The real problem here is that the Afghan War has now become popular with much of the media and the intereventionist elite in both parties. Under Obama — as under Bush — all the interventionist nonsense is the rage: elections, secularism, women's rights, nation-buliding, human rights, schools for girls, etc. (NB: A prolonged military occupation and rules of engagement that yield more dead soldiers and Marines but few dead enemies also is required.) While all of these things are essentials in America, they barely qualify as nice-to-haves in the realms of foreign policy and national security. The Afghan War was a necessary war; the need to annihilate al-Qaeda and as much of the Taleban as possible was absolute. We have failed utterly in that task and are now compunding that failure by torturing the Afghan people — men, women, and children — with an imposed Westernization they want no part of. The only justifiable reason to go to war is self-defense and and the intention to win. We had the first, we lacked the second, and now the interventionists, much of the media, and the social scientists who are using Afghanistan as a laboratory are taking us all, Afghans and Americans alike, to hell.

M.F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA