Brooks on Karzai's Organized Crime Ring

First, I have to say that I loathe Hamid Karzai. How dare he run a corrupt government and then expect the U.S. to preserve his status. He needs to step up and take care of his people and his country. Not likely though. Conservative columnist David Brooks offers his insights on why Obama moved away from the COIN (counterinsurgency) strategy to come up with another:

First, they say, COIN is phenomenally expensive. It consists of doing a lot of things at once — from increasing troop levels to nation-building — and doing them over a long period of time. America no longer has that kind of money, and Americans won’t accept a new 10-year commitment having already been there for eight.

Second, it may be possible to clear and hold territory, but it is looking less likely that we will be able to transfer it to any legitimate Afghan authority. The Karzai government is like an organized crime ring. The governing talent is thin. Plans to build a 400,000-man Afghan security force are unrealistic.

Third, they continue, the population in Afghanistan is too dispersed for COIN to work properly. There would be a few bubbles of security, where allied troops are massed, but then vast sanctuaries for the insurgents.

Fourth, COIN is too Afghan-centric and not enough Pakistan-centric. The real threats to U.S. interests are along the Afghan-Pakistani border or involve the destabilization of the Pakistani government. The COIN approach does little to directly address that. Read it all at NYT