I really don't get what 'winning' would be in Afghanistan. The semi-conscious say we 'lost' in Vietnam because we left, so does that mean that if we'd stayed, seemingly forever, we would have won? (Eliminating all incidences of terrorist attacks is as feasible as eliminating all crimes, so that can't be our measure of a 'win.') So if we stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, we've won?

By the way, according to my Afghani friend, who has a direct line to his home country, Afghanis are killing Americans because they equate us with Karzai whom they hate. That may not make sense, but that's where they're coming from - he's ruling because we're allowing him to.

The twist is that there is a healthy number of conservatives (with Pat Buchanan leading the charge) who are vehemently against nation/empire building. The days of the explicit empire is gone, so we have to create at least the pretense that it is self-governing.

So if Obama makes the case that we simply can't afford to be the cop/nation-builder (and the only way to be the "cop" with insurgencies through strengthening the centralized government, and that can't be done from an aircraft carrier or by few armed drones) it will put many of these conservatives into a quandry: support Obama or argue in favor of nation building.

Not being an ideologue, President Obama has already made what appears to be a wise, reality-based decision that premature disengagement from Afghanistan would be catastrophic. He is not going to do it, and so the coming weeks will be devoted to choosing the best option for remaining engaged in a manner that best serves our long term objectives. That may or may not involve acceding to General McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional troops, but it will certainly involve substantial retention of ground forces as part of a multifaceted strategy.

In this, Obama is consistent. He has never deviated from his pre-election campaign promises to shift attention from Iraq to where it was more urgently needed - Pakistan/Afghanistan. The goal has never been to "win" in a military sense, nor to eliminate the Taliban insurgency, but rather to keep a lid on the insurgency sufficient to permit some reconstruction of Afghan civilian society, and the replacement of NATO forces by indigenous ones - a task that will probably take a few years at least. The corruption within the Karzai government is an impediment, but Richard Holbrooke is already making efforts to circumvent this obstacle in dealing with other Afghan factions capable of aiding stability.

The alternative, an Afghanistan under uncontested Taliban domination, is pretty much unthinkable. In a moral sense, it would be a betrayal of the Afghan people, who enjoyed a brief respite from Taliban oppression after our successful campaign in 2001, and who dread and hate the Taliban. According to Ahmed Rashid, a native of this part of the world, and who knows it intimately, most Afghans want us to stay, but at the same time fear the dangers of the resultant combat; they want to die neither from American bombs nor Taliban suicide bombings, and so they are ambivalent. With additional security, they would very much welcome efforts that reduced the power of the Taliban, and permitted girls to go to school again, music to be played, and men to walk the streets without fear of being killed because their beards were not proper.

The moral question is not overriding, however. Rather, it is the stability of Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons that the terrorists covet. The Pakistani military, despite some ambivalence, are finally coming to recognize the dangers to Pakistan of the Taliban/Al Qaeda insurgency, and are making serious efforts to put the insurgents on the run - with some success. Because they are doing that, NATO ground forces in Pakistan would be terribly counterproductive, and so we are using drones rather than troops to help out.

In Afghanistan, however, there is no equivalent to the Pakistani army - hence the need for outside forces until indigenous ones can be built up. Without suppressing the insurgency on the Afghanistan side of the border, and preventing Al Qaeda from restoring a secure base there, maintaining stability on the Pakistan side becomes difficult, costly, and much more uncertain than would be possible with a reasonably stabilized Afghanistan.

The grandiose reference to "empires" in the original post strikes me as almost completely divorced from any of this. On the other hand, for one reasonable perspective on how stabilization might be sought over the next 2-3 years, although not the only one, it's worth reading Rashid's recent WaPo piece on the topic, at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/04/AR2009090402277.html?sid=ST2009090902222

Empires fall because costs outweigh enforcement. In order to keep territories compliant, a constant stream of resorces and attention must be dispersed. Some areas require more attention than others. CENTCOM requires our devotion. But the more we push in that region, the more other regions under our dominance begin to eat away or throw off our control. You can only juggle so many balls.

PNAC envisioned a hegemony that could remain perpetually enforceable through technique and technology. In other words, they believed in perpetual motion in contradiction to thermodynamics. War and occupation exacerbates entropy through friction and confusion.

Now, America has to push harder to achieve less. Economic wounds take longer to heal. Natural disasters take a larger and more expensive toll. In other words, the nation is no longer healthy enough to continue its accustomed imperial lifestyle. We either adjust or breakdown/die faster.

But, like a stereotypical star athlete, we seem unable to admit that it is time to retire.

It is hard enough getting "journalists" to "tell the truth about the American empire project", isn't it, Mr. Taplin?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/the-rest-is-silence/

1. Stupidity and spinelessness
2. Empire and exertion

Two very different things.

Which one describes better describes Congressional Democrats during eight years of monumental foreign policy blunders and horrors by the Bush Administration ?

Obama is reaping what his lazy cowardly former Congressional colleagues have sown. Eight years of quivering feverishly to NOT take the slightest action has allowed eight years of festering of the mess that will soon be "THEIR war." Once health care is passed, some token climate change bill adopted, a bit more knuckle-wrapping "reform" of Wall St. etc,. expect Beck and his liars club to steam full speed ahead towards Denying the Baghdad Cakewalk. Afghanistan was a peaceful paradise until Obama's inauguration when all hell suddenly broke loose. etc. etc. Democrat bozos in Congress should go to the blackboard and reproduce a thousand times the Peanuts strip where Lucy snatches the football away at the last minute so that Charlie Brown lands on his back. Again and Again and Again.