Today in Afghanistan

Fantastic, informative post Joe, as usual. When do you sleep?

Joe: getting out of the Beltway has done some good: your pieces are more nuanced. I guess being in Amman does lend perspective. The Council on Foreign Relations has a strange collection of people: and Max Boot is stranger than most.

Do you plan to give us a piece from Damascus. What about bringing them into our diplomatic fold. Posting an ambassador there may send a good signal.

Excellent post, thanks.
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I did find this "Where Boot goes wrong is to compare Karzai to Iraqi President Nouri al-Malaki, who was seen as a WINK link when Iraq was in chaos" amusingly Freudian.

Joke Line
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Did we ever hear back about that "rookie mistake"?

Joe Klein:
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Where is the cost vs benefit analysis that supports a continued occupation of Afghanistan?

@sg,
The rookie mistake is being ignored as a professional courtesy. Upon further review it was determined that the AP reporter wasn't a rookie and therefore is allowed to mistate official positions with impunity as long as the result is more rather than less bellicosity.

Afghanistan could (and perhaps should) be the 100 Years War to which McCain correctly alluded.

What really emboldens the enemy -- as we've seen with the renewed car bombings in Iraq this week -- is to stupidly tell the forces of evil when you PLAN TO LEAVE.

And always changeable Skippy Obama's the head cheerleader of the Cut & Run Cult (a subsidiary of the We Have No Clue Cult, partnered in crime with the We're Going To Cook The Census Books Cult).

The Taliban must have been licking their chops, waiting for this myopic MOOP and his wobbly cadre.

Some more nice vetting, libniks.

"Afghanistan could (and perhaps should) be the 100 Years War to which McCain correctly alluded."
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Except the 100 years McCain was looking for was in Iraq, not Afghanistan.

BTW: We've been logistically forward and ready to rock in Germany, Italy, Spain, Korea, Japan, Guam, and numerous other military posts most Americans have forgotten, for over 50 years.

WHY do Iraq and Afghanistan deserve less, as potential improvements, than those other places?

The argument could be made, will be made, has to be made that we in fact have a GREATER stake in securing stability and slow democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, and Indonesia, and Saudi, and Syria, and Iran) than we do Old Europe -- which still refuses to carry any substantial armed weight with the housecleaning, other than the UK. And the Brits have basically chunked their naval and marine forces (there are plenty of shiny news ships that the French seem to like docked & pristine rather than useful & engaged).

Comparing U.S. strategy and tactics to the Russians is a fool's analysis - where are combat units don't drop to their knees in confusion whenever a CO gets hit, but in fact move forward and with dedicated leadership on the ground that the commissars could only dream about in politically deadened Moscow.

Before we retreat ala Saigon, again, we need to cross the DMZ, in force.

Anything less is RFK.

"We've been logistically forward and ready to rock in Germany, Italy, Spain, Korea, Japan, Guam, and numerous other military posts most Americans have forgotten, for over 50 years."
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Guam??

"...the 100 years McCain was looking for was in Iraq, not Afghanistan..."

Jesus H. Christ:

McCain was making a RHETORICAL POINT about not tipping off the enemy to our plans and capabilities, get it?

When a buller (a bullee should be the victim, phonetically) knows you'll be away soon, what does he often do?

What passes for common defense sense in the DNC you could fit in Leo Paschetta's empty CIA portfolio.

Guam
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Air Force refueling station deluxe.

And they vote too.

"Air Force refueling station deluxe.
And they vote too."
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Hula,
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Beautiful place. Been there . . . more than once. Anderson used to be a SAC base with B52D's and tankers stationed there during Vietnam. More of a way station now.
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Just trying to figure out what specifically Guam is ready to rock against.

who was seen as a wink link when Iraq was in chaos
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You mean "weak link"?
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I'm sorry to be picky but it seems like influential journalists should be impeccable in their use of language.

Oh, and one does not simply rock into Guam.

[...] Klein, writing at Time’s Swampland blog, thinks Boot’s Iraq analogy is off base: First of all, it’s perilous to compare Afghanistan to any other place–and particularly [...]

