It's hard to argue with this approach, first because it is always better to promise less and achieve more, rather than promise more and achieve less (a rule the Bush administration too often failed to grasp).
Second, crushing the Taliban and al-Qaeda is a top-line U.S. strategic interest. Helping foster a free, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan is a more challenging and much longer-term project.
Another lesson we should have learned by now: America cannot export democracy. The best we can do is support democrats where we find them and when they are bold enough to fight for freedom. If there are no serious Afghan democrats, there will be no Afghan democracy no matter what we do. But if there are serious Afghan democrats, we have a duty to assist them, and it's in our enlightened self-interest to do so.
That said, if Petraeus, as expected, develops for Afghanistan a counterinsurgency strategy -- COIN, for short - as he did for Iraq, it will include building local governing capabilities and promoting economic development. Without that, it's not COIN.
In Iraq there is change and in Afghanistan there is the anticipation of change - though perhaps not the change some of Obama's supporters expected. That's a reason for hope.
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