The Newshour persists in inviting the COIN charlatan, John Nagl, to comment on the "progress" of the Afghan War. Last night (transcript not yet available) they used him and Vali Nasr, dean of SAIS, for interrogation by Judy Woodruff. For some reason the Newshour has misidentified Nagl as a retired lieutenant general when in fact he retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. Perhaps they think that gives his remarks greater weight. I wrote to them about this and they have changed the label on their website.
Nasr was the sensible person that he always is. Nagl continues to expect us all to believe that all is well in Afghanistan, that the training of the Afghan military and police is proceeding well in spite of minor disturbances caused by the murder of NATO people by these same Afghan security forces. Nagl said at the end of his self destructive comments that all will be well because the US will persist in Afghanistan for another ten years at least, and remain committed to Afghan security indefinitely.
Well, he doesn.t have anywhere else to go rhetorically. When the end comes, his end as a public person will come with it. Perhaps he could write another seminal book about how wrong he was in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It could be entitled, "Learning to play Buzkashi without a horse." pl
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/afghanistan2_09-17.html
