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2,000TH U.S. SOLDIER DIES IN AFGHANISTAN FOLLOWING LATEST ‘INSIDER’ ATTACK

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TALIBAN ATTACK RESULTS IN WORST AMERICAN AIRPOWER LOSS SINCE VIETNAM

State Department: Taliban is not a terrorist organization

Via-Daily Caller

By Amanda Carey

A new State Department report designating terrorist organizations notably excludes one group: the Taliban. The U.S. has been fighting a war in Afghanistan for almost a decade aimed at “defeating the Taliban,” Taliban members repeatedly have threatened and killed American citizens and lawmakers have increased pressure on State to add the Taliban to the list.

Earlier this summer, a group of congressional Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton urging her to begin the process of categorizing the Taliban as a terrorist group. In June, Sens. Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey proposed legislation that would immediately add the Taliban to the terrorist list.

Yet the State Department’s report (due on April 30 but released last week), did not include the Taliban with groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas and the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA). To qualify, an organization must meet only three criteria: It must be foreign, it must engage in terrorist activity and its activity must threaten the security of the U.S. or its citizens.

“It is hard to imagine this agency can see fit to issue a report that doesn’t include the Taliban groups,” Fred Gedrich, a foreign policy analyst and former State Department employee, told The Daily Caller. “They have killed more Americans and conducted more terror attacks on innocent civilians during the past 12 months than any other terror group.“

Gedrich and others troubled by the Taliban’s absence from the list note that the Taliban recruited and trained the failed Times Square bomber. Just days ago the Taliban claimed responsibility for the deaths of six American medical missionaries in Afghanistan.

“Leaving these ruthless groups off the terror list undermines State Department credibility and could further endanger American troops, U.S. embassy personnel and others in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Americans innocently going about their business in the United States,” Gedrich said.

Further inspection of the State Department’s report reveals that not all the terrorist organizations listed meet the requirements as precisely as the Taliban does. The Mujahadin-E Khalq (MEK), for example, is an Islamist organization that seeks to overthrow the Iranian regime. Although a U.S. citizen has not been harmed by the MEK since the 1970s, it was designated a terrorist organization during the Clinton administration in hopes that rapprochement could be reached with Iran.

The MEK continues to be included on the list, while the Taliban has not appeared once. And the seemingly arbitrary decision on the part of the State Department has confused even the most experienced foreign affairs experts.

“It’s insane because we are talking about the most barbaric group in the world,” said Gedrich.

“I don’t know why,” Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former CIA officer, told TheDC. “Bush should have done so back in 2001.”

So is the decision not to include the Taliban purely a political one? Some suggest it’s possible, that the U.S. government, going back to the early days of the Bush administration, does not want to ruin its chances for some type of rapprochement with the more moderate parts of the Taliban.

“There may be some today who do hope for a political process with the Taliban,” said Riedel. “But that does not explain why we didn’t put them on the list in 2001-2008 during the Bush years.”

When contacted by TheDC, Rhonda Shore, senior public affairs adviser in the Counterterrorism Office of the State Department, said, “We’re considering the question of designating the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) and are following the necessary procedures to establish a clear evidentiary basis to support any FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) designation.”

When pressed, Shore declined to comment any further.

Dems Sour on Obama's ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan

Via-JWR

By Michael Barone

Over the last eight years, most Democratic politicians have made a distinction between The Good War (Afghanistan) and The Bad War (Iraq). That very much includes Barack Obama.

As an Illinois state senator, he spoke out against military action in Iraq in 2002. And as a U.S. senator at a September 2007 hearing, he offered a blisteringly negative assessment of Iraq so lengthy that it left no time for Gen. David Petraeus to reply. But he has always said he supported military action in Afghanistan as a valid response to the Sept. 11 attacks that were planned there. So it is a little surprising to see in the results of this month's ABC/Washington Post poll that most American voters are not making the Good War/Bad War distinction.

