The Picture of Success in Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s Civic War - NYTimes.com

With all the focus on the recent Rolling Stone article, this Times article seems to have received little notice. It is one of the best I've read in terms of describing the challenges of the Afghanistan War. In particular it shows U.S. soldiers spending their days tending the multiple layers of local leadership and governance while the Taliban spend their nights disrupting these fragile bonds. The Taliban's work is obviously easier as their purpose is simply to frustrate our efforts by acts of violence and intimidation. One would expect that as our troop levels increase, the Taliban's night visits will become increasingly rare. Should this come to pass, we will have succeeded in Afghanistan. For all the moral complexity of this war, protecting civilians while they sleep may be the clearest duty, though even here tactics may prove otherwise.