The Afghan war - year 10

Kudos to Bob Herbert for actually paying attention to our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Bob Herbert - The Courage to Leave Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

.... What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent — and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times’s Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.

There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001...

We may be in the all too common situation where, if there is any game plan, it's not one that can be spoken. For example, our game plan might be to divide Afghanistan into feudal baronies, and make each Baron responsible for their domain. Keep things quiet, or get a missile through the castle window. Not necessarily a bad idea, but not one that Obama can verbalize.