In “Why U.S. Efforts to Promote the Rule of Law in Afghanistan Failed,” Geoffrey Swenson's inaccurate description of one project, the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID's) Rule of Law Stabilization—Informal Component program (RLS-I) (Swenson uses “RLS-Informal”), misrepresents an effective rule of law program while missing an opportunity for comparative learning.1 At the core of the issue is Swenson's conflation of RLS-I with counterinsurgency projects and approaches—approaches that RLS-I deliberately avoided. Swenson's dismissal of RLS-I's stated objectives and his selective reliance on sources of varying timeliness, relevance, and accuracy results in the false assumption that the “program's more pressing goal … was to supplement and consolidate U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts” (p. 127). This faulty conclusion serves as the premise for his subsequent analysis, which results in inaccurate assertions and misattributions throughout the article.
Swenson claims that RLS-I assumed the existence of and sought to fill a post-Taliban justice vacuum by...