A propos whether success is possible in Afghanistan, Hampton forwarded me this Time article by Rory Stewart which is must reading. His arguments are specific to Afghanistan, a country he knows intimately from having walked across it in 2002, but also read as a manual of restraint and modesty in the conduct of foreign policy, especially when that foreign policy is increasingly outsourced to the military. I’m tempted to clip a paragraph or two, but instead I’ll just strongly encourage you to click through and read through to the end.
