Dayuhan:

You hit on it in the last line: What is it that can be done on a budget and schedule that is in the process of a radical downward shrink.

Since 9/11, there was a holiday from economic reality, and the cost is catching up.

How to do the most important things with that limited pie, in the places where it will have the most effect is a very different problem than: we are here so we must do something with the tools we brought.

Jonathan Alter's book covers the recent Obama review of Afghanistan, where Gen's Petreaus and McCrystal promised that if he committed to the COIN strategy and troop build up, they would be done before the start of the next Presidential election cycle. That was a civilian policy maker reacting to a military promise (Cross my Heart and Hope to Die), which he has now staked his political future on, rightly or wrongly... and the promise and plan keeps shifting like the sands.

I have always seen Afghanistan in the context of a confrontation of the new world to a very old vendetta based local culture whose time may or may not be done. Either way, surrounding development, population, and geo-political pressure continues to drive inexorably the conflict.

One obvious alternative is to substantially boost the Non-Pashtun population, and let it crush the Pashtuns and disable them after some ten or so years of crushing hardships (stop investing, stop aid, kill whenever you can). But that result is obviously undesirable, so we get dazzled with the idea of remarkably transforming things as if, like the US, everything turns on a dime. Just doesn't work that way.

Sure, it is the tenth year in Afghanistan, but most of that was low-intensity, low-commitment. Now, we want to do everything fast, including curing years of emerging defects in our strategy. Why? Because domestic patience, and other demands are all catching up. What to do?