However, it’s got to be said (and other military analysts have made the point) that the Pakistani army previously made sure these same sort of guys received pretty decent training.

This is the elephant in the room. The connections the Pakistani military and ISI have had with the Taliban, and presumably al Qaeda, are not news. In a logical world, any calls for escalation in Afghanistan would have to be tempered by the fact that the nation next door, whom we are giving billions of dollars, has a hand in it's destabilization (at least from an American perspective). I'm not sure counterproductive begins to describe it.