A quibble with Yglesias on strategy:

Where have we sent our best-regarded commanders? All to Iraq rather than to a theater of more strategic importance to the United States [Afghanistan], where our operation has more legitimacy, and where there’s a real chance we could secure more international assistance with our efforts if we were willing to make them a bigger priority.

Afghanistan was more legitimate, to be sure, and as such would probably get more nation-building support from the rest of the world if America was more engaged. But I’m not sure what Matt’s getting at with regards to strategy. Afghanistan is more strategically significant because… what? We can menace Pakistan’s unruly provinces from across the border?

I’m not arguing by any stretch of the imagination that Iraq was a good idea. But now that it’s been done, I’d say that focusing our attention on it is at least as much of a priority as Afghanistan. An ungovernable, fractured Afghanistan is what we’ve been living with for centuries. An ungovernable, fractured Iraq, with its vast oil wealth, is more unpleasant to contemplate.