The fact that the President had to fly into Afghanistan when it was dark and fly out before it got light, that after ten-and-a-half years of fighting there, we can’t be confident of his safety either at Bagram Air Force Base or downtown Kabul, tells us more than his speech.
As for the new Strategic Partnership Agreement that promises we will do, um, something TBD in Afghanistan through 2024, it doesn’t say anything about how many forces we will provide or how much money we will spend. It just says we won’t have permanent bases or soldiers on patrol after 2014, something many of us would like to see happen even sooner.
We can’t fix the corruption, we can’t establish a strong central government, we can’t fix the ethnic and tribal rivalries and feuds. The Afghans have not proven themselves deserving of the investment in lives and treasure we have already expended for them, let alone more.
Al Qaeda has moved on, to Pakistan, to Yemen, to Somalia. We should too. The Taliban understands that if they mess with us again, we can always go back.
Embattled Farmers 