That’s what I got out of this quote from a top Army commander today. You have to look at statements from the military in Afghanistan with an eye toward their goals and desires. They want to maintain their military presence as much as possible, and also create a safety valve so they receive no blame for any failures. So when I read this:

There’s no practical way for U.S. troops to seal Afghanistan’s vast border with Pakistan and stop all Taliban fighters from slipping through, so they are focusing on defending vulnerable towns and fighting insurgents on Afghan soil, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday.

Army Col. Viet Luong said that “to secure the border in the traditional sense” would “take an inordinate amount of resources.” He said it also would require far more cooperation from the tribes inside Pakistan who often provide Taliban fighters safe passage.

I think about a few things. Those maps showing a deteriorating security situation inside Afghanistan conflict with the narrative of progress being served up by David Petraeus. They have to be explained away somehow. The border crossings provide that opportunity. Then, add that it’s impossible to stop without “cooperation” from Pakistan, that without a presence there, you cannot logistically seal the border.

We know from Wikileaks cables that special forces operations are already occurring inside Pakistan, essentially expanding the war. But that hasn’t been widely reported. So the setup here is to say that the only way to increase security for good in Afghanistan is to expand the war into Pakistan and stop the cross-border attacks at the source.

There’s a bit more than that going on here; Col. Luong commands the forces in eastern Afghanistan, including that porous Pakistan border. He has an incentive to say it’s impossible to police rather than admit to some failure on the part of his command. Still, I can’t help but think that the military is itching to blame the failures of this war on the inability to have “flexibility” in going after extremists in Pakistan. And when that fails, surely the blame will be placed on extremists crossing some other border, maybe from India. And then they’d move to Myanmar, and Thailand, and Indonesia, and so on, and so on, and so on. Why, it’s almost as if extremists can set up shop anywhere to project attacks, and a whole war strategy based on “denying safe havens” is ridiculous!

UPDATE: Insurgent groups are actually teaming up along both sides of the border. But you can’t police the Afghan side of the border, so don’t blame the military.