The New York Times special report on Afghanistan

The New York Times released an fascinating and incisive analysis of the myriad pages of classified information that it, along with two other newspapers, was granted access to by the website WikiLeaks.  I think this analysis clearly shows that American involvement in Afghanistan is not going as well as American military and political leadership wishes, and not as well as it portrays those efforts to the American public.  I cannot help but feel that the lack of adequate governance in Afghanistan, especially relative to the presence of strong governance in Iraq, plays a key role in stifling our efforts to rein in corruption, defeat the Taliban, and strengthen Afghani military and political institutions.  Afghanistan has more territory than Iraq, fewer people, is less economically developed; its political institutions are less centralized and more corrupt.  The success of our efforts there, it seems, rests on America's ability to strengthen political institutions so that Afghanis have no need to turn to the Taliban to resolve their political or territorial or other claims, and strengthening military and para-military entities such as the police force so that they can defend their territory against invasion attempts by Taliban troops.  The strengthening of political institutions sounds like a long process that requires financial and military commitment from the United States over a very long period of time.  The Afghanistan war has already taken 10 years.  I have doubts that America can maintain the level of investment needed in Afghanistan to build the political and military institutions in the face of disruptive Taliban forces and the recently-revealed extensive involvement by Pakistani intelligence.  In light of these difficulties, perhaps American goals in Afghanistan should be curtailed to simply be the creation of a central Afghanistan government free of Taliban personnel.  And that increasingly sounds like a government that has cut a deal with the Taliban of some Taliban governance or power in return for non-agression.