Max Boot is talking traditional US foreign policy nonsense, of which Joe Klein is also a devoted advocate. The murder of Diem was unnecessary and could have been avoided by a little arm twisting by the US to bring him around to address the disruptiion he was causing, mostly with Buddists. The whole affair, before, then, and after was a mindless mess, which is to describe US foreign policy in general for 60 years until now.

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Want to really depart from such keystone kops exercises in Afghanistan and try to really change things in the world? Invite Russia to participate in the mess. They had forged great progress in the country before we intervened on behalf of the primitave tribes to help them decide it wasn't worth it. Radical thought I know, but at least it is a coherent thought, unlike that eminating from the State Dept. and intelligence communities, and supported by the likes of Joe and Max.

Terry Gross interviewed Sarah Chayes last week, her view is that government corruption is the problem in Afghanistan right now. She backs up your point that "the Taliban resurgence has grown on the hatred that average Afghans have for the Karzai government's arrogance and corruption."
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Thanks for this post, JK. Your recent string of posts hasn't made for as much comment fodder, but I for one have been reading them with interest.

"Invite Russia to participate in the mess."

They're uniformly uncoordinated, corrupt, incompetent, depressed drunken thugs.

And they screwed up there the last time, despite their overwhelming firepower.

Other than that great troops.

NATO needs to kick in, hard, and we need to issue the ultimatum to the Pakis (and the Iranians) to stand down from the terror export business.

And when they hesitate, FRY THEM.

All of free India, if not Indianapolis, will rightfully cheer.

Changing its name to Altria!:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/02/apnewsbreak_blackwater_dumps_tarnished_brand_name.php

"They're uniformly uncoordinated, corrupt, incompetent, depressed drunken thugs.

And they screwed up there the last time, despite their overwhelming firepower."

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hulagate, I lost the thread here. Are you speaking of Russians or Republicans? And, about that overwhelming firepower...you know damn well that it was overcome by hand held missles supplied to your mujadhen cousins by the idiot Carter administration. There, go figure that one out. You gonna defend Carter? But hula, you do make me laugh. You have just enough propaganda information to engage, yet theere is not enough Republican propaganda to be convincing. I think you and Joe would agree more than he and I.

The following comment is the opinion of my son who lives in Afghanistan since 3 years. I thought I would share this with the general public:

I think this article is a typical piece by someone who spent a week in Afghanistan and believes they now understand it. If he can't even get the names of the programs he advocates right (It's the national SOLIDARITY PROGRAM), I don't trust him to solve the country's vastly complex problems.
In short, I do not think that better oversight of the Karzai government will solve anything. Not at this point. What this guy has right is that Afghans are completely disgusted with the corruption and arrogance of the people working in the government. But of course, you can imagine it's misleading to use Karzai's name in all of this, to think that somehow it's in his control magically to fix these problems. I told you, several years ago, about having been shaken down by Afghan police officers. It's only gotten worse since then.
I've found myself thinking about the issue a lot, recently, and I wonder if such a thing as "Afghan government" is even possible. The basic problem, to put it very crudely, is that this is a country choc full of men with inferiority complexes, which are a part of the culture. The man here who has authority acts essentially like a mafia don. And that works, when he assumes the mafia don's traditional role, which is to provide for the same people from whom he takes. But here, they do not. Instead, there seems to be this collective feeling of "I'm part of the government, which is providing for the people. Therefore I don't need to provide for anyone -- that's someone else's job, obviously -- but I have been invested with authority / power over people. Therefore, I can push people around as I see fit." So what you find a lot more of is mafiosi along the lines of the scumbags in the Sopranos, and less like Robert DeNiro/Marlon Brando in the Godfather.
I'm not sure if that explanation will make much sense to you.
In any event, a more basic, though perhaps not as fundamental, problem is that Kabul is entirely disconnected from the rest of the country. If you want to see a tragicomedy unfurl, watch someone try to reform the country from his seat in the presidential palace.
The next few years here are going to be a complete mess. People in the US need to see the writing on the wall. This country could have been won over some time ago, but the window of opportunity is closed now, and the sooner the US comes to a completely unsatisfactory compromise and gets itself out, the better.