Another Word for Failure is "Afghanistan"

Despite Fareed Zakaria's most recent reasoned essay on how to pull something positive for US national security and regional stability in the volative far Middle East out of a situation that daily deteriorates, getting it right in Afghanistan means getting out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Here are three things that wre wrong about going to war in Afghanistan to begin with:

1. Itis not our country
2. It is not even a country
3. Al Quaeda does not need a country to be a problem

Didn't you wonder how all the training that supposedly went on in the Al Quaeda camps in Afghanistan contributed to 9/11. Specifically, I could never understand how all the people running, jumping, shooting in the tapes we saw of the training camps in Afghanistan translated into 12 hijackers flying airplanes into the NY Towers. Somebody more intelligent than I am can tell me what the connection is. And, I am sure that the security obessessed folks who run much of our national security apparatus would be glad to tell me what the connection is.

Still, in my ignorance, I can imagine that we could have done a much better job of disarticulating Al Quaeda by not invading and not stationing troops exactly in the middle of one of the longest standing and intractible conflicts of modern history (that is the one between competing tribes exacerbated by surrounding interests who specialize in intrigue. The idea that we could establish somekind of democratic government in Kabul that would, eventually, win the hearts and minds of Afghanis assumes first that all the people withing the national boundaries conside themselves Afghanis and, secondly, that if they did, that the central goverment with no resources could do more for them than the poppy fields could.

Somebody who knows how to play chess, could probably have figured out a way to enter the conflict/intrigue of the region in a way that would eventually reduce Al Quaeda to a minor player. And, we would not have been embarrassed by so little success, have not demonstrated so clearly that we have no criteria for friendship (that is the Pakistan as ally thing), and would not have been the reason for so many civilians being killed by stray bomb blasts.

So, more troops, better counter-insurgency tactics, more humanitarian and evelopment aid for Kabul, geting tought with Pakistan....I am sad to say, it all just costs money, lives and destabilizes a region that had managed to stay stable for decades despite the incipient conflicts sowed into the soil of the region prior to our arrival. Worst of all it all still fails to take into account three things, if the goal is to disarticulate Al Quaeda's power:

1. It is not our country
2. It is not a country
3. Al Quaeda does not need a country

Best advise to President Obama is to "declare victory, go home and play chess."