The Right Metric for Afghanistan

Richard Holbrooke believes that, like pornography, the U.S. will know success in Afghanistan when we see it. Well. That's reassuring.

More substantively, Katherine Tiedemann offers a few more tangible metrics.

National Security Advisor Jim Jones has reportedly "approved a classified policy document on July 17 setting out nine broad objectives for metrics to guide the administration's policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan," but another couple of months are needed to work out the details. One metric under consideration is an opinion poll to gauge how corrupt Afghans view their public officials.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has said that another measure of success is the number of civilians protected, not the number of Taliban militants killed (and indeed, CENTCOM is not publicizing the latter). Although that first metric is much harder to calculate, it shows the Obama administration's focus on implementing counterinsurgency strategies in the Afghan theater.

Another yardstick of progress will be how legitimate the international community considers the August 20 presidential elections.

I find it fairly remarkable that none of the metrics floating around for Afghanistan include: 1. al Qaeda; 2. al Qaeda's ability to attack the U.S. Isn't that what this is supposed to be about?

(AP Photos)