Has the war in Afghanistan contributed to the long-term security of the United States? Some 53 percent say it has, while 44 percent say it hasn't.

Has the war in Iraq contributed to the long-term security of the United States? Some 50 percent say it has, while 48 percent say it hasn't.

Those are virtually identical numbers. It seems that about half of Americans think both were Good Wars and about half consider them both Bad Wars.

Substantial majorities of Republican voters consider both to be wars worth fighting, while majorities of Democratic voters disagree. What's most interesting is the switch among Democratic voters. A year ago, 41 percent of them thought Afghanistan was worth fighting for, while only 12 percent felt that way about Iraq. In this month's polls, the corresponding numbers were 36 percent and 29 percent. The Good War-Bad War distinction is disappearing.

One reason for this is that things have been going pretty well in Iraq, while things in Afghanistan look dicey. The ABC/Post poll reported that 71 percent of Americans oppose immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and 60 percent favor keeping 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq in a supporting role. Keeping U.S. troops there seems hardly more controversial than keeping them in Germany.

But there is something more fundamental here. The Good War-Bad War distinction was based in large part on the argument that George W. Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, Bush didn't lie. He relied on the same intelligence that many Democrats and leaders of foreign nations did. But, as Karl Rove wrote in his Wall Street Journal column this week, the Bush White House never pushed back against the Bush Lied claim when it was advanced by prominent Democrats like Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards and Al Gore.

This was, as Rove now admits, "a dagger aimed at (the) administration's heart." It tended to delegitimize the Iraq war and encouraged many Democrats to wish for their country's defeat. No wonder that as late as July 2009 only a handful of Democrats considered Iraq a war worth fighting.

Now that Barack Obama has been commander in chief for 18 months, Democrats are singing a different tune. They no longer have a psychological stake in believing that Bush's surge strategy failed, as Democrats like Harry Reid and Barack Obama insisted in 2007 and 2008. They are coming to grips with the reality that our mission in Iraq is succeeding, that a reasonably functional democracy is emerging and that there is no great peril in maintaining a military presence there.

At the same time, the dovish instincts that have been such a prominent part of Democrats' DNA since they recoiled from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War are apparent in their assessment of the war in Afghanistan. Barack Obama's decision last December, after a three-month review, to seek something like victory there is still supported by most Republican voters, but after negative developments many Democratic voters are turning against the president's policy. Increasingly, they regard Afghanistan as a Bad War.

Some Republican politicians are tempted to seek political gain from this. Thus Republican National Chairman Michael Steele on July 1 told Republican candidates they should call Afghanistan "Obama's war."

In some areas of life, turnabout is fair play. But not in war. Prominent Democrats may have been happy to delegitimize the Iraq war, but that's not a good reason for Republicans to do something similar on Afghanistan. Rooting for your country's defeat is ignoble. More importantly, when it comes your turn to take responsibility, it can be self-defeating.

Afghanistan Agonistes

Via-National Review Online

by Victor Davis Hanson

The growing consensus is that the United States and its NATO allies cannot prevail in their aim of creating a stable constitutional government in Afghanistan, free of radical Taliban insurrectionists who will facilitate terrorism beyond their borders and seek to reinstitute their medieval theocracy.

We need to calm down and take a deep breath. Here are ten considerations that suggest that Afghanistan is hardly lost.

1. General Petraeus. By all accounts he is an historic figure. Take his willingness to step down from Centcom, after achieving global fame, only to enter into the Inferno of Afghanistan, at a time when he has seen nonstop service and dealt with health issues — and when there is not much that can be added to his reputation but a great deal that might diminish it in Afghanistan.

All that is in marked contrast, for example, to the 2003 behavior of Gen. Tommy Franks, who did the opposite: He retired abruptly after basking in the glow of a three-week victory — even as he saw the insurgency brewing — seemingly in order to capitalize on his newfound and transitory fame. Petraeus’s moral capital and past successes are worth a great deal, here and abroad, and bring a new dimension to the struggle — even though he will be apparently working with diplomatic personnel quite unlike the gifted and selfless Ryan Crocker.

