizing," of making business of all sorts more efficient, more effective. The human costs were high, both in the near and long term, but the end results put paid to the notions offered by all too many pessimists that the day of the US was done and the new age of Japan, Inc was upon the world.

Prince al-Faisal has flipped us, each and everyone of We the People, a big, royal bird. He has said rather bluntly that we lack the will both political and individual as well as the capacity to find a replacement for Saudi oil--so we had better be damn nice to the reactionary Islamists who rule the land of the shrines.

Of course the US cannot curtail its use of oil greatly in the short-term. Oil and other fossil fuels must be seen as necessary bridges on the way to developing energy systems which are not based on these prime movers. But, Prince al-Faisal had best take note of such realities as the newly proved three giga-barrel field on the Mexican continental shelf.

He might also contemplate the possibility that the political winds in the US might shift suddenly so that the self-imposed restrictions on exploiting the potential reserves on the American continental shelf or the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve will be removed. The short-sighted purveyor of insults directed at us might also consider that the oil shale and tar sands still exist and the technology abandoned thirty years ago has remained under development so that the cost-price considerations which were negative then are not so now.

The princeling turned pundit might stop pontificating on what the American public will and will not, can and cannot do long enough to read some US history. If he could get off his high camel long enough to do this he would discover quickly that We the People are both ready and willing to bear sacrifice--if the cause be good, and the results clearly foreseeable.

While we are making recommendations, it is reasonable to make the same suggestion to the Nice Young Man From Chicago and the entire global warming crew behind the current energy and carbon limitation legislation. Now, to paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth, "You who have two good eyes, better read."

President Obama, the Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party, Prince al-Faisal just like President Jimmy Carter thirty years ago have missed a critical point in the nature and character of the American people which is quite self-evident in our history. All of these worthies have underestimated both the will and ability of individual Americans working collectively in mutual self-interest.

Back in the cardigan sweater before the fireplace days of the Man From Plains, we were implored to "think small," to be happy with less, to accept a diminished state and quality of life. President Carter, showing his engineer's training and preacher's orientation, earnestly pitched his energy policy in terms of doing with less, living closer to the bone, aspiring not to great dreams but small ones. He did not challenge us to think our way to a new approach to energy prime movers, to the equivalent of the manned space program in developing new technologies, new methods, new and great industries with the potentials (and risks) these would entail. He did not call upon our best aspects, but rather on our least.

As a result which was drearily predictable We the People met President Carter's sermons with a collective yawn and a complete unwillingness to go beyond the purely symbolic. We trusted that somehow, someway, things would get better with time.

They did. Even with the combination of Federal expenditure and corporate short-term thinking and the failures it produced, things did get better. In fits and starts, in bits and pieces, the energy "crisis" resolved itself.

Now the anthropogenic climate change fanatics and their political enablers including President Obama baying in the van seem hell bent on not only repeating the errors of the Carter years, but expanding upon them in the interests of an agenda of enhanced public space and the necessary concomitant, decreased private space. Like President Carter they sell fear, limitations, and decreased aspirations for the future. All are predicated upon a total lack of faith in the capacities of We the People.

Changing the profile of energy prime movers as well as enhancing the efficiency with which energy in all its forms is used will require sacrifice. By all of us. The degree and dollar amount of the necessary sacrifice cannot be determined with either accuracy or honesty. Suffice it to posit that the collective sacrifice in mode of living (and costs) will not be negligible.

To motivate us, the Nice Young Man From Chicago and his merry crew of doomsayers, must call upon our best aspects, our highest motivations--and a sense of collective outrage. It is absolutely essential that the need for energy prime mover change be pitched not in terms of global warming (or to use the new, politically correct formula, global climate change) but rather to cut the US free from the reactionary, Islamist, hostile governments such as that in Saudi Arabia.

Global climate change, even if it is a reality rather than the positing of a collection of physicists, pundits, and politicians pursuing an arcane agenda, is simply too hazy, too vapid, too distant a prospect to inspire, motivate, and focus the effort and will of the American public. It is too much of an artifact, a construct of debatable merit, to serve as the platform for shared sacrifice of an unknown amount and duration.

