A New York Times story published Thursday documents US plans to withdraw from the Pech Valley in Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. As the Times notes, this is a significant withdrawal from an area previously touted as one of the most important in the war in Afghanistan and is an area where over a hundred US troops have died. Remarkably, there is a rare bit of self-awareness in this move, as the US is admitting that it is our presence there that destabilizes the area. Like the unwelcome guest who keeps breaking things but just won’t leave, US behavior in Afghanistan to this point has had a huge component of destabilizing areas while producing no real benefit.