Remember, he surged in Iraq without the sort of wide-scale criticism over his rules of engagement that has been directed at current counterinsurgency methods in Afghanistan. Again, for a national icon to willingly step down into the fray, when conventional wisdom is writing Afghanistan off, and under the aegis of former senators — Biden, Clinton, Obama — who deprecated his efforts when he most needed public support is nothing short of heroic. And that too will help for a while in rallying military and civilian opinion behind the effort.

2. The mission. President Obama needs to remind America of the mission. We seek to foster a stable constitutional system in Afghanistan that will keep radical Islamists from offering sanctuary to international terrorists. That is our main objective. Shutting down the opium industry, fostering a civil society that does not butcher its own, and enlisting the support of Pakistan to stop terrorism — all these are important corollaries and aid our objective, but are ipsis factis not the main reason why we are fighting in Afghanistan. For nearly a decade, those on the left have simply defined Afghanistan as not Iraq and left it at that — without telling us why in fact they would fight the “good war.” Now they must do so without invoking Bush or Iraq: We need to hear from the president what Afghanistan is, rather than what it is not.

Where ‘nice’ Obama has got us

Via-MACLEANS.CA

Why would Ahmadinejad take him seriously when even Karzai flips him the finger?

by Mark Steyn

In 1939, Capt. Peter Sanders, serving with the Tochi scouts on the Afghan-Indian border, was blown up by a Waziri booby trap and lost his right arm. Shortly afterwards, he accepted an invitation to lunch from the tribesman who’d planted the bomb. Awfully decent of the chap, and not a bad spread, all things considered.

Not everyone cares for the old stiff upper lip: “I spit on your British phlegm!” as the Khazi of Kalabar remarked in what remains the seminal work on Afghanistan, Carry on up the Khyber. But imperialism requires a certain dotty élan. Without it, it’s no fun. You’re just a guy holed up in a Third World dump occasionally venturing out in the full RoboCop to pretend to implement some half-assed multilateral “nation-building” strategy that NATO defence ministers all agreed to at some black-tie banquet in Brussels and then promptly forgot about. Instead of the Tochi scouts—Pathan irregulars commanded by British officers—we now have Afghan units “trained,” or at any rate funded, by Western governments. A headline in the Washington Post captures the general malaise: “Afghan forces’ apathy starts to wear on U.S. platoon in Kandahar.” On a recent patrol through the city, 1st Lieut. James Rathmann stopped at a police checkpoint and found them all asleep in a nearby field.


It’s not just the natives who are dozing. In London recently, Robert Gates, the U.S. defence secretary, complained that the allies’ promised 450 “trainers” for the expanded Afghan National Army had failed to materialize. These are not combat roles, so in theory even the less gung-ho NATO members should have no objection. Supposedly, 46 nations are contributing to the allied effort in Afghanistan, so that would work out at 10 “trainers” per country. Yet even that modest commitment is too much. So the Afghan army will fill up with time-servers and Taliban sympathizers.

Colonial administration was always a cynic’s field. In Lisbon last week, I was admiring the beauty of the jacarandas when David Pryce-Jones, the scholar and novelist, reminded me of the words of Lord Lloyd, British high commissioner in Egypt in the twenties: “The jacarandas are in bloom,” he observed. “We shall soon be sending for the gunboats.” When the weather heats up, so do the natives. In Lloyd’s day, we were cynical about the locals. Now we’re starry-eyed about the locals—marvellous chaps, few more trainers and they’ll do splendidly—while they’re utterly cynical about us. Hamid Karzai has just fired his two most pro-American cabinet ministers and is making more and more pro-Taliban noises. This is a man who for the last nine years has been kept alive only by U.S. military protection. A throne in Kabul may not be much, but, such as it is, he owes it entirely to his patrons in Washington. Why would Putin, Ahmadinejad or the ChiComs take Barack Obama seriously when even a footling client such as Hamid Karzai can flip him the finger?

