Our students at SAMS, who have been looking at the problem closely over the last 10 months, in coordination with planners on the ground, have seen the same problem and came to essentially the same conclusions that the McChrystal report came to. Were their own ideas to be implemented, the strategy would focus on winning in the villages by focusing development and building good governance at the local level in order to rebalance the role of local / tribal leadership with that of the central government.
But the question remains, even if we plus up by 40k in additional to the 60k already there, is that enough to sustain a village-centric strategy?

Can we build good governance at the local village level if we can't even get it in the cities? Shouldn't we try to build some capacity where the GiROA at least can recruit officials?

I totally agree that we cannot just abandon the villages to Predators and Taliban, but if we can't at least secure Kandahar, what good is it to plant Marines in a few dozen Helmand villages?