Just in case there is anyone out there who doesn’t have a hard and fast and inflexible view on our post 9/11 policy, I’ll throw out the following: the US had a multitude of VERY good reasons for choosing not to make Afghanistan the centerpiece of its then-new “war on terror” TM. And those reasons together are a pretty plausible explanation for why, after a quick bug spray in Afghanistan, we went after Iraq as well, and then shifted the focus there.

Those opposed to the escalation of the WoT into Iraq made a big deal about how we should have focused on and finished the job in Afghanistan. Now, as time passes and Afghanistan proves a very difficult nut to crack, much harder than Iraq, folks who spent 6 years bitching about Iraq are likely to blame Bush and say that we could have fixed Afghanistan properly if we had focused exclusively on that situation in the aftermath of 9/11.

Well, we’ll never know, will we? And that’s what affords the anti-Iraq-war folks the luxury of continuing to blame it all on Bush. So much easier than digging into the details and history of places like Afghanistan and Iraq and noticing how, with the world’s help, they are dysfunctional sociopolitical cesspools.

I think reforming Afghanistan into something resembling a functioning modern democracy was a fantasy then, and I think its a fantasy now. Unless a young charismatic and truly insightful native figure rises up to lead these folks, and he (or she, but in Afghanistan, let’s face it, probably he) can be kept alive.