At the Brookings Institutions’ event on policy options for Afghanistan last Friday, former U.S. intelligence official Paul Pillar offered one of the best framings of the strategic argument over Afghanistan that I’ve heard. “The ultimate objective of everything we do in South Asia is to enhance the safety and security of the American people,” Pillar began. “Unfortunately a lot of the debate about this Afghanistan issue has confused and conflated that ultimate objective, particular missions that may or may not enhance that objective, and particular strategies designed to accomplish specified missions.”

When you look at what our theater commander [McChrystal] has been focusing on, he has quite properly focused on strategies for accomplishing his assigned mission as he currently understands it. Which, to put it quite simply is to stabilize Afghanistan, or at least to prevent the current Afghan government from falling.

But President Obama needs to focus on a broader question, which is whether counterinsurgency in Afghanistan would enhance the safety and security of the American people enough to justify the costs and risks entailed. Or to refine the question even more with a counter-terrorist focus: Would the terrorist threat that the American people and American interests face without counterinsurgency in Afghanistan be enough different from what we would face with it…to justify the costs and risks of a properly resourced counterinsurgency?

In my judgment that difference is at best slight, and it may not even be in the right direction. And the main reason for that is the main threat from Al Qaeda, or any other terrorist group or movement, is not to be equated with control over a particular piece of real estate by the group itself, or by the friends or patrons of that group.

Pillar has made the latter argument about the relative lack of importance of safe havens before, most recently in a September op-ed in the Washington Post, but I think his larger point here is important. We shouldn’t just be asking whether the successful implementation of the Full McChrystal in Afghanistan will make us safer than continuing to muddle through, but how much safer? If the answer is “not much” or “hard to say,” does that really justify the enormous costs — both human and monetary — of a fully resourced COIN approach? I really can’t think of any other policy area where an administration doing a deep dive into these kinds of hugely important questions regarding efficacy and cost would be attacked as irresponsible dithering, rather than praised as due diligence.

Our guest blogger is Laura Heaton, Writer-editor for the Enough Project.

In a press conference this morning, choreographed to show a unified front after months of internal bickering, Secretary of State Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and Sudan special envoy Scott Gration released the official U.S. policy on Sudan.

For the past seven months, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Maj. General Scott Gration, has led the U.S. response to Sudan’s multiple challenges –- ongoing humanitarian crisis and political deadlock in Darfur, growing tension between North and South over a 2005 peace deal that is largely unimplemented, and increasing violence in the South in which Khartoum seemingly has a hand. Absent an official policy line, General Gration has had the leeway to implement an approach that many longtime Sudan watchers feel is inappropriately soft on Khartoum. (He even described his strategy as one in which he would hand out “cookies and gold stars” to encourage Khartoum to abide by its commitments.)

Fortunately, the policy paper released today demands accountability and verifiable progress on a wide range of issues before incentives would be deployed — although these benchmarks are not spelled out in detail.

Now is when things get tricky.

The evidence from Gration’s tenure so far — and even more importantly, the heinous 20-year track-record of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, or NCP — is unambiguous: Khartoum is not a partner that can be cajoled into behaving in the interests of its people. U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan has tilted dangerously in the direction of appeasement of the NCP headed by a man wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The policy on paper looks solid and seems to take into consideration recent lessons learned. Significantly, it states that “assessments of progress and decisions regarding incentives and disincentives must not be based on process-related accomplishments (i.e. the signing of a MOU or the issuance of a set of visas), but rather based on verifiable changes in conditions on the ground.” The policy on paper also blatantly shifts away from earlier indications that the U.S. approach would quietly ignore past state-sponsored atrocities in the interest of moving forward. For the millions of victims in Darfur and for the leaders who believed their culpability for past crimes could negotiated away in exchange for cooperation on counter-terrorism efforts, the acknowledgment that “accountability for genocide and atrocities is necessary for reconciliation and lasting peace” is critically important.

The new policy also calls for more formalized involvement of senior level administration officials, a welcome shift that will ensure that the day-to-day diplomacy on Sudan matches what senior administration officials have agreed to on paper.

