Should Obama Go 'All In' On Afghanistan? - Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times opinion.

Back in January when he took office, Barack Obama had amassed a very considerable pile of chips. Events since then have appreciably reduced that stack. Should he wager what remains on Afghanistan? That's the issue the president now faces.

The first true foreign policy test of the Obama presidency has arrived, although not in the form of a crisis coming out of nowhere announced by a jangling telephone at 3 a.m. Instead, a steady drip-drip of accumulating evidence warns that Afghanistan is coming apart...

Obama's advisors - Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander on the ground in Afghanistan - have been quite candid in arguing that half-measures won't suffice. The war is going badly. The Taliban is gaining in strength. Seven-plus years of allied efforts in Afghanistan have accomplished very little.

Even if the military's recently rediscovered catechism of counterinsurgency provides the basis for a new strategy, turning things around will take a very long time - five to 10 years at least. Achieving success (however vaguely defined) will entail the expenditure of vast resources: treasure (no one will say how much) and, of course, blood (again, no one offers an estimate)...

More at The Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...0,5826004.story

No.

Let the pipeline people protect their property themselves.

Afghanistan was and always will be a network of tribal communities connected by a roadway system. The idea that there can be a NATION is pure nonsense.

Best option for us and them is to get out...

Next best option is to make three countries: Pakistan, Pashtunistan and Afganistan and limit our military involvement in all three...

There already IS Pashtunistan. Afghanistan is a Brit invention. Pakistan was an accident.

But I agree.

GET OUT.

Let the pipeline people fight it out.