Alexander, so frustrated by the incessant rebellion in the people of Sogdiana, sank into dark dreams of conspiracy, butchered friends for the sake of his paranoia, and finally slouched his unstoppable army off to the south in search of conquests that might stay conquered.

Not much has changed in Sogdiana, save for the name. It is still factious, conniving, bleak, arduous and ruthless. It just happens to be called ‘Afghanistan’ these days.

Afghanistan is miserable for America. There is a myth that Afghanistan was “the good war,” and that we bestowed some noble gift of liberty on its people by invading. That myth is rapidly withering on the cold slopes of the Hindu Kush.

Women’s rights are appalling - the reports of women only taking their burkhas off for the western media’s cameras were largely true, and the “bee-keeper suit” is still going strong. Suicide, honor-killing and punitive gang rapes are not only common, they are stronger than ever due to the lawlessness and poverty caused by America’s half-hearted war against the Taliban.

A particularly nefarious byproduct of the war was the re-emergence of the Afghanistan opium market. Virtually annihilated by the funless Taliban, our new regime has turned a blind eye to poppy cultivation, and Afghanistan is back on top of the world for drug production.

Afghanistan dominates the drug market, with the highest production of opium in the world–93 percent–and ranks last in terms of human development.

Human development isn’t helped by the fact that many rural Afghans - and Afghanistan is mostly rural - have to take out loans to buy poppy crops to plant, and the only people handing out loans for that high-yield, high-profit harvest are the drug lords. The farmers have nothing to use as collateral, save their daughters. So when the US comes along and napalms a poppy field, it usually directly leads to some pre-adolescent girl being sent to a life of sex slavery under a drug lord.

Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. [10 year old] Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. “It’s my fate,” the child says.

Even without the element of loans involved, the abduction of children for sex slavery or organ harvesting has become epidemic.

Toppling the law and order that had been suppressing such activities has had little return for America. After all, we’ve spent the last seven years putting the most hazardous country in the world on a back burner. What did we think would happen when we refused to go into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan after bin Ladin?

Al-Qaeda is stronger than ever in Pakistan, in terms of organization, recruitment abroad and funding, and is pouring money into. Across the virtually nonexistent border, their Taliban forays control half the country.

This permeation of the Afghan society allows them to employ a nifty new tactic: Using our air strikes to commit their terror bombings. Given that we rely on Afghan militia intelligence to direct our Special Forces air strikes, the Taliban has been masquerading as friendly militias, or using proxies, to call in air strikes on civilians - usually on groups comprised largely of children.

…the Afghan interior ministry issued a statement declaring that “76 people, all civilians and most of them women and children were martyred… 19 women, 7 men and the rest children all under 15 years of age”.

So, the end result of the usual cost-cutting, over-reaching, debt-dependent philosophy of the administration in Afghanistan?

We have success, but it’s only anecdotal.  Our Special Forces can still succeed at narrowly defined missions, just not affect the overall battlefield.  Kabul may be under siege, but it’s getting wealthier.  On the other side of the scales, however, is catastrophe:

Worse treatment of women than ever. Rampant lawlessness and poverty leading to the most depraved practices against children. An al-Qaeda stronger and more global than before 9/11.

The conclusion I draw from this is that occupying Afghanistan is not something to be done by halves.

You don’t just stick an oil company good old boy in power, stifle the press and call it done. You don’t let your enemy have safe haven while underfunding the shoe-string forces you leave in place - just enough hold back the flood. Above all, you don’t stay longer than you have to.

You get the job done, make sure it’s done, and get out. If you stay at the table too long, the house will win. It always wins.

Just ask Alexander.  Just ask the U.S.S.R.

Last week was the RNC bump.

Yesterday, Democrats were wringing their hands over rising Red polls, and Independents were listening to commentators wonder whether the skinny scholar was tough enough next to the War Hero.

Today, continuing what they began last night, the Democratic ticket hit back hard.

Obama, in Dayton, gave due criticism to the foreign policy:

Obama accused Bush of “tinkering around the edges” and “kicking the can down the road to the next president” with his plans to remove 8,000 US troops from Iraq in the coming months and send 4,500 to Afghanistan by January.

