We took a wrong turn, but we can't give up on Afghanistan

However, the picture is not as absolutely dark as one might be led to expect. On my own ventures into the Afghan hinterland, I found that the Taliban also labored under one giant disadvantage from which the earlier mujahidin had not suffered: They had already been the government of Afghanistan and had not been loved for it. Countless people, especially women and city dwellers, had ugly memories of their cruel and stupid rule. Many Afghans fled the country to get away from it and only came back when the Taliban were thrown out. Several religious and ethnic minority populations, who also suffered grossly, are unlikely to submit to another round of Taliban control…

The problem could be that, in his anxiety to deflect any charges of weakness over Iraq (and starting at a time when the Afghan-Pakistan picture was a good deal brighter than it is now), Obama may have promised in Afghanistan more than he can hope to deliver. As it is, we are now committed to a huge new Afghan security apparatus at a cost that continues to grow every day, while NATO allies become increasingly edgy. Even the British are expressing restiveness about the casualty rates and the ever-receding horizon of political stability. Finally, and unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has no economy (except the “informal” one that we have so foolishly committed ourselves to uprooting). But there are many options short of despair, let alone capitulation, and it ought to be possible to mention them as well as to think about them.