Let's quit while we're behind

Item: Earlier today, in eastern Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed 10 members of the local police, while they were travelling home from a ceremony.

Item: Also today, in southern Afghanistan, two Taliban militants hiding small guns in their shoes [not turbans? Ed.] slipped into a provincial governor's compound, setting off a fierce gun battle that left two security guards and both attackers dead.

Item: As reported here earlier this week, Prime Minister Harpoon says if Canada is asked by the USA to extend its hopeless "mission" in Afghanistan beyond 2014, he will "consider all the options".

Suggestion, from Walt to Messers Obama, Harper et al. Isn't it about time to declare victory in Afghanistan and get the hell out?

Precedent: When the undeclared Vietnam War was at its height, with the US military spinning its wheels, all the while piling up American as well as Vietnamese corpses, Lyndon Johnson called an old Senate colleague, George Aiken. The prez asked his friend, who had been in the Senate since 1941, what he should do about Vietnam. Senator Aiken's advice? Claim victory and get out. Did Mr. Johnson listen? Noooooo...

Congressman Ron Paul, among others, have given the same advice to Al O'Bama. Enough already! Let's quit while we're behind!

Bombs started to fall on Kabul eleven years ago, the announced objective being to oust the Taliban. Well, as noted above, the Taliban are still there. When they get pushed out of one area, they retreat into another, or cross into Pakistan, or melt into their Afghan community.

Meanwhile, the Americans, Aussies, Kiwis and even Canucks fight on to support the Karzai government, which is not only thoroughly corrupt, but also irrelevant beyond the outskirts of Kabul. In the provinces, warlords again run the show. And Afghanistan's neighbours -- Pakistan, India and Iran -- have their own agendas, which NATO members can't begin to understand, let alone affect.

The Prez keeps saying US troops will be drawn down swiftly in 2013 and gone by 2014. Should Americans believe him? Last weekend, Washington and Kabul drafted an agreement that would see the USA supporting the Afghan government for a decade after combat forces leave. That would stretch the U.S. commitment from 2001 to 2024.

The mission after 2014 period will be to building democratic institutions and develop Afghanistan's economy, once all the opium poppies are killed. The estimated cost is $4 billion... per year! The US would put about $2.7 billion of taxpayers money on the Persian carpet, while the begging bowl will be passed around at the NATO heads of government meeting in Chicago in three weeks, to collect the remaining $1.3 billion.

But no matter how much money we pore down the Afghan rathole, once our forces leave, Afghanistan is almost certain to enter a period of fracture marked by political instability and ethnic conflict. Some would say, in light of events such as today's, that a civil war has already started.

So what we're doing is throwing good money -- not to mention precious western lives -- after bad. No matter what we do, Afghanistan's future will be shaped by domestic forces and pressure from nearby nations over which NATO will have little or no control.

Afghanistan has seen outside powers -- Persia, Britain, Russia, now America -- come... and go. Yet Afghanistan hasn't changed. Nor will it. The American war against Afghanistan -- let's not kid ourselves that NATO would be there if it wasn't for America's pushing -- has unclear goals (now that Bin Laden is dead) and only two chances of success: slim and none. Time to go.