He mentioned the unstable status quo - a situation truly on a razor’s edge: The Islamic-fundamentalist Shia in power in Baghdad arresting the Sunni tribal leaders who were and are helping us to fight al-Qaeda; the Taleban ascendant and US-Coalition deaths climbing.

He mentioned the expense of the war - approximately $10 billion a month - and the $79 billion surplus Baghdad is sitting on.

And he summed up Bush’s recent decision to deploy the exhausted forces out of Iraq and into Afghanistan:

“The Illinois senator said that on Afghanistan, he was “glad that the president is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years.”

But he added: “His plan comes up short — it is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency.”

This could not be more right. We need to remember the lessons of Iraq - that showing up to a fight short on resources will be worse than not showing up at all. For years, the country was pat on the head and told that everything was alright; that the only critics were internal enemies who hated the country and were fixated on its faults. Meanwhile, the insurgency worsened, our troops were worn down and bloodshed blew out of control.

Finally 2006 made the White House admit mistakes; finally Petraeus stepped in and acted in defiance of stated policy; at long last, after hundreds of thousands of lives needlessly and forever lost, we adjusted strategy, provided the resources necessary - albeit still on a shoestring, but we have nothing left due to the grand strategic decisions made - and began to stabilize.

We can only hope that Obama’s criticisms now compel the administration to take action in Afghanistan sooner rather than later - that the White House remembers the fundamental flaw in its Iraq strategy, that it was under supplied and ignorant of the local powers, and adjusts in Afghanistan.

If not, our only hope is that America remembers that war critics are better friends to this country than those who ignore its faults at the expense of American lives and treasure.

For, according to John McCain, all things are going just peachy overseas.

It ain’t broke. There are still periodic suicide bombings, but that’s as natural as sandstorms. The Iraqi government wants Obama’s timetable, not long-term bases, but that’s no reason not to keep advocating digging in and building Burger Kings behind concrete walls. Afghanistan sees a resurgent Taleban, but we just need to send in enough troops to break the deluge, not to actually staunch the threat. And as for ‘remember 9/11,’ well, McCain said he’d follow Osama to the gates of Hell, but he draws the line at actually following him to where he is.

“…seven years after 9/11, we are still fighting a war without end in Iraq and we still haven’t taken out the terrorists responsible for 9/11. We heard no explanation for why (Al-Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden is still at large, because that’s where George Bush and John McCain’s judgment has gotten us.”

And that’s where it will continue to get us - a long way off from getting the people who attacked us, closer and closer to getting disastrously worn down with an average of three-tours served and climbing among our troops, and getting deeper and deeper in debt.

To that, today, and in a bold voice, Obama has declared, “Enough.”

Here’s hoping that message will echo strongly from now until November.

Here’s hoping that the people remember the courage of the troops, and are brave enough to admit the government’s mistakes and vote for something new to give them a winnable war.

Here’s hoping for “enough” to bring us an end in sight.

Army General Barry McCaffrey, Patton of Gulf War I and former drug czar, has returned from a survey of Afghanistan to declare it, with his usual panache, “A 25-year campaign … generational war.”

It is … a war of extremists against a population desperate for peace.

In McCaffrey’s estimation, this kind of war can only be won when adequate security forces allow an infrastructure unlike the one now - meaning, opium and slave peddlers dominating isolated villages - to grow.

The battle will be won in Afghanistan when there is an operational Afghan police presence in the nation’s 34 provinces and 398 Districts. The battle will be won when the current Afghan National Army expands from 80,000 troops to 200,000 troops with appropriate equipment, training, and leadership and embedded NATO LNO teams.

Only when this is in place, and prosecuted persistently, will Afghanistan have a chance in McCaffrey’s opinion. He sees this as a long-haul social program - the development of a client-state under the aegis of a few Imperial Legions, rather than a surgically targetted stab against a select band of bad guys.

Al-Qaeda isn’t McCaffrey’s objective. He wants Afghanistan turned away from its course as a terrorist-fostering failed state.

