Recent reviews examining the ongoing counterinsurgency and stabilization effort in Afghanistan regularly report on a variety of ills, problems, waste, and mishandling of one of the largest foreign assistance efforts in history. This essay suggests that the challenges and issues affecting the stabilization mission in Afghanistan arise less from these common themes than from the very institutions that supposedly support the endeavor. The political and bureaucratic challenges facing stabilization programs in 2010 and 2011 often inhibited progress, and unless decisionmakers understand and address these self-imposed challenges, success will remain elusive.