Bureaucrats can't change society, unless they work at the Pentagon

Here's the key paragraph in his column:

Again, the issue is not whether government acts, but whether it acts with an awareness of the limits of its knowledge. Sometimes we seem to have a government with no sense of those limits, no sense that perhaps government officials don't know how to restructure General Motors, pick the most promising battery technology, re-engineer the health care system from the top, or fine-tune the complex system of executive pay.

Isn't this exactly what the U.S. is trying to do in Afghanistan (and in Iraq, another war Brooks supported)? We're trying to install democratic governments and free-market economies in countries that have neither. We're trying to change ancient cultures which most Americans -- including the ones on the ground -- simply do not understand.

Why isn't Brooks calling for a sense of humility in Afghanistan? Why doesn't the Pentagon need to acknowledge the "limits of its knowledge"? We can't reduce systemic risk in the financial sector by kneecapping a few bankers -- but we can install a transparent, representative government in Kabul in a matter of years?

Counterinsurgency strategy demands far more arrogance and self-assurance than anything the Obama administration has tried to do in the financial sector. I don't see how Brooks can condemn one and praise the other.