There’s little moral reason to argue against him. Afghanistan’s tribal cadres would gladly go back to aiding, boarding and abetting any inheritor to Osama, assuming we nailed him. Even without the Taliban around, they’re a Narco-State: The world’s leading producer of heroin, a $4 billion exporter. It’s a wreck - a nation in “misery” as McCaffrey puts it.

Staying won’t make many Afghans happy, but leaving is sure to piss them off.

In this regard, the report runs counter to immediate American self-interest. I’m sure most of the supporters of Obama’s Afghan plans envision us just kicking in doors in Pakistan, grabbing bin Ladin and leaving that notoriously unruly region in the dust. McCaffrey, however, insists that unless you start laying down serious stakes - especially economically - Afghanistan is going to bite back.

And that’s the Cost of Imperialism we now face - the Colin Powell problem: We have broken it, and to wit, we bought it. We bought its dope-dependent economy, three-hundred-plus tribal feuds, burkha-and-honor-killing culture, its jihad-fueled mujahadeen; they’re ours to take care of, or take blame for.

Back in the forties, our first Imperial venture saw us occupying and reshaping the far more stable, progressive, economically viable states of Germany and Japan. Even in ashes, the Axis nations were better “clients” for us to raise - eager to please, largely homogenous, desperate for wealth and redemption. And even then, it took massive conscription and a 91% tax limit to get that “generational” campaign to be seen through.

Bush has forced larger, harder, meaner tasks on America’s shoulders when it is far less capable - both in terms of military and money, and in terms of social psychology - to handle them.

One way or another - in investment or in blowback - a generation of Americans will have to pay the price.

Adding his voice of support for Obama’s foreign policy vision to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s, the Afghan ambassador to the US endorsed a vision for his country identical to Obama’s - and vastly different than John McCain’s.

Obama considers Afghanistan the foremost front in the War on Terror; McCain doesn’t. Obama considers more troops an urgent priority; McCain doesn’t. And while the ambassador agrees on all these points, he is also vocal about the main division between Obama and McCain on Afghanistan: Whether the US should pursue al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas regardless of Pakistani support or not.

“We would appreciate it if Pakistan could take full responsibility in dealing with them,” [Afghan ambassador Said Jawad] said. “But if they can’t, if they don’t have the resources, they should allow the international community to take these elements out, for the sake of Pakistan, for the sake of Afghanistan, and for the sake of the world. These are criminals. We should allow the humanity to go out and eliminate these enemies of humanity. We should not fool ourselves with the legal questions such as sovereignty.”

I’m not sure if I like the phrasing of the last sentence, but I agree with its sentiment insofar as that the GWOT depends on us violating the sovereignty of other nations for the sake of tracking down non-state actors - terrorists. All those Tom Clancy-type scenarios that are the bread and butter of counterterrorism are, by and large, illegal. They throw sovereignty out the window for the sake of beating the bad guys. Heck, that’s the mission definition of the CIA.

So for McCain to criticize that with one side of his mouth while he props up the reasoning behind the Iraq invasion is vile hypocrisy and big time dumb. Fortunately, the rest of the world seems to agree with his opponent.

Now all that needs to happen is for the American electorate to give a listen to the rest of the world.

The Presidential candidates have staked out their terrain on the war issue, and so much of America’s White House future depends on the course of events overseas.

For John McCain, a lot of his vaunted war cred requires things to continue to go well in Iraq, while Afghanistan remains a foul-tasting afterthought. For Obama, proof of his claim that being right is more important than being experienced at making mistakes has to be borne out by continued fumbling in Iraq coupled with growing military interest in Afghanistan.

It’s no shocker that I find McCain’s position the less tenable. The news is, however, giving him some notches on his belt. Tactically, Iraq’s not the crucible of chaos it was a year ago, and major efforts are being made by those Iraqis that stood up - the factious but currently firm coalition of government forces and the Awakening - to garotte what’s left of al-Qaeda.