Prince al-Faisal's insulting declaration that there is no way, no way at all, no new ideas, no new technologies, no political base for cutting the US free from the Lords of the Sand and Oil puts the matter in a sharp, exploitable focus. The Prince has said, in essence, that the Saudi Oil Dog can and will continue to wag the American tail.

Implicitly, the prince is stating that the US must follow Saudi and the Saudi dominated oil sheikdoms in its foreign policy. He is saying in clear terms that the Arab hand on the oil valve waves the whip over Uncle Sam's back. By his reasoning, the US is enslaved to Arab oil and as a necessary result is at the command of the Arab master.

The concept of slavery, enslavement, and the relation between slave and master is endemic to Islam. It is endemic to the Arab worldview. It is a powerful reality not a mere metaphor in the mind of people such as Turki al-Faisal.

Turki al-Faisal is also taking a position of an intensely nationalistic sort. While President Obama and many in his administration along with the majority of the elites in Western Europe and the US believe that we are living in some sort of post-nationalist world, the overwhelming preponderance of governments, elites, and people around the globe think otherwise. To most of the many states and billions living today, the interests of the nation trump some sort of vague idea of "humanity," or the "international community" or the bumper sticker thinking of "we are all passengers on spaceship Earth."

As a consequence, if the US Congress, the Obama administration really, really want to reconfigure the American energy prime mover mix, it is utterly essential that it be recast in terms of definite American national interest. The arrogant Saudi prince and prophet must be the poster boy for the campaign to change the profile of our energy prime movers.

For years, decades really, the US has lost its ability to operate freely in the world. Treasure notes to China and petrodollars to the Arab states take with them a measurable degree of American autonomy in world affairs. Recently the Chinese have been hinting strongly about how many indebted US dollars they hold. Now Turki al-Faisal has all but written that We the People are his slaves.

Push has come to shove. Now is the time to put matters clearly and honestly. The US must claim its freedom. Energy independence must be more than a political slogan. It must be the reality. And, if a lower "carbon footprint"comes in the bargain, well, nothing wrong with that.

The only real question is whether or not President Obama and his fellow "progressives" have the will, wit, and guts to call reality by its right name. And, act upon it. Decisively and effectively. The will, wit, and guts to call upon the best of We the People and not play to vague, faint fears.

Well, that is an unknown. If the Geek were a betting sort of guy.... Well, he ain't.

Gates And Mullen Talk Afghanistan

The equally experienced and realistic SecDef Robert Gates along with the ever-so-diplomatic Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, held a Washington ceremony today. They held a joint press conference. There were no surprises.

Both men belabored the self-evident with the pro forma vigor of beating a dead horse. You betcha, things are far from good in Afghan Land. You betcha, the US won't lose (we think.) You betcha, there may be a need for more boots on the ground even though all the boots (and loafers for the civilian "surge") authorized by the President have not arrived yet.

And, the deadest horse of all: We have only started an effective effort in the past few weeks. Right you are, Chief. No one bothered to call the blunders of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld years an "economy of force" approach. That, at least, was refreshing.

Far less refreshing was the unwillingness or inability of the two men to acknowledge a reality every bit as evident and even more compelling than those which they dilated upon. That troublesome reality is the nature of the Karzai regime, or, for that matter, any central government, even one which is everything the Karzai bunch is not.

As has been demonstrated in previous posts, the place for troops and aid alike is out in the boonies. Out with the tribals and the villagers. Out among the real Afghans who know what is needed for them to feel and believe two important things: That the Americans are not pursuing an imperial interest alone but are willing and able to insulate the locals from the destruction and death of war; and the Americans will follow the local's guidance regarding the requirements for a viable, dynamically stable, self-organizing community.

Karzai, his government and the civilian advisors to that corrupt Kabul based Frankenstein are not directly relevant to the announced goal of obliterating al-Qaeda and by implication Taliban as well as convincing future Afghan governments not to make the mistake of offering harbor to Islamist jihadists. In Afghanistan history, demography and culture alike combine to insist that any genuine, legitimate government in Kabul be the result of the interactions among local, self-organizing communities.

