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Update: Exum responded to me by e-mail, but I don't have permission to use it yet. However, I think it is safe (and important) to tell readers this: Exum did not advise the Obama campaign on Afghan issues. That renders moot most of my concerns regarding conflicts of interest and re-judging Exum's writings in context. More to come later.

A sharp critique of U.S. military intelligence efforts in Afghanistan, written by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top intelligence officer in the country, is making waves in Washington, D.C.; even, it seems, inside Flynn's own place of business -- the Pentagon -- which on Tuesday seemed a little taken aback by his decision to publish the article -- which doubles as an official directive -- through the Center for a New American Security.

"I think it struck everybody as a little bit curious, yes ... My sense is that this was an anomaly and that we probably won't see that (in the future)," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters. "It was an unusual and irregular way to publish a document of this nature."

I think Flynn made a bold, honest and correct decision -- he lived up to the expectation of information sharing that he has now demanded from his own officers. (Cynically speaking, he's also made himself look like a great think tank candidate, should he find that the wind leaves his sails after uncorking a grenade like this.)

I took yesterday off from blogging to catch up on some "real" work, so I'm just now reading up on the latest developments from Afghanistan.

First, there was a bit of good news yesterday: Kai Eide, the head of the United Nations mission in Kabul, announced that he will step down when his term ends in March. Eide insists this isn't a resignation -- "I'm just not renewing my contract," he said yesterday. But it's clear that he sees the writing on the wall, after months of controversy over his handling of the Afghan election.

It's Sunday afternoon and I should probably be watching football, but this Cowboys-Redskins game was so dreadfully boring that I found myself reading about Yemen instead.

I imagine the Obama administration is starting to think about a "Yemen policy" (if it hasn't already). The country is making headlines because of the insurgency in the north and an ongoing problem with al-Qaeda, which reportedly kidnapped a Japanese engineer last week (though the Yemeni government denies this report). And Yemen is also starting to get some attention on the D.C. think-tank circuit -- most recently from the Center for a New American Security, which published a paper on Yemen last week.

Against that backdrop, it's worth asking a fundamental question: Just how much can the U.S. hope to influence events in Yemen? The answer, I think, is "not much at all."

Reliable chronicler of Washingtonian long-war/small-wars/counterinsurgency/counterterrorism culture Spencer Ackerman has penned an overview of the Obama administration's Afghanistan debate for the National, and he does an admirable job of summing up the reasons for the current state of limbo.

Ackerman's piece is basically a clip job, but in this case I don't mean that derisively, since he manages to bring a number of subtle contradictions and details into focus. I was particularly struck by his description of the events following the September leak of the classified Stanley McChrystal Afghanistan assessment. Remember, the Washington bureaucracy had already been set in motion six months earlier, when the Obama administration released the results of a strategy review for Afghanistan and Pakistan laying out specific goals.

Obama's reaction [to the McChrystal leak] was to announce that his cabinet would begin a series of internal debates about what strategy to adopt before addressing McChrystal's much-telegraphed [troop increase] request. The move stunned many midlevel and lower officials. Hadn't the white paper been the strategy? Wasn't that the whole point of sending McChrystal to Afghanistan? It's well and good to revisit strategy in the face of setbacks, some thought. But was the administration returning to square one after the bureaucracy had begun the slow and arduous process of mobilizing for counterinsurgency? Had Obama truly understood his own strategy? And if not, how could he be trusted to craft a new one?

Not with every word. But Friedman highlights the key problem with nation-building in Afghanistan.

Because when you are mounting a counterinsurgency campaign, the local government is the critical bridge between your troops and your goals. If that government is rotten, your whole enterprise is doomed.

The counterinsurgency enthusiasts tend to gloss over this inconvenient fact. Richard Fontaine and John Nagl -- both from the Center for a New American Security -- actually argued, in a not-very-convincing Los Angeles Times op-ed on Monday, that Karzai's corruption helps the COIN strategy.

But even Gen. Stanley McChrystal admits that Karzai's corruption greatly undermines U.S. efforts, according to the AP.

4:58 p.m.: Biddle has gone back to the issue of safe havens several times. His basic argument is that Al-Qaeda needs a "safe haven" to avoid detection by intelligence agencies.

What havens do is not to provide real estate for the construction of tent farms where you run training seminars... protect terrorists from human intelligence collection on the ground, which is the primary threat to their survival.

I've said this before, but I think it's crucially important to consider the counterfactual in Afghanistan. The country has a very limited intelligence and security apparatus. Can a pro-Western Afghan government really keep tabs on Al-Qaeda? Or will the group be able to establish safe havens anyway, right under the government's nose?

4:27 p.m.: The senators keep dropping the names of lesser-known Afghan provinces and villages (Zabul! Kunar!). I guess this is an effort to demonstrate their expertise? It's getting annoying.

Oh well. At least they can find it on a map.

Water scarcity in Yemen, and the government's inept response to it, is contributing to that country's unraveling, Princeton University PhD candidate Gregory Johnsen tells the Center for a New American Security's Natural Security Blog in an interview posted today.

Johnson has spent several years in the Middle East, including a couple in Yemen, where he was a Fulbright Fellow. He tells CNAS that the Yemeni government of Ali Abdallah Salih is losing legitimacy as it becomes "increasingly unable to provide services to many of its citizens."

The New York Times is beginning to write about a trend we here at The Majlis identified more than two months ago - an increase in Iraqi violence since around the time of the official U.S. withdrawal from the cities in June.

Maliki is getting criticism for decisions he has made about security that seem to reflect his political desires rather than on-the-ground necessities, like removing protective T-barriers, the Times reports.

Money quote: "The prime minister and the Iraqi people paid the price for their reach exceeding their grasp," said John A. Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert and president of the Center for a New American Security, a research institution in Washington. "The insurgency is not over."

Andrew Exum is hosting an "Afghanistan Strategy Dialogue" over on his blog, debating whether the war in Afghanistan is in U.S. interests and, if it is, what it can realistically accomplish. It's a long-overdue discussion in Washington policy circles, considering American troops have been in Kabul for a staggering eight years.

Anyway, days one and two are worth reading, but I specifically wanted to comment on something in today's submission.