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” said Osama bin Laden many years ago, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” The world does not see President Obama as the strong horse. He has announced that U.S. troop withdrawals will begin in 12 months’ time. Karzai takes him at his word, and is obliged to prepare for a post-American order in Afghanistan, which means reaching his accommodations with those who’ll still be around when the Yanks are over over there. The new government in London takes him at his word, too. Liam Fox, the defence secretary, wants as rapid a British pullout as possible. When Obama announced an Afghan “surge” dependent on such elements as mythical NATO trainers and then added that, however it went, U.S. forces would begin checking out in July 2011, he in effect ruled out the possibility of victory. Over 1,000 American troops have died in Afghanistan, 300 British soldiers, 148 Canadians. What will our soldiers be dying for in the sunset of the West’s Afghan expedition? What is Obama’s characteristically postmodern “surge” intended to achieve? More Afghan police sleeping in fields? Greater opportunities for women? Take Your Child Bride to Work Day in Kandahar? British troops, said Liam Fox, are not in Afghanistan “for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country.” And, even if they were, in certain provinces “education policy” seems to be returning to something all but indistinguishable from Mullah Omar’s days. The New York Post carried a picture of women registering to vote in Herat, all in identical top-to-toe bright blue burkas, just as they would have looked on Sept. 10, 2001.

McChrystal’s real offense

Via-Washington Examiner

By: Byron York

There is a lot of uproar about Gen. Stanley’s McChrystal’s disrespectful comments about his civilian bosses in the Obama administration, and President Obama would be entirely justified in firing McChrystal for statements McChrystal and his subordinates made to Rolling Stone. Obama is a deeply flawed commander-in-chief who doesn’t want to be fighting a war on terror, but he is the commander-in-chief. He should have a general who will carry out his policies without public complaint until the voters can decide to change those policies.

But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house that American officers had asked permission to destroy. From the article:

The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt. Arroyo’s platoon for the memorial, I arrive at Combat Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have been on repeated combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered by Ingram’s death. His commanders had repeatedly requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal’s new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the request had been denied. “These were abandoned houses,” fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. “Nobody was coming back to live in them.”

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f–king sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

Afghan War Becoming a Bloody Farce

Via-RCP

By Tony Blankley

Since last summer, President Obama has publicly doubted whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai's corruption and incompetence make him a fit partner for our policy goals in Afghanistan. Now, according to Saturday's New York Times:

"Mr. Karzai (has) lost faith in the Americans and NATO to prevail in Afghanistan."

Regretfully, both presidents are correct. Neither of them has a national partner in whom he can place any reasonable confidence. The two governments cannot agree on a common fighting strategy. Nor can those facts be materially changed in time to make a difference, given President Obama's firm commitment to start withdrawing troops no later than the middle of next year.

The current price for staying is approximately one American troop fatality a day (plus several wounded and an undisclosed number of killed and wounded American contract employees). British troops are being killed at the same rate proportional to their troop level. The fatality rate for the remainder of NATO forces (proportionally) is about one-fifth the Anglo-American level of sacrifice.

As these truths become more broadly understood and accepted, I think more Americans -- Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives -- will come around to the lamentable conclusion that a continued, substantial U.S. militarily presence in Afghanistan will do no good for the United States or the long-suffering people of Afghanistan.

As the New York Times article Saturday went on to observe regarding Mr. Karzai's state of mind:

"People close to (Karzai) say he began to lose confidence in the Americans last summer, after national elections in which independent monitors determined that nearly one million ballots had been stolen on Mr. Karzai's behalf. The rift worsened in December, when President Obama announced that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by the summer of 2011. 'Karzai told me that he can't trust the Americans to fix the situation here,' said a Western diplomat in Kabul. ... He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year. And then they said publicly that they were going to leave."

