The way the Pentagon and its defenders have pushed back against this story is to say: "They weren't doing psychological operations, they were doing information operations and public affairs. They were just helping us spin senators like we normally do."

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions.

Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.

I love living in Vermont and I love living in New York. Does my love for Vermont give us the right to rain bombs down on Tripoli? Of course not. There are exceptional qualities about the United States. But it doesn't give us the right to impose our will on other cultures when they often don't want it.

The fact that our largest presence in the world is our massive military is going to dictate how we engage with the world.

I made this bad joke on Twitter saying, "I want to put in my first no-bid contract to train the Libyan army and police force." These counter-insurgency guys like to say, "We don't do the big F-16 or big boondoggle projects, we're not pulling this stuff because it's good business." But in fact it turns out there are tons of business opportunities involving counter-insurgency operations - and it's not like we're getting rid of the boondoggle programs either, we're just doing more of everything.

Look at the violence in Pakistan and the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan: the more troops we put in the more violent Pakistan becomes.