The Washington solipsism

The announcement and interpretations of the Afghanistan/Pakistan "policy" have said nothing about those actual countries, and here is the reason:

The problem--"how to make the US government move"--has now been solved, as the USIP dude says.

“We have never seen this level of political attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is easy to underestimate how much that attention means.” Beyond the additional diplomatic, aid, and military U.S. personnel being committed to the mission, Thier added, “Fundamentally to have such high level support by people such as Richard Holbrooke who really know how to make the U.S. government move – we haven’t seen before.” J. Alex Thier of USIP

So naturally we can now expect smooth sailing, says CAP:

I think the odds of the multi-modal influx of military forces, civilian development and governance experts, and money working are pretty good. MY

In other words, the view is that the debilitating effects of inter-agency sectarianism have been overcome--in Washington. If you want to know what that has got to do with anything in the region, well...