Indeed, today’s policy roll out is a first step in changing the tenor of U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan. The de-facto strategy up until now has been deeply problematic, giving President Bashir and his close-knit circle of advisers (many of whom rose to power alongside Bashir after the 1989 coup) the chance to stall and make excuses, while fomenting violence and undermining peace efforts behind-the-scenes.

Allowing the status quo in Sudan to continue is a recipe for a return to war between the North and the South. If the Obama administration doesn’t build an international coalition around this policy, doesn’t recognize the dangers of the increasing attacks in the South and the ruling party’s efforts to stir up violence ahead of the South’s self-determination vote in 2011, and is not willing to use multilateral and unilateral pressures (which have a history of working) early enough to make a difference, Sudan will descend into war, with disastrous consequences for broader stability in the Horn of Africa. U.S. policy objectives, so sensible on paper, will go up in smoke as Sudan burns again.

This past weekend, the retailer Target agreed to take its “illegal alien” costumes off the shelves after receiving several complaints from immigrant rights advocates. Americans for Legal Immigration PAC’s President William Gheen quickly jumped in and has offered to appear on television and conduct interviews while wearing the costume in protest. Gheen, whose self proclaimed rallying cry is “Illegals Go Home!,” perceives the controversy as an attack on free speech, and hopes the demand for the costumes will rise and quickly lead to sold out inventories.

Gheen is offensive enough when he appears in public dressed as himself. Gheen has gone out of his way to use hateful vitriol and fear-mongering rhetoric to impart meaning on a term that is deliberately used to degrade an entire population. The American Defamation League (ADL) criticizes Gheen for demonizing “immigrants as drunk drivers, gang members, invaders, murderers, and disease-carriers.” He’s also gone as far as to compare undocumented immigrants to Hitler, explaining “this time Americans are the Jews and the illegal aliens and their supporters are the Nazis.” At a rally in 2007, Gheen told a North Carolina crowd that “illegal aliens” have “set up ethnic cleansing zones where if you walk past the wrong sign post, the invisible line, you’re under the threat of death.” He also blamed the presence of bedbugs, tuberculosis, and Chagas disease on what he perceives as a lax immigration policy. In other words, it’s people like Gheen who make a costume consisting of an orange jump suit, space alien mask, and fake green card controversial, if not downright offensive.

The National Hispanic Journalists Association has been urging media outlets to stop using the term “illegal alien” because it doesn’t “give an accurate description of a person’s conditional U.S. status, but rather demeans an individual by describing them as an alien.” Angelica Salas, Executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called the costume “distasteful, mean-spirited, and ignorant of social stigmas and current debate on immigration reform.”

Meanwhile, Think Progress reports that this morning, the hosts of Fox and Friends “couldn’t get enough of the costume.” Steve Doocy wondered where America’s sense of humor was and Brian Kilmeade called the costume “fantastic,” and urged undocumented immigrants who are offended by the costume to go to their local police station and tell them how outraged they are as “illegal aliens.” Michael Steele also appeared on Univision’s Al Punto this weekend defending his use of the term.

The Halloween costume was featured on the websites of Walgreens, Toys R Us, Target, Meijer, Amazon, and other retailers.

Yesterday’s suicide terrorist attack in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province “killed seven commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and dozens of other people,” including civilians. In a statement, U.S. State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said “We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives,” and denied any U.S. involvement in the attack.

This bit of diplomatic boilerplate was too much, however, for Commentary’s Noah Pollak, who is outraged that it took our government “only moments to respond to the utterly non-tragic and thoroughly deserved killings of some hardened terrorists and murderers,” and asks:

Why does the Obama administration work so hard to always reassure the Iranian regime that the U.S. has only its best interests at heart?

It’s really a wonderful demonstration of deepening neocon dementia that even a standard administration statement of regret at the murder of Iranians by terrorists is now viewed as inappropriately solicitous of Iran. I’m sure there were similar sentiments expressed by right-wing Iranians when Ayatollah Khamenei condemned the 9/11 attacks. As my friend Rob Farley says, every country has its neocons. And Iran’s neocons and America’s are united in the view that terrorism against people we don’t like isn’t really terrorism, and should be applauded, not condemned.