[Al-Qaeda in Iraq] has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

This is big news. Al-Q with its spine broken is still a mean and desperate creature, but nullifying its effects on the map of Iraq seems a possibility. But bigger news is happening in the big picture, and could spell things seriously souring for McCain’s soaring talk of a “Korea-like” presence in the fertile crescent.

Namely, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said definitely today that he wanted just what the Democrats consistently call for - a timetable for withdrawal.

“One of the two basic topics is either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces, so that we know (their presence) will end in a specific time.”

Meaning, short of an official entry in his dayplanner, Maliki wants at least two things: One, for Americans to put it in writing that they’ll leave. And two, that critical elements of American operations in Iraq be manacled to Iraqi governance: Legal culpability and detentions.

This is not sunny news for the old soldier, McCain. He could, and rightly, note that the Iraqis are only able to flex such sovereignty because the US ignored the Congressional bleating for a timetable and surged instead. But voters will want this debacle over, and chances are they’ll hear a disparity between McCain’s line and what Baghdad will soon be banging its gavel for.

What’s more, the fewer bombs go off in Baghdad, the more the barrage in Afghanistan will be heard. Considering that’s Obama’s pole of concern, voters may hear prescience in his constant insistence that while sewing up the suppurating wound of Iraq is key to America’s future, Afghanistan needs to be cauterized - not just stuck under a band-aid and ignored by the administration and McCain.

Escalating events - from the Taliban assault last month to the horrific bombing in the capitol, Kabul today - bear this urgency out.

A car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack in Afghanistan’s capital since the fall of the Taliban, officials said.

Voters will - media allowing - begin to take notice. If they do, they’ll ask questions along the lines of the one that comes immediately to mind when a hard look is taken at today’s bombing: “Why India’s embassy?”

The answer is, because India is the enemy of Pakistan. Quick math follows for those who know the integers involved: An enemy of Pakistan means an enemy of the Taliban, because Pakistan is the private friend of the Taliban. Pakistan is also the country that the US has given sole authority to go after the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their mountainous tribal area.

This all adds up to a typical Central Asian beartrap for the US. It also means points for Obama - not because it’s another Bush war circling the drain; or not just because - but because he’s long insisted that we not only need more forces in Afghanistan, but the will to use them across Pakistan’s border as well.

The final geometry of the Presidential battle lines over the war is coming clear:

McCain is the guy with good tactical ideas - simple, surge-theory stuff; the kind of problems that can be solved by sledgehammers. But for all his bang, he’s weak on the buck - from crosstalk on the big picture in Iraq, to sweeping the toxic stain of Afghanistan under the carpet, McCain’s showing himself a nimwit when it comes to strategic investment of military force. That, or a namby-pamby, poll-driven double-talker who just talks the talk of permanent bases to sound like his pair swings lower than Obama’s.

Obama, on the other hand, knows there’s no sense in keeping one hand tied behind your back in a fight. If we’re putting blood and money into Afghanistan, we best see a return of peace, Pakistani borders be damned.

If proper reporting applies, the American voting public will see their military choices defined clearly: Between the guy who keeps focused on the daily polls and PAC reports, and the man who has his eyes on the grand scheme of our global war.

UPDATE:

Throughout my post, I repeatedly intoned statements along the line of “media willing,” “media wiling,” as though it were my version of “inshallah” (the ubiquitous “God willing” of devout Muslims).

The reason why comes from no respect for the media. Rather, a furious disrespect. Today’s news media has been catastrophically insipid when it comes to covering anything political. A new video on the media’s treatment of Obama’s war stance by stranahan.com amusingly points this out:

The other day, I noticed a headline reporting that Bush was considering sending more troops into the ailing defenses of Afghanistan. I didn’t concern myself, given that so far as he might talk about bolstering our efforts there - or our commitment to combating climate change, or our vision for Middle East peace - nothing would come of it. We’re simply running on fumes so far as our force readiness is concerned.

Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, confirmed this.

The Taliban may have thought they were massing for a major offensive, but instead showed up for a severe drubbing outside Kandahar. Our military and NATO on the whole can put another proud notch on our gun butt. But the victory only serves to sweeten a bitter pill we have to take when trying to scheme success in Afghanistan.

