So I subtracted for bias in all directions, and I view my conclusions as provisional. I spent my time in Afghanistan looking at, and talking to people about, the civilian side of the effort; beyond that, I'm just another reader. But I do leave Afghanistan with a number of (provisional) observations:

1) Historic experience suggests that we won't make much headway. Our efforts at state-building -- or even "building capacity," as we more modestly say today -- have succeeded in postwar settings with a prior history of governance, like Germany and Japan after World War II. In postwar settings where deep antagonisms remain, like Bosnia and Kosovo, we have made much less progress toward building a legitimate state. Because much of Afghanistan remains a war zone, consumed by civil strife, the inherent probability of success is low.

2) Nevertheless, tender shoots of governance have broken through Afghanistan's ancient crust. In places like Arghandab, where the Taliban presence has been significantly reduced, local government has begun to operate, and people have begun to look to the state for economic opportunity, basic services, and the redress of grievances. That's called the social contract.

3) This is necessarily the work of slow accretion. Stanley McChrystal, commanding general in Afghanistan, has promised to deliver what he calls "government in a box" to newly cleared districts. The military hopes to stand up, or perhaps defrost, as many as 48 of these in coming months. This is a fantasy only a military bureaucracy could entertain.

4) The great struggle on the civilian side will be increasing the number of success stories and connecting them to the provincial and national government -- and doing so over the next year or so. Will this happen? Here I do see a meaningful pattern of belief and disbelief: Non-officials close to the ground are deeply skeptical of Afghanistan's willingness and capacity to establish what is known as "subnational governance." There may be no way of getting around the Karzai problem. "Does Karzai want to see provincial government improve?" asked a Western official involved with the process. "Or would he prefer to keep it weak and feeble?"

So I come back to the first question: Can it work so long as Karzai remains Karzai? The West's Karzai problem is that he spews venom and tolerates warlords like his brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai. Afghanistan's Karzai problem is that while he is obsessed with his personal legitimacy, he seems indifferent to the creation of a legitimate state. That may be an insuperable problem. So mark me down as a skeptic.

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