I made this same point three months ago in this space when I reiterated my call from November for us to get out of Afghanistan: "If we need a credible 'local partner,' our local partner needs a reliable, supportive 'large brother' (to wit: the United States). But by first hesitating to support Mr. Karzai, then saying we will support him -- but only for 18 months, then publicly admonishing him to end the endemic corruption, then leaking the fact that his own brother is a major drug smuggler, we have undermined and infuriated him, without whom we cannot succeed in Afghanistan."

Then this spring, as the toxic relations between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai became the subject of newspaper headlines rather than mere diplomatic gossip, Mr. Obama invited Mr. Karzai to the White House to be treated right royal. Fine food and fine words could not undo the fatal damage done to the alliance by the public White House words of the previous year. Mr. Karzai was intent on undoing American policy, and he has succeeded.

The essence of Mr. Obama and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's strategy for counterinsurgency and "population-centric" mini-nation-building was to: (1) Build up allied troop levels quickly, (2) as a first step, drive the Taliban out of Marja, an insignificant town of 60,000 in Helmand province, and set up some governance to demonstrate the feasibility of our "clear, hold and build" strategy, and (3) go on in June to execute the Kandahar Offensive, which would overwhelm and replace the Taliban in their spiritual homeland stronghold. Gen. McChrystal called this the "decisive" battle of the nine-year-old Afghan war. But as early as April, the London Times reported, "Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block NATO offensive (in Kandahar)." This entire strategy was premised on inducing Mr. Karzai to let us help him set up minimally competent local governance on which the local people could rely. It was openly said that we would get rid of Mr. Karzai's powerful mobster brother, Wali, in Kandahar as a necessary precondition for good governance.

But Mr. Karzai, who had lost faith in the U.S., didn't cooperate. No decent governance could be set up in Marja, where Taliban executions of U.S. friendly locals are being carried out in daylight, in public.

Mr. Karzai has refused to remove his brother, and the White House has moved up the date to judge our success in Afghanistan from June 2011 to December 2010. U.S. Brig. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, director of operations for southern Afghanistan, told the London Times: "Our mission is to show irreversible momentum by the end of 2010. That's the clock I'm using." Gen. McChrystal has shifted his strategy away from population-centric nation-building to Special Forces night raids against the Taliban.

Then, last week, Gen. McChrystal begrudgingly announced, "The Kandahar operation (previously scheduled to ramp up in June and largely conclude by August) will unfold more slowly and last longer than the military had planned." According to British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, who commands allied forces in Kandahar, "One would hope that by November-time, one is demonstrating positive trends."

Thomas Paine, during the Revolutionary War, argued in "The Crisis" that there are serious moments in the life of a country when "to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other."

We are at such a moment in this forlorn war in Afghanistan. Only self-deception can justify the continued sacrifice of our finest young men and women in uniform. Given the two presidents in command and their irreversible dispositions toward this war and each other, failure is virtually inevitable. For a lesson in how wartime allied presidents ought to struggle to work together for victory, consider the Franklin D. Roosevelt/Winston Churchill partnership.

What is not inevitable is the number of American (and allied) troops who must die before failure becomes undeniable.

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

Via-NYT

by James Risen

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

The mendacity of hope

The U.S. essentially has four options — from best to worst — going forward in Afghanistan.

By Ralph Peters


The conflict in Afghanistan is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead of concentrating on the critical mission of keeping Islamist terrorists on the defensive, we've mired ourselves by attempting to modernize a society that doesn't want to be — and cannot be — transformed.

In the absence of a strategy, we're doubling our troop commitment, hoping to repeat the success we achieved in the profoundly different environment of Iraq. Unable to describe our ultimate goals with any clarity, we're substituting means for ends.

