The goal Mr. Quinn seeks is not attainable. Attempting to achieve it is helping to wreck our country.

People need to grasp that fact.

Walt

I'm not sure one citizen's cri de coeur is a sound basis for war. I thought there was something about vital national interest, imperceptible in Afghanistan. Something too about shared effort and mutual sacrifice, again MIA in Afghanistan.

This undertaking has descended into debacle, a theoretical exercise that has as practical effect the propping up of a kleptocracy. The raw military mission is to destroy the ability of terrorists to mount attacks on the homeland. Biden's plan goes much farther in this direction than this current attempt to reverse centuries of culture and practice in a part of the world where we prove every day that we are utterly ignorant and wholly ineffective.

This is the longest war in American history. Those who 'know' how to win it have had their shot. Time for them to leave the stage and turn it over to rational interpreters of national interest. Right now the highest and grandest goal we can possibly achieve is 'graceful exit.' Let us not let that also slip away.

I understand what it is like to lose a brother. Such a loss unhinges the survivors, and what happened to this man and his brother makes such an event all the worse. So, my heart goes out to him and his family. That said, violence does not solve violence. Correctly applied force solves problems, but not violence. Are we correctly applying our force in Afghanistan? Are the troops really securing the villages and countryside to make it safe for the locals? What about the recent failure of the Kabul Bank? How can American soldiers protect Afghans when Afghan elites rob their own citizens of their savings and leave them penniless just like Wall Street banks and Madoff did to American investors? Afghanistan doesn't have an FDIC. So, how can we get the people to trust us when we support a corrupt government that makes no attempt to rule fairly by law or administer provinces and institutions properly? Our troops just look like occupiers instead of saviors to the locals. Meanwhile, victory is always elusive and just out of reach as it has been for nine years.

It will take 20 years to make Afghanistan a state, and that is if we actually take the time to rebuild it properly. But Afghanistan isn't Japan and Germany, and there's nothing there we really want or need, and it costs us dearly to ship supplies into the country. It would make sense to hold territory to deny it from a national enemy, but to hold territory to deny it from terrorists who belong to no state is foolishness. Terrorists can go any where for training so long as they are welcome in the region. This is why certain regions of Pakistan are now terrorist training centers. But we have no plans to invade Pakistan and eliminate those camps. So, is the goal still reasonable? Or, is our strategy fatally flawed?

This is a typical Orwellian tactic. Mr. Ricks should be ashamed of himself for reaching in the gutter with a post like this.

I actually feel sorry for this guy. Of course, he is completely delusional regarding Afghanistan. The war is over dude, time to pack up your little toys and go home. The war was lost a long time ago. King David will not save you or the defeated army he manages. He is a politician that could give a rats ass what happens to you or your troops. And if you have not heard, the USA is broke and falling apart. The US public could care less about the lost cause of Afghanistan. Sorry.

By the way I have lost a brother as well. It sucks.

sheet, the U.S can't control the gangs in the hood..... let alone warlords guilty of torture, rape, murder, and theft....... warlords who have built reputations for Islamic piety, patriotism, generosity, courage in combat, and fearsome acts of cruelty with theatrical flair.The warlords provide a defense for people of their ethnicity or tribe and hold genuine support from segments of the public....... yeah, good luck with that son.

Joe Quinn’s GOAL will remain just a DREAM because Obama administration has continued Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

Obama administration has continued to ignore Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Taliban’s Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

As Afghan President Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/2010 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

Afghanistan’s national security advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta asked the same question in a Washington Post article on 8/23/2010: “While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor (Pakistan) continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified? Despite facing a growing domestic terror threat, Pakistan “continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and Al Qaeda. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure “requires confronting the state of Pakistan that still sees terrorism as a strategic asset and foreign policy tool”.

Poor Karzai’s call to his Western allies ‘to destroy Islamist militant sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan’ is falling on deaf ears in Washington where powers to be are hell bent on sacrificing Afghanistan to mollycoddle Pakistan.

Apparently, Logic was not part of the core curriculum at the Kennedy School of Government. The ‘logic’ of Joe Quinn’s argument means that we need to invade Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and host of other quasi-nations infested with al Qaeda to also rebuild their societies. We also need a big military presence in Hamburg, Germany and many other foreign cities where al Qaeda operates and plots.

Nobody with normal sense believes that al Qaeda should get a free ride but the military has over a period of nine years bungled its opportunity and demonstrated that its leadership and methodology are no more effective than they were in Vietnam where we won all he battles while managing to lose the war.

Our big heavy cumbersome Army has proven itself not only inept but also incapable of managing this sort of mission. The alternative, repeatedly rejected by that same ‘big army’, is a discreetly managed, much lighter footprint; intelligence and special operations based campaign that is sustainable would receive public support and not bankrupt the nation. Also, our allies (the UK and Australia as an example) who possess world class special operations capabilities of their own would be able to work with us with much less dissension and controversy in their home countries.

are frequent bedfellows. Hard-pressed to question the sincerity of Quinn's piece; ditto for the stubbornness we've demonstrated in our misadventures in Iraq and AFG.

Just because it's sincere, though, doesn't make it right.

We are losing because we hire idiots from Harvard who write:

"So after nine years, why are we still in Afghanistan? For me it's still simple. The men that killed my brother on 9/11 were five of 20,000 terrorists trained by Al Qaeda in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan."

