Thinking About Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about U.S. policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan. The article was written by Jack Devine, former CIA deputy director of operations and chief of the CIA Afghan Task Force. His underlying premise, we have failed to learn from Afghan history.

Mr. Devine advocates a "covert ops, work with the tribes" kind of approach in lieu of our current large military presence attempting nation-building. His analogy is that we beat the Soviets when they were using the strategy we are now using. He believes a return to our former strategy would be more successful.

I have no idea if Devine is right. Afghanistan is not Iraq and nation-building seems not to be working.