Success In Afghanistan? "We'll Know It When We See It," Says Holbrooke

By Steve Hynd

This from Katherine Tiedemann does not fill me with confidence:

Asked about how to measure success and progress in Afghanistan, Holbrooke remarked, "In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue: We'll know it when we see it."

As Dave writes, war policy should not be compared to porn if you want to be taken seriously.

It doesn't seem to have inspired a number of A-list bloggers who have been widely on-board with Obama's plans for Af/Pak until now either. Tiedemann notes:

A universal head-desk rippled through the Twitterverse, with Foreign Policy blogger Mark Lynch tweeting "Feel reassured?" and Spencer Ackerman chiming in with "Is there alcohol here?" CAP's Brian Katulis asked, "Will 'we know it when we see it' be convincing enough for the American people and the Hill, focused on econ and health care?" and FP's own Josh Keating drew the parallel, "Holbrooke suggests AfPak success like pornography: 'we'll know it when we see it.'"

Stephen Walt writes:

So I guess those elaborate benchmarks the administration has been trying to develop don't really matter. Holbrooke will just let us know when we've won. Or lost. Until then, you critics can stop asking those pesky questions.

"Stop asking those pesky questions" is the message from the editors of the Small Wars Journal, noted stenographers for the Pentagon, too. Is this going to be the new benchmark policy? Apparently so, since at least some of the color-coided metrics the Obama administration are still working on, more than four months after Obama said they's be forthcoming, are going to be classified, secret, "stop asking pesky questions".

There's a sense among progressive bloggers who have opposed Obama's Bush-lite plan from the very first that we've finally reached a tipping point where the Very Serious People are beginning to sound just like us. Spencer Ackerman, who I get the feeling has been torn between his wish to be a good Obama-supporting Democrat and his common sense from the very first, lays down a long essay at the Washington Independent today exploring exactly how the few voices of the Get Afghanistan Right blogger coalition have slowly but surely morphed into a mainstream unease about "early signs of erosion over unclear goals, increased U.S. resources, and new concern that the counterinsurgency strategy embraced by the administration commits the U.S. too deeply to peripheral tasks." It's well worth a read.

Holbrooke's faux pas will accelerate that movement. Still, only some of those VSPs who tip will ever admit to their original cheerleading, nor will the original skeptics ever get mainstream credit for doing some of the tipping. C'est la vie!