Remember that Afghanistan base where nine Americans were killed recently in a bold frontal attack by Taliban militants? Instead of beefing up our presence, the base is being abandoned. Might as well leave a white flag flying when they leave. That's a big win for the Taliban, and another sign we don't have the forces in Afghanistan to win that war.

But now that John McCain has adopted Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy, maybe there's hope.

A soldier serving in Afghanistan has a good point:

Following the deaths of 32 Virginia Tech students, the President of the United States ordered that all American flags be flown at half-staff for one week.

In accordance with the president’s order, the U.S. flag at Bagram Airfield was raised to half-staff.
The deaths of the 32 students are a tragedy that was felt throughout the world. Even Afghan President Hamid Karazi gave his condolences to the U.S. on the loss of so many young lives. The president of a country, which has seen more than its fair share of young deaths, tipped his proverbial hat to these young people.

But I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. servicemember.

Is the life of Sgt. Alexander Van Aalten, a member of our very own task force, killed April 20 in Helmand province not valued the same as these 32 students? Surely his death was as violent as the students.

Aalten’s death lacked the shock factor of the Virginia massacre. It is a daily occurrence these days to see X number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. People have come to expect casualty counts in the nightly news; they don’t expect to see 32 students killed.

Just watching an interview with Michael Scheluer, former head of the the CIA Bin Laden unit. He said that al Qaeda has been rebuilding these past five years. Money quote:

"The idea that we are going to try to do with 40,000 troops in Afghanistan what the Soviets couldn't do with 150,000 troops is a bit of madness."

Seems we need help in Afghanistan:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday he would consider sending more troops to Afghanistan where U.S. commanders say they expect the Taliban to step up attacks from Pakistani sanctuaries.

Gates, in Afghanistan to ensure commanders have the resources to counter an expected Taliban offensive in the spring, said it was very important the United States and its allies did not let the success achieved in Afghanistan slip away.

Violence in Afghanistan intensified last year to its bloodiest since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

One thing left out of this story is that the Bush surge in Iraq takes one brigade OUT of Afghanistan.

Could the price of Bush's surge plan for Iraq be failure in Afghanistan?

Glenn Greenwald points out the brick wall that is coming up fast:

If preserving our dominance of the Middle East is something we want to make a priority, then we would need to decide what sarifices we are willing to make to do so -- how we will massively expand our military, the increase in indiscriminate force we are willing to accept, and how we are going to pay for our imperial missions. Because as long as we are committed to dominating that region, we are going to be engaged in a long and likely endless series of wars against religious fanatics and various nationalistis who simply don't want us there and are willing to fight to the death -- making all sorts of sacrifices -- to prevent us from dominating their countries.

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.

Frist: Taliban should be in Afghan gov't:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

Why is it that a Republican can say that the war in Afghanistan can't be won militarily, when anyone else mentioning such a notion about Iraq is branded a traitor?

At one time, it was Afghanistan which was the breeding ground and export center for terrorism. Now it looks like they are importing lessons from Iraq:

A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in downtown Kabul on Friday, killing at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others, officials and witnesses said.

The blast, near the U.S. Embassy, came as NATO chiefs appealed for member nations to send reinforcements to combat resurgent Taliban militants fanning the deadliest violence in five years. A top British general said the fighting in volatile southern Afghanistan was now more ferocious than in Iraq.

Worse than Iraq?

Many, many people warned the Bush administration to not pull out of Afghanistan too early. The country was never really secured, nor was the Taliban threat eliminated. We left the country in the control of warlords, with only the capital Kabul being in the hands of the official government. The warlords are only interested in the opium, and many are now teaming up with the Taliban again.

Will people now see the real cost of the war in Iraq? It's not just the Iraqis who suffer.