The details of the battle are scarce at this point. As I noted in a previous article, the Taliban had been on an old-school offensive through Arghandab province, seizing villages and blowing stuff up like they were the army of Tamerlane resurrect.

Of course, they were actually what they’ve always been - up-armed street thugs with vulpine guile and second-hand Pakistani weaponry - and so when our forces locked down their noisy advance, there was Hell to pay.

Afghan and NATO-led forces killed or wounded hundreds of Taliban on Thursday in an offensive to clear the militants from the outskirts of Kandahar city, according to the provincial governor.

“Hundreds” could be an overstatement, but the reality is that the dread Taliban offensive stomping through Arghandab had its back broken. Fighting remains ahead, the countryside is still in flames, but Kandahar is safe.

For how long, though? And to what end? These questions aren’t criticism of any particular policy, nor should they be taken as pessimism. Rather, they are evoked by one of the lines to come out of the AP report on this recent Battle of Arghandab.

“They have suffered hundreds of dead and wounded and many of their casualties are Pakistanis,” [Kandahar provincial governor Assadullah Khalid] said.

The presence of Pakistanis in the Taliban forces shouldn’t just be an assumption - they are likely the majority of any Talib force complement these days.

The logical extension then is that America and NATO are at war in Afghanistan to defend it from Pakistan - not the government of Pakistan, true, but fighters based in, funded by, and consisting mainly of people from Pakistan. The Taliban has always been the groomed champion of Pakistan’s “ISI” - a sort of CIA on steroids that has been the real power in Pakistan since around the start of the Afghan-Soviet War.

So for America to be successful, it needs to address this strategic truth and define its goals accordingly. We nominally entered Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and take out al-Qaeda. We did both, but then discovered that they both just change their ZIP code to Pakistan and come back into Afghanistan whenever they want.

So now do we just go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan, in order to eliminate some of the luminaries and big bankrollers in global terrorism, like Osama?

Do we expand that mission into Pakistan to take out the Taliban as well - a mission that would involve a counter-insurgency vastly larger than Iraq, directed against the civilian population and bringing us in direct conflict with Pakistan’s intelligence services?

Or do we, as we are now, just wait in Afghanistan as the enemy masses up across the border, hitting us and Afghanis harder every time?

Scenario One is favored by Barack Obama, as I’ve noted several times with aplomb. He even mentioned it again today, as Arghandab rages:

“I’ve repeatedly challenged George Bush and John McCain’s refusal to hold the Pakistani government accountable for inability to crack down on Al Qaida and Taliban operating within their borders. We are not going to get Afghanistan right until we get our Pakistan policy right.”

Scenario Three, as Obama points out, is McCain’s scenario - another depressing War of Occupation without end. It means stationing at least 37,000 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, to play border guards on the most difficult border in the world. I assure you, the Rio Grande has nothing on the Hindu Kush.

Today again proved America’s incomparable tactical supremacy. What we need now is to restore our strategic supremacy. All the gadgets and training in the world can’t do that. Only intelligent planning can.

Only the American voter can.

Obama responded to McCain’s snide accusations that he didn’t know about Iraq because he hadn’t been there in two years with customary grace and vision - by rising above them, and announcing he will not only be visiting Iraq, but Afghanistan as well.

Obama has said before he was considering a trip, but his comment to reporters Monday was his first clear confirmation. He said more details will be announced shortly, and that he also plans a visit to Afghanistan.

The inclusion of Afghanistan is politically wise for a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that it raises the stakes with McCain. I considered it a foolish expectation that a candidate visit a war zone, but now that expectations game plays in Obama’s favor, demanding that McCain announce a trip to Afghanistan in order to keep pace.

More importantly, it underscores Obama’s message and strategic outlook that Afghanistan is as critical - if not more so - as Iraq in the War on Terror.

