SpyTalk

"[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy," Will wrote.

"America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."

Will's apostasy prompted fuming attacks from his right wing brethren, which he defended against by brandishing an endorsement of his views from retired Marine Commandant George Krulak on George Stephanopolous's Sunday morning TV yak fest.

"I am in total agreement with your assessment," Krulak wrote Will. "Instead of a surge of 21,000 troops, [we] would need a surge of hundreds of thousands. Not only would our nation not support such a surge, but, most distressing, the military could not support such a surge."

What went largely missing in the contretemps was Krulak's call for a big-time raids into Pakistan by U.S. special operations troops.

"I would put hunter-killer teams along the borders and in suspected al Qaeda strongholds," wrote Krulak, who started out as a young rifle company commander in Vietnam.

"I would support them through intelligence, thru logistics with the aid of parasails, responsive airpower (need to be close), armed and unarmed (fitted with cameras, infrared, etc) drones, 'reachback' capability for cruise missiles and other capability as needed," he advised Will

And then there was the Dirty Dozen part:

"The H-K teams should be given minimal rules of engagement...when they identify the bad guys, they need to be empowered to take them out," the general said.  

Loyal SpyTalk readers will remember that I've consistently advocated a special ops solution  - if there's any solution at all -- to escaping the Afghan morass.

And as far as I can tell, CIA contractors have for some time been sneaking across the AfPak frontier to take out ID'd al Qaeda operatives.

But Krulak appears to be advocating something much more robust.

"Krulak's Hunter Killer Teams would require probably about 2-300 well trained platoon sized elements, around 10K troops," Ken Small wrote on the Small Wars Journal blog, "plus about half that for support (X3 to allow for rotation) to decently cover the 936km Iranian border and the 2,430km Pakistani border -- both in some really bad terrain."

"You could provide fewer," Small added, "but that is really not an economy of force mission if you expect any success at all."

Perhaps. But however worthy Krulak's suggestion, I can't see such an effort flying in the current political climate.

In the end, let's face it, it's going to depend on the Pakistanis themselves to hunt and kill Al Qaeda, a problematic forecast at best.

Drones alone aren't going to do the job, that's for sure. The blow back alone from civilian casualties has tipped the cost-benefit ratio.

"The future of war is not the son of Desert Storm, but the stepchild of Chechnya," Krulak wrote almost a decade ago, before the 9/11 attacks.

Think about that.