The health of Afghanistan is not especially good (AFAIK) and it is good that this decision isn’t made overnight. We need a real plan for success (and not just numbers) or we would be risking far too much to stay there.

(among your several errors)

Then maybe Obama can open his “Organization to prevent record unemployment and deficits” right next to the Bush center for public policy.

he is erudite, humorous, snarky and apalled, just like some of us!

here is Ioz on November 9th, aptly summarizing the situation in Afghanistan:

Consider. What are we doing in Afghanistan? After all the dross has been peeled away, the most comprehensible, consistent, and coherent explanation remains: we are there to deny the Taliban and their allies control. Now it would be wonderful if Hamid Karzai discovered his inner Jeffersonian (well, Hamiltonian, but are we gonna split hairs?), but in the meantime, this is it. Rubber on the road. Deny the Taliban the country. Into the cracks and fissures around this goal flow such minor boons as the pipelines and the Womyn and the occasional stab at democracy. And what are our enemies but a mirror image, enacting violence and sowing chaos and dissension to deny America and its allies control? Into the cracks and fissures around this goal flow such minor boons as . . . It is mere attrition. To whom will the cost become too high first? The differences are all in the economies of scale. To America, it seems more sensible to use robots and missiles. To the Taliban, the terrorist, whomever, it seems more sensible to use people. There are more of them. They are eminently replacable–they can be manufactured with a minimum of infrastructure, you know?

Obama judiciously considers 4 options, counsels with his wise men, and distills a new 5th position out of the 4! High wonkery indeed – but the 4 and the new 5 are all raises, are they not?

So to Obama, the goal of denying the Afghan Taliban control of Afghanistan is worth at least say, $4.5 billion dollars a month in the present day, and onwards for what, 10 years?

He will quibble about allocations, deployments, plans and strategeries, but he’ll commit enormous fortunes on Day one, up front, for this goal.

The goal of Health Care for Americans?!? too expensive, has to be budget neutral! 2013 at the earliest – and lets have the IRS make sure you are tithing to the insurance cartel.

I think we should have Juan Cole over ASAP for a Salon regarding all of this. His view of a “light footprint” is insightful.

Juan Cole: If you are going to accomplish anything in Afghanistan, you need a very light footprint.

MT: What would that footprint look like?

Cole: Let’s back up and talk about what the goal is in Afghanistan. Your strategy and your tactics are going to come out of your goal. I’m a little bit afraid that, in regard to the goal, you see a lot of mission creep. The goal has become standing up an Afghan government and an Afghan military that’s relatively stable and can control the country. There’s a lot of state-building involved in that.

I am a severe skeptic on this score. I don’t think that’s a proper goal for the U.S. military. I think we are dealing with a tribal society of people who, as a matter of course, are organized by clan and have feuds with each other, and feuds with other tribes, and feuds with their cousins. I think that Washington misinterprets this feuding as Talibanism, and thinks that if you put a lot of troops in there, you can pacify the country and settle it down.

I just think it is a misreading of the character of the country. Afghanistan is a country where localism is important, where people don’t like the central government coming in and bothering them.

The gaping non sequitor is that Karsai’s corruption leads to the rise of the Taliban. Where is the proof of that cause and effect. Not only that but that the Taliban must be constrained from attacking the US again. How is that even remotely possible, you can not remove people’s resolve, especially when that resolve is justified.

The Taliban are Afghans, they have every right to take part in the affairs of their country, just as Southern Christians radicals have that right in this country. In fact every Afghan has the right to repudiate the effects of the US government’s actions that go against their interests. And there are quite a few.

The threat to take away oil and natural gas from their area is one. The mistreatment of Palestinians at the hand of Jews in Israel and the US is another. The fact that the US is militarily occupying their country and killing its peeople is a third.

A lesson that the US government very deliberately refuses to learn because it does not suit its purpose, is that actions by the US government that injure people pisses them off. And people who are pissed off will retaliate as best they can.