Meanwhile, in Afghanistan...

The title of a new blog post by Glenn Greenwald says it all-

Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda -- together again

Money quote:

...The few war advocates left insist that all we need in Iraq is just some more troops and some more time. Except we don't have more troops (according to the military itself) and the ones we do have are spread thin and exhausted from multiple tours of duty. And even if we did have some magic troops materialize for Iraq, what would we do about Afghanistan, which -- according to Bush's own ambassador -- requires a commitment of enormous additional resources over many years just to prevent the country from "fall[ing] apart again"?

And even if these severe and dangerous problems could be solved with a massive increase in resources (money and troops) -- an extremely precarious premise, to put it mildly -- how would we pay for that? The Republican propaganda machine has made even the mere mention of tax increases politically toxic. Even the suggestion that the Bush tax cuts maybe shouldn't be made permanent was a weapon that was used by Republicans in an effort to keep themselves in power. And we are a country that is drowning in deficits and buried by debt. "Imperial overstretch" doesn't even begin to describe the untenability of our predicament...

...If we want to fight the wars necessary to maintain our dominance in the Middle East, then we should do so. And if we don't, then we shouldn't. But this middle course -- where we plod along aimlessly, starting wars that we're not really committed to winning and therefore are losing -- is not only the most incoherent course, but also the most destructive one.

What is indisputably clear is that our current course is totally unsustainable. That's just reality. It isn't that things have progressed too slowly in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's that the situation has deteriorated in both countries, to the point where Al Qaeda now has not one but two countries (not counting a nuclear-armed Pakistan) in which it is more or less free to operate. And the stronger they get, the more of our resources are needed to keep up. Yet we don't have the resources needed and aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get them. But we pretend that's not the case by insisting on our divine entitlement to magical victory and depicting those who claim otherwise as people who hate the troops and don't want to win.

What he said (and bolded added by moi for emphasis).

He brings up many good points, not the least of which is that these wars-- which have been used to justify everything the Bush administration does, not to mention their reelection two years ago-- are treated as afterthoughts. Just go about your business, American people, just a few wars going on over here, that's all. I was reading of one of the local papers today about the history of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and how the parade was canceled for a few years during the second world war. Many sacrifices were made during that war... food rationing, people collecting tin and rubber, people working in factories, and filing their income taxes three times a year. That was a war that was truly being fought by everyone in this country, and not just in the "rah rah rah" way conservative bloggers think they're fighting the war on terror by ranting about islamofacism on their website. So oblivious is this President to reality of the war(s) he started, that it only momentarily seemed to register that this cost him control of his Congress last week. I am not saying I wanted to be told we had to start eating turnips, but something in the neighborhood of a national discussion of the implications of foreign oil dependency, etc, would have helped.

It is clear that the leaders of this country no longer have the 'will' for really going to war and being serious about it, here and abroad... if only because the public is more willing to blindly support a war if it can be fought quietly, with others' lives and the money of future generations. Which may be for the best. Because maybe in the future, they will not start wars preemptively by choice, or use war casually as a political weapon. WWII was won because it was treated seriously, and it was treated seriously because it was a necessary war that the world fought together. We made some really poor military decisions in the 60 years since that time, the lessons of which we were supposed to learn after Vietnam, but we never did.

Then 5 years ago, we were attacked again, and went to war inside Afghanistan with some pretty clear goals. But our President got bored with that pretty quickly, as his administration implemented their subtle plans to start a new war of their choosing to settle an old score and bomb the Middle East into democracy (they hoped this would only take a week or two to accomplish). And so here we are. Losing two wars. But the President insists that we will win. Why? Because we say so! Clap harder, everyone!!

If the President's plan for war in 2002/2003 had been better thwarted, would Afghanistan be doing better today and would our general status in the world be better as well? It seems hard to argue otherwise.

Let's see how quickly the next generation will forget that lesson.