Anything else will be brushed with the tar of foreign imposition. This reality has doomed past Afghan central governments, most recently in the years following 1979.

If either Mr Gates or Admiral Mullen had made that observation and commitment to the dictates of realpolitik, it would have transformed their little ceremony into something really important. A real news event with the headline: Administration Officials Get A Grip.

Just About Everybody Wants Out--

Of Afghanistan, that is. Remember, the so-called "good war?" Yeah, that one. The one which was deemed non-essential by only six percent of We the People when Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld launched the disastrously ill-conceived "shock and awe" campaign without enough trigger pullers on the ground to do much more than look on as the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence pulled their Taliban and al-Qaeda clients out of harm's way. And, then compounded their collective blunder by initiating not "mission creep" but rather "mission leap" into an ill-founded, non-achievable exercise in "nation-building."

Now over half of We the People surveyed apparently want the US out of Afghanistan. This is echoed throughout the European population. And, this percentage is bound to continue on its upward trend along with the number of American dead.

The support for seeing Americans die or come back home wounded--often desperately with life long and life crippling results--will be further eroded by the sick circus of the presidential election in Afghanistan. With every passing day there are more--and more credible--allegations of vote fraud on Hamid Karzai's part which put to shame the game played by Ahmedinejad. The latest involves the prevention of voting in an entire district with the Karzai gang forging nearly twenty-four thousand votes for the incumbent.

While no one expected the election to be honest, fair, and transparent, the actions of Karzai and company are rather too, too much. The massive cheating by the incumbent is completely in keeping with the massive corruption which has and continues to characterize the current Kabul regime. It is also completely compatible with the inherently friable nature of tribal politics when such are artificially projected onto a "national" scale.

The fraudulent election, the corruption, the inefficiency of the central "government" are all to be expected in a population which is deeply divided along ethno-linguistic and tribal lines. It is part and parcel of a "nation" which has been united only rarely and then because of a combination of external pressure (think invasion by foreigners) and a charismatic indigenous leader. These conditions have been met only rarely since Alexander the Great briefly touched on the Afghan consciousness.

The emergence of a central government will come if and when the self-organizing imperatives emerging from the population as a whole compel it to. Until and unless that happens, any pretense of a central government can only be installed and maintained by brute force and oodles and oodles of external financial aid. This mixture might keep up the pretense of government, but it cannot provide for the reality of one.

The brutal ground truth is simple to get a grip on. The mission of the US must be limited to the destruction of al-Qaeda and Taliban. The destruction must be so complete and so evident that no future government of Afghanistan, regardless of its commitment to Islam, will repeat the mistake of Omar and his Taliban--allowing Islamist jihadists to root themselves in the rocky soil of Afghanistan.

President Obama maintained last month before an audience of VFW members that this was the strategic goal of the US. That this goal made the effort in Afghanistan a "war of necessity." If his words were honest and remain so, he was and is right. If not, then, the US and its allies are well and truly on a treadmill to oblivion.

Gen. Stan McChrystal has changed the US tactical and operational doctrine significantly. But, from the direction of change, it may be hard for some to see the direct relation between what appears to be an enhanced "nation-building" approach and the requisite penumbra to accomplishing the strategic goal presented by the President. McChrystal's emphasis upon "clear-and-hold" as well as limiting the use of airpower and refusing combat if such would unduly put civilians at risk is both prudent and realistic--even if the end goal is simply the obliteration of the Islamist jihadist entities and as many individual jihadis as possible.

Among the many who fail to see the linkage between the McChrystal doctrine and the Obama Objective is George Will. His recent "retreat now!" op-ed in the WaPo makes that pellucid. Somehow, somewhere, Mr Will has gained the impression that General McChrystal and his troops have morphed into a collection of armed social, educational, and economic development workers who also pull triggers. Further, he seems to be under the misapprehension that successful counterinsurgency (and a successful counter-jihadist war as well) require an effective central government in full control of the territory and population of the country.

