How Is Ravin' Like FP's Writing Desk?

I don't agree with the "Down the AF-PAK Rabbit Hole," but props from one reformed Victorian lit student to Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason in Foreign Policy for going deep in the first quarter to come up with this lede:

The release of Tim Burton's new blockbuster movie, Alice in Wonderland, is days away. The timing could not be more appropriate. Lewis Carroll's ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.

Other than the English geek observation that Alice wasn't so much inspired by opium use, why disagree with the authors? Because Marjah is not as they claim a "nearly worthless postage stamp of real estate" that is being secured in "a giant public affairs exercise, designed to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating an illusion of progress." The geographic area of Operation Moshtarak -- much larger than the town of Marjah that has become the media shorthand for the offensive -- connects two larger areas of the Central Helmand River Valley previously secured by U.S. and U.K. forces. Insurgents had turned the area into a safe haven for operations against Afghans and international forces, including what was the primary point of manufacture for the improvised explosive devices used in southern Afghanistan.

In other words, the Marjah "postage stamp" was on a letter bomb addressed to the Afghan people as well as the young men and women of more than 40 nations serving here. Securing this area means establishing a contiguous zone of security in the popular and economic heart of the Taliban insurgency -- which is exactly what the political and military strategy laid out for Afghanistan says we should do. Operation Moshtarak isn't the alpha and omega of stability in Afghanistan. But it's not a bad start.

There's no shame in using real success consistent with strategy to boost public support of the strategy, because you're not creating false hope. You're reflecting real hope. What's being peddled in Afghanistan right now is not the illusion of progress but the gen-u-wine article. How long will our policy and media elites remain so bitter about the Bush era that they're unwilling to buy it?