Expending blood and treasure blindly in Afghanistan, we do our best to shut our eyes to the worsening crisis next door in Pakistan, a radicalizing Muslim state with more than five times the population and a nuclear arsenal. We've turned the hose on the doghouse while letting the mansion burn.

Initially, Afghanistan wasn't a war of choice. We had to dislodge and decimate al-Qaeda, while punishing the Taliban and strengthening friendlier forces in the country. Our great mistake was to stay on in an attempt to build a modernized rule-of-law state in a feudal realm with no common identity.

We needed to smash our enemies and leave. Had it proved necessary, we could have returned later for another punitive mission. Instead, we fell into the great American fallacy of believing ourselves responsible for helping those who've harmed us. This practice was already fodder for mockery 50 years ago, when the novella and film The Mouse That Roared postulated that the best way for a poor country to get rich was to declare war on America then surrender.

Even if we achieved the impossible dream of creating a functioning, unified state in Afghanistan, it would have little effect on the layered crises in the Muslim world. Backward and isolated, Afghanistan is sui generis (only example of its kind). Political polarization in the U.S. precludes an honest assessment, but Iraq's the prize from which positive change might flow, while Afghanistan could never inspire neighbors who despise its backwardness.


Recalling failures of Vietnam


Echoing Vietnam, we're pouring wealth into Afghanistan, corrupting those we wish to rally; we're fighting with restrictions against an enemy who enjoys sanctuaries across international borders; and our core enemies are natives, not foreign parties (as al-Qaeda was in Iraq).

If the impending surge fails to pacify the country, will we send another increment of troops, then another, as we did in Southeast Asia? As the British learned the hard way, Afghanistan can be disciplined, but it can't be profitably occupied or liberalized. It's inconceivable to us, but many Afghans prefer their lives to the lives we envision for them. The lot of women is hideous, and the lives of nearly all the people are nasty, brutish and short. But the culture is theirs.

Even "our man in Kabul," President Hamid Karzai, put his self-interest above any greater cause. Reborn a populist, he backs every Taliban claim that the U.S. inflicts only civilian casualties in virtually every effort against terrorists. Karzai is convinced that we can't abandon him.

We should do just that. Instead of floundering in search of a strategy, we should consider removing the bulk, if not all, of our forces. The alternative is to hope blindly, waste more lives and resources, and, in the worst case, see our vulnerable supply route through Pakistan cut, forcing upon our troops the most ignominious retreat since Korea in 1950 (a massive air evacuation this time around, leaving a wealth of military gear).

Ranked from best to worst, here are our four basic options going forward:

• Best. Instead of increasing the U.S. military "footprint," reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a "mother ship" at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary.

Stop pretending Afghanistan's a real state. Freeze development efforts. Ignore the opium. Kill the fanatics.

• Good. Leave entirely. Strike terrorist targets from over the horizon and launch punitive raids when necessary. Instead of facing another Vietnam ourselves, let Afghanistan become a Vietnam for Iran and Pakistan. Rebuild our military at home, renewing our strategic capabilities.

• Poor. Continue to muddle through as is, accepting that achieving any meaningful change in Afghanistan is a generational commitment. Surge troops for specific missions, but not permanently.

• Worst. Augment our forces endlessly and increase aid in the absence of a strategy. Lie to ourselves that good things might just happen. Let U.S. troops and Afghans continue to die for empty rhetoric, while Pakistan decays into a vast terrorist refuge.


A reality check


In any event, Pakistan, not Afghanistan, will determine the future of Islamist extremism in the region. And Pakistan is nearly lost to us — a fact we must accept. Our strategic future lies with India.

President Obama pitched Afghanistan as the good war during his campaign, while rejecting our efforts in Iraq as a sideshow. He got it exactly wrong. Now our new president either needs to lay out a coherent, detailed strategy with realistic goals, or accept that, by mid-2002, we had achieved all that conventional forces could manage in Afghanistan.

We don't need hope. We need the audacity of realism.

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