Max Boot and Fred and Kimberly Kagan’s report on Afghanistan in The Weekly Standard is well worth reading in full. The three authors played key roles in making the case for the surge that has helped to transform Iraq and their comparisons of the two countries are instructive and suggest that the situation is less dire in Afghanistan than is often portrayed.
One thing that is hampering the effort in Afghanistan is coordinating the various members of the coalition. Aside from the caveats issue, there are simple problems that could—and should—be resolved. For instance, take the situation at ISAF headquarters:
‘most Americans stay in Afghanistan for at least a year, most other NATO soldiers are on four- to six-month rotations, making it almost impossible to achieve any coherence or continuity. Even NATO officers privately admit that the resulting arrangement is, as one of them put it, “partially dysfunctional.” Their American counterparts are more scathing.
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