It has always struck me as somewhat ironic that the very personification of the War on Terror’s objective, Osama bin ladin, has been able to cool his heels and operate with virtual impunity in Afghanistan’s border regions outskirts, without raising the ire of the most fervid supporters of the war. Considering the tendency - even the eagerness - to invoke the specter of 9/11 when challenged in their foreign policy beliefs, the right-wing has been stunningly numb to Osama’s continued prosperity.

This best change. It has to. And yet, we do not see it changing with McCain.

First off, we don’t hear McCain’s rhetoric changing from the Bush administration’s standard saws. Just today, his campaign criticized Obama for a “September 10th mindset.” That is a profoundly empty statement, not only relying that the listener react emotionally rather than rationally, but requiring they not question it.

For instance, the particular issue McCain contrasts with Obama on was the matter of whether Guantanamo detainees should have Constitutional legal protections or not. Now mind you, all of our prisoners customarily do, foreign or not. And the administration has made plain that the Gitmo crowd were not covered by the Geneva Convention like an enemy army would be. Mind you, the majority of detainees have been found to have had no links to terrorism, instead having been turned in for money by mercenaries or rival governments.

So in essence, Obama was criticized for giving the captives some form of legal rights, whereas McCain considered the smart, proper thing to do was to give them no rights at all.

If this position wasn’t cynical and stupid enough, McCain’s comments on Afghanistan raise further questions as to how sensible he is about matters of war. Asked by conservative media figure Michael Smerconish why we couldn’t invade the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas to pursue bin Ladin, McCain tried to sound erudite and reasonable:

“…there is a reason why [the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region] hasn’t been governed since Alexander the Great. They are ruled by about, as my understanding, 13 tribal entities and nobody has ever governed them.”

Unfortunately for McCain, that explanation is neither erudite or reasonable. In the first case, it’s not erudite because that area has, in fact, been effectively pacified, by rulers from the aforementioned Alexander, to Mahmud, to Tamerlane. In one form or another, it has proven it can be stable and prosperous.

Even more to the point is why it’s not reasonable: For while Afghanistan’s factious, backward and corrupt rulership might be a good reason not to invade in the first place, we passed that decision point awhile ago. Now we’re there, and we have a job to do.

That job is narrowly defined: Get Osama, and cut off the head of al-Qaeda. But even on that matter, McCain complains that we can’t just violate Pakistani sovereignty. To that, I ask, why not? The War on Terror was predicated on the notion that we couldn’t let little things like international law keep us from zapping the terrorists before they hit us with “another 9/11.” And while I actually refute most of that, I have to ask the question:

“If we marched some troops quietly into Pakistan’s border region for the sole purpose of hunting Osama, would Pakistan really complain all that much?”

Given that doing so would only make us isolate them further, cut off the oodles of aid money we fountain them in, and inspire us to beef up India, I doubt it. Obama does too, which is why, though McCain sneeringly accuses him of being out of touch with military matters, he remains firm on his policy that we would put boots on the ground in Pakistan whether they like it or not if it would bag us Osama.

Who’s got “September Ten Head” now, McCain?

This is precisely the kind of leadership we don’t need - the kind that so clouds the actual events of the war with the smoke of emotional drama that we don’t see that they, and not their critics, are the ones standing in the way of victory. For years under Bush, complaining about a lack of troops, armor or an exit strategy in Iraq was declared tantamount to treason, and a wide population of the American public accepted that. Now McCain is doing the same to mask his own mistakes.

He needs to get the facts right. First off, lacking a permanent troop presence in Iraq isn’t “surrender,” it’s obeying will of the government we installed and saving us hundreds of billions. Secondly, the War on Terror’s answer isn’t to hem and haw about how many tribes Afghanistan has - it’s to see its mission through by getting Osama no matter what the cost. And in that second case, it would be high time, what with the Taliban hitting back hard as ever.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that between 300 and 400 militants _ many of them foreigners _ took over the Arghandab region 10 miles northwest of Kandahar. The offensive Monday came three days after a Taliban attack on Kandahar’s prison that freed 400 insurgents.

Facts seem obscured by McCain at every turn, though; not just the military affairs he seems so vapid about. His latest answer to the agony of soaring gas prices was to beat the old drum of off-shore drilling.

