Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots

Phi Beta Iota: The White House is up in arms over the leak of a critical document on Afghanistan; General McChrystal means well but has the wrong mission, the wrong force, and no Afghan army at all (as well as a heavily-armed venal police force with more in common with Karzai's drug lord brother than with US or Afghan public interests); and winter is coming.  Here are some of the dots.  We disagree with Chuck Spinney, who believes the leak is an attempt to pressure Obama to go along.  On the contrary, we believe the leak was a clever way of avoiding the high crime, on the part of senior defense leaders, of concealing from Congress and the public the key fact: no progess, more troops, no promises.  Missing from all of these dots is the original dot: the Taliban OFFERED Bin Laden to us and we turned them down.  Like Iraq, our entry into Afghanistan and the subdequent devolution of that endeavor was based on political lies to the public.  Our military leaders failed us then in refusing to speak truth to the public and call out the liars (whose lies were de facto high crimes and misdeamenors).  Afghanistan is winnable as a battle royale, is we are willing to eradicate the bulk of the population, but it is also a growing cander within the Republic, and we surmise that if the Obama Administration wants to save what little is left of its credibility (being virtually indistinguishable in all respects from the Bush Administration), Afghanistan is a no brainer.  Ralph Peter's, below, offers an excellent face-saving and force-saving option.  When in doubt, we always like to say, “Listen to Ralph.