Mike,

Thanks for posting these. This is so long over due. To this point we have held Afghan Sovereignty in complete disregard, demonstrating through our actions the hollowness of our own words when we toss about terms like "Legitmacy" "Sovereignty" "Justice" and "Respect."

Any government elevated into power by an external nation or other source of power is presumptively illegitmate, regardless of any holdings of any offical legal bodies to the contrary. Legality and legitimacy are not the same thing. In our pursuit of effective and efficient defeat of the Revolutionary and Resistance insurgencies in Afghanistan we have to this point placed the very perceptions of the non-Northern Alliance populaces of Afghanistan that are critical for stability far behind what we saw as reasonably necessary authorities and activities to defeat the insurgent threat.

This is what happens when one comes to see their intervention as being "COIN." The host nation, as sovereign, conducts COIN. The intervening party assisting such a government is conducting FID, and fundamental to FID is the subjugation of ones actions to the sovereignty of that host nation. To do other wise is to make a joke of the very government one seeks to support. It places what one needs to be tactically successful secondary to what one needs in order to be strategically successful.

If this were an American colony and all we needed to do was suppress the insurgent fighters so that our puppet government could get on with serving our interests over those of the nation they run for us, then suppression of this nature is good enough. Though that is what the bulk of our COIN doctrine is based upon, that is not our mission in Afghanistan, and that is not "good enough." This is a big step toward getting right with the people of Afghanistan. GIRoA may well fall, but if they fall it will be because they did not deserve to stand. Either way, Afghanistan is finally on a path toward earning true sovereignty and legitimacy in the eyes of not only their own populace, but the entire world,

Now, I do not know if a Northern Alliance judge issuing a warrant in a Kabul court is going to mean F-all to a Pashtun living in the mountains of Uruzgan Province, or the suburbs of Kandahar. We may be applying an American solution to solve an American problem. I suspect a more recognized forum would be a local shura with village, tribal and religious leaders, who then go as a body to the home in question and ask for the offending citizen of their community, backed by appropriate Afghan security forces. One won't likely find very many guys still at home in such an approach, but that in of itself is a metric of how powerful the insurgency to the current government is in much of the country.

We must learn that it is far better to achieve horrible results doing things right than it is to achieve tremendous results doing things wrong. This is a big step in the right direction, but we are losing control of the situation and effectiveness is out the window. Perfect. For those who are thinking, "we may as well pack up and go home," you are not far wrong.