Oh really, where were these five trained? What did they learn? How to use a box cutter? I realize that most believe this constant stream of Langley lies, but reality is that no Afghan or Taliban were part of the 9-11 attack. Even OBL didn't know about the plan. It was hatched by a wealthy Kuwaiti upset at total US support for Israel's gradual ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. (That is from the 9-11 commission report, yet our corporate media decided it wasn't fit to print.)

It was carried about by Saudis and UAE moderate Muslims for nationalist reasons. Planning was done from the Philippines, and the pilot training done in Germany and the USA.

This is why we can't win anywhere. Everyone's mind if filled with PR garbage spread by PR machines funded by the war machine, like this blog. There are more al Qaeda in Somalia, Yemen, and Saudi. Why aren't we fighting there?.

Mr. Ricks,

Perhaps you've noticed that your BS "inside the beltway" posts are not well received by readers here. What passes for journalism and reality at the WashPost is rejected by intelligent Americans with access to websites like the Asia Times www..atimes.com and brilliant commentary like that of Fred Reed, which I dare you to repost. Here is part of his most recent.:

A Requiem for Reason
Oh well. It never amounted to much anyway.

September 8, 2010

At this writing, the government’s war for oil and AIPAC has more or less solidly metamorphosed, among the rubes at least, into a war against Islam. Men of thunder and portent peddle the notion like starving encyclopedia salesmen. No less a political howitzer than Pat Buchanan says that the mosque should not be built, because of the religious motivation of the Saudis who attacked the towers. His view has been eagerly received by the populace. Now it seems that yahoos at some fourth-grade church in Florida plan to burn a Koran to commemorate 9/11.

Splendid, this. We are telling 1.3 billion Moslems that America is not fighting Al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or Terror. No. It is Islam itself we hate. How very wise. This will make it so much easier to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those security forces that GIs are supposed to be training—the ones with the AKs—they will know that their trainers are their enemies. Curiously, this is just what bin Laden tells them.

Glands again trump minds, if any. Consider that ten minutes before the first tower got hit in New York, the thought had occurred to practically no one in America that Islam constituted a mortal threat to all that we hold holy, chiefly chain restaurants and iPods. But Islam afterwards offered to fill this void that the Russians had wimped out on. For a brief period after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Americans had no threat to worry about. They found it deeply puzzling. Weren’t we supposed to be afraid of something? It didn’t feel right.

Then came New York, and suddenly we saw it: The Clash of Civilizations. Islam was out to get us. Why hadn’t we noticed? A roaring hatred for Moslems sprang up from people who had never met a Moslem, who had a garden slug’s grasp of history. A deep satisfaction came over the land. We had been made whole again.

Battling Mohammedans quickly became an industry. The government at first tried to peddle Terrorism as the enemy, not Islam, but it didn’t stick. Something more robustly flackable was wanted.

----------------------------'

The rest is here: http://www.fredoneverything.net/BurningtheKoran.shtml

Agree with much of what Sir_Mixxalot wrote. I know it sounds too simple, but US foreign and military policy are built around the bedrock of the American dream: the auto and the fuel to power it. I imagine that the day he is inaugurated, the new president is briefed on the little black book which spells out what must be done to keep this 4-wheeled frankenstein rolling. It is the golden calf before which we are ready to sacrifice even our children.

is that the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, have radicalized many regula people into the same terrorists who killed your brother. It’s a cycle that we need to break.

I was willing to accommodate the president and bury his senatorial vote against the surge in Iraq – clearly now a glaring error in judgment – by doing as he requested and “turning the page”. But Tom Ricks and his guest columnist continue to dig away at the war in Iraq, now using it as an excuse for our current difficulties in Afghanistan. Ricks & Co claim that it drew vital resources from the right war to the wrong war. My challenge with this is:

1. the US military is structured to fight two major wars simultaneously; neither Iraq or Afghanistan are major wars;

2. the recent withdraw of equipment from Iraq has largely migrated back to the US, not been rushed to Afghanistan.

Rick’s point can be reversed: the relative quiet in the Afghanistan war in 2003, allowed the West to focus on other risks, such as the dwindling containment of the Iraqi regime. We did not take our ‘eye off the ball’ because of Iraq; rather, we simply became complacent of an insidious risk.

The Taliban resurgence largely fooled us, as did the collapsing Soviet Union, the credit crunch, invasion of Kuwait, Pearl Harbor, BP spill, tech bubble, Sputnik, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon. All foreseen by some, but missed by most.

Containment of the Iraqi regime was deemed unattainable by the UK and US, the two countries charged by the UN to provide military containment. Sanctions were undermined by Russia, France and even some in the UN. So it became clear that either containment had to be abandoned, or the regime removed from power.

It would have been negligent for the UK and US leadership to just let the Iraqi regime do as they pleased in the Middle East. They had demonstrated their ambition to acquire territory and resources by military means. Without arduous restriction, their ability to develop, stock and deploy WMD was undisputed; their willingness to do so proven.

The Middle East is at least a little more stable now than it would have been with Iraq and Iran in an unrestrained nuclear arms race – at best! The balance of power there is far from perfect, but it’s certainly better than it would have been had Afghanistan been the only geopolitical risk we bothered to tackle.