Good point

Matt Yglesias points out a blindingly obvious flaw in our Afghanistan policy:

As I understand it, our policy there [Afghanistan] puts economic development at the core of our strategy. But if the US government knew how to produce development in foreign countries just because we want to see it happen, the world would be a very different place. The fact of the matter, however, is that promoting development is really hard.

I am embarrassed to admit that despite my extensive rants on Afghanistan and years of working on economic development, this point never occurred to me.