He agrees with the British historian of World War II and the Falklands Islands War, Max Hastings, that "our" Afghans are equivalent to "our" South Vietnamese forty or so years ago. By implication that means that both "our" Afghans and us are on the road to defeat. Both the linkage and the analogy are as wrong as a cat barking.

Wrong that is if President Obama was being honest, straightforward, and full of only the truth when he spoke to the VFW. (Admittedly, his track record in the honesty and being filled only with the truth is quite dubious.)

Assuming for purposes of argument that President Obama had an uncharacteristic attack of truthfulness and that he continues to labor under its after effects, there is reason to believe that General McChrystal was right, that the situation in Afghanistan is "serious but salvageable." It is also necessary that one way or another the general receives the additional troops which are so obviously necessary to achieve the redefined goal.

It is necessary for foreign troops--our troops in the main--to interpose themselves between the Islamist jihadists and the uncommitted majority. It is necessary that we fight in a way which consistently and as a matter of operational design does not kill civilians.

The uncommitted majority not surprisingly are like people everywhere. They want to be insulated from war's dark devastation. A complication emerges from the fact that while no Afghan wants to be killed by a fellow Muslim, all find dying at the hands of an "infidel" far worse. As the Geek has written before, "Muslim killed by Muslim--bad. Muslim killed by infidel--very, very bad."

This means that our people have to be placed at greater risk. It means fighting up close and personal. It means our physical presence must be real in the eyes of the population. And, presence, the sine qua non of interventionary operations, brings higher friendly casualties as surely as new boots make sore feet.

Worse, at least from the perspective of We the People, our troops have to maintain their presence over time. Persistence is the second sine qua non of success in interventionary operations. And, the longer we persist, the more friendly casualties will result.

Finally--and this is the most difficult sine qua non of all at least for Westerners in general and Americans in particular--patience is necessary. There are no phase lines in an interventionary operation whether the goal is countering an insurgency or obliterating Islamist jihadists. This kind of war does not end with an unconditional surrender. Nor does it end simply because a fatuous leader declares, "Mission accomplished!" This kind of war simply fades out. Hostilities simply taper off. The noise level subsides. The number of bodies, both friendly and hostile, simply decreases--ultimately to zero.

Hostilities end but that does not mean the conflict has been resolved. This is a major reason that countering an insurgency can be a multi war affair as the Russians are finding out one more time in the North Caucasus.

Conflict resolution is an emergent system. It is a self-organizing dynamic which must result organically from the local contestants. It will be messy, even inherently chaotic. It will not meet the expectations or policy requirements of foreign observers. But, it is the only way in which an internal political conflict finally can be resolved.

This implies something quite important for US and other policy makers. It also has an important implication for US and other troops on the ground. The soft power aspects of conducting what is at root a very, very long punitive expedition must be applied at the local level. This means the central government, the Karzai regime must be bypassed, ignored when it comes to providing local necessities whether police, medical clinics, educational systems, infrastructure development, or economic development.

By directing all--well, at least most--soft power money and advice to the locals, it is possible to both capitalize upon and facilitate the self-organizing that is critical to both providing assistance in the war against the jihadists and laying the foundation for effective conflict resolution. The locals: the tribals, the men in the villages no matter what they need, what they lack, what they must have to feel like members of a dynamic and functional community. It is these locals who we must work with--not the wallahs in Kabul. They can wait. They have no where to go.

So far the signs are that General McChrystal understands all of this. So do most of those under his command. Regardless of jihadist bombing spectaculars, the jihadists are on the defensive. As long as clear-and-hold continues, as long as we carry the fight to the black turbans, as long as we seek to gain and retain the initiative, Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the others in country have no chance of winning.

George Will is wrong. So also are the "progressives" among the Democrats of the House. So is public opinion. Provided that President Obama does not change his mind, or choose to sell out the war and all those Americans killed and injured in Afghanistan to achieve some bit or another of his Great Transformational Agenda, the situation is "serious but salvageable." The US can yet achieve its minimal strategic goal of "not losing." We can still achieve the somewhat more expansive end of obliterating the Islamist jihadists and providing a long lasting object lesson in the perils of hosting those who seek to harm us.

That is if President Obama has more brains than a lettuce and more backbone than a banana.