How to Get Out of Afghanistan (With "Grace")

This truthdig piece by William Pfaff explains the seemingly insurmountable quagmire that is Afghanistan. Gee thanks, Pres. Bush, you idiot. Here's the crux of the solution as proposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal:

McChrystal has suggested that his war, if fought on his terms (with troop reinforcements rising to a total of over 100,000 men at least), would take between 10 and 50 years to succeed.

My italics. Yeah, there's a solution for you. You betcha! Employ a (failed) Vietnam-era strategy of "clear and hold" and claim that if it hadn't been for the press, the fickle public, and a Congress that failed to do the right thing for fear of the loss of incumbency.

Retired Army General Karl W. Eikenberry, now the US ambassador to Afghanistan, urges in writing that we should not send one additional soldier to Afghanistan. Instead, he says, cut back to a few thousand trainers, wait to see if the Afghans get their shit together, and if not, bail.

Appealing to my anti-war outlook, but from a practical and political standpoint, not a winning strategy, either for 2010 or 2012. This would be, as the Republicans put it during the 2008 campaign, turning tail and retreating. What better way to paint the Dems as weak on national security than to point to Obama following Eikenberry's strategy.

But, in reality, he tells the truth about this country. The Karzai government has never managed to rule that country beyond the city limits of Kabul. I'm no historian, so please someone tell me: when has there ever been national rule in that that country? It's just so tribal, such a forbidding landscape, and so ungovernable. We will never manage to eliminate the Taliban so long as Pakistan fails to protect its western border. No matter how many troops we drop down in there, we will never win over enough hearts to get them to see the wisdom of the western way of life: namely, democracy and equality for all. And we will never find the political will to step up a serious attempt at building infrastructure, schools, etc., because Americans want our money for our own needs.

So really, our job there devolves into playing Terrorist Whack-A-Mole as cells pop up to pose a threat to the U.S. And we'll just have to keep dropping quarters into the coin slot, and each successive presidential administration will spend weeks trying to come up with a solution that works there and here, and each will fail.

Again, thanks Pres. Bush! Asshole!