Washington Post photo: Army Captain Nick Stout presenting his "case" to Afghan "jury."

For actual years now, I've been writing that the foundational fallacy of COIN, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, is that success depends not on what American forces do, but on how alien peoples react to what American forces have done.

In Iraq, that translated into "surge till they merge," a two-step process in which US forces would amass to provide security, and Iraqis would then, the theory went, automatically react to that American-produced security by forming a more perfect union or something. We're still waiting.

In Afghanistan, American forces are supposed "to secure and serve" the Afghan population, as Gen. Petraeus put it recently. The secured and served Afghan population is then supposed to react by supporting the US-propped Karzai government. We're still waiting for that, too, in the process, ordering our troops, as noted many times here, to participate in a dangerous and degrading popularity contest with the ... Taliban.

Or is it a trial?

The Washington Post recently reported on a typical COIN offensive -- read: lots of tea-drinking with tribal elders-- in a Taliban stronghold in which an American officer offered a new analogy.

"It's a trial, and the people are the jury," said Army Capt. Nick Stout, 27, a commander of the 101st Airborne company that has patrolled Senjaray out of a sun-scorched hilltop outpost for two months. "Whoever presents the best case . . . they're going to side with."

Once again, the COIN recipe for success is out of our hands. And, once again, this jury is rigged.