Whether you oppose the moratorium or not, hoping to increase America’s 3% share of world oil to 3.25% or even 4% at the expense of our ailing oceans is not going to affect oil prices much. Furthermore, it would be ten years before any major output from offshore drilling could be expected.

Waiting a decade to shift our control of the market by 1% isn’t a plan to help the economic pain of today. It’s pushing an agenda through a gimmick while letting people continue to get screwed.

That - on the Iraq he wants to occupy despite its people’s will and so claims no less will be victory; on the Afghanistan he ignores even though our greatest enemy lives there and attacks with impunity; on Constitutional rights, economy, immigration - seems McCain’s only strategy.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama will be heading for the war front, with a lead in the polls and the solutions to make it worthwhile.

The moment that nation at large has been ignoring is drawing nigh - signs of the Petraeus strategies fractures are now showing, as violence in Iraq flares anticipating the end of the Surge. That this would happen was not, for those in the know, in doubt. The Surge’s most critical objective - the establishment of an enduring, functional government in Baghdad - wasn’t even given a ghost of an effort by the Green Zone aristocracy currently taking up space in the Iraqi parliament. Without that base of support intact, it is inevitable that the house of cards is going to fall once there aren’t enough American hands to hold it up. And, just as the strategists all feared, now that the clock has run out on the Surge, every Iraqi with a gripe is hitting the streets to ensure a hot summer comes in spring.

Now all that remains to be seen is how the different factions here in America will spin it. But before we hold our noses and check out what either side is likely to shovel onto us in the weeks to come, let’s look at the facts on the ground:

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A historic event occured this weekend, when it was announced that a US Army female combat medic in Afghanistan, Spc. Monica Lin Brown will receive a Silver Star for heroic actions taken last April.

This marks the first combat medal of that degree or greater received by a female member of the Armed Forces since World War II. It is also a reminder that despite the gravity of the situation in Iraq, we continue to fight an intense conflict in what is one of the least hospitable locales in the world - a conflict in which our forces are comporting themselves with remarkable valor.

Army Spec. Monica Lin Brown used her body to shield five wounded comrades and pull them to safety after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees last April, the military said.

“I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there,” Brown said Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern Khost Province.

She said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions, so she helped drag the soldiers away from the vehicle.

“I was in a kind of a robot mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of,” she said.

Eventually, she helped move the wounded some 500 yards away and treat them onsite before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation. “I did not really have time to be scared,” Brown said. “Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous [because] I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary.”

Brown, like the Afghanistan conflict, deserves not to be a footnote, but a headline in our American history.

As next year’s spring approaches, there’s another credit bubble that America need to worry about bursting - our military successes abroad - as two wire service reports on the situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq bring to light.

What gains we’ve seen in those “fronts” in the War on Terror have been won because our military has been operating at an exhausting maximum capacity. This has, fortunately, proven enough for tactical successes on the ground. In Afghanistan, we have consistently managed to beat back the al-Qaeda/Taliban incursions of the past years when they flood out of “our ally,” Pakistan, ever tougher than before. In Iraq, Petraeus’ surge deployments and cunning behind-the-scenes - and behind the Iraqi government’s back - diplomacy with our rivals have earned a tentative few months of diminished attacks. But in both these cases, it is due to the excellence of our troops and the awesome resources behind them that the impossible has been made to seem on the horizon. Sadly, it isn’t.

What is on the horizon is the disappearance of the elements that led to those gains.

Troops in both theaters will need to be rotated home after their extended tours elapse. Our military spending, as evidenced by Bush’s recent spending request, is astronomical and only climbing higher. In short, our time with an extra player on the court has run out. This has left our military leadership to take hard looks at how tight our hold on either theater is.

In Afghanistan, the diagnosis is especially bleak. Our insipid strategy of allowing the enemy to reinforce, learn from past battles and return on their own terms from Pakistan effectively unmolested has led to an enemy as strong as when we first met them. Not once or twice but three times they have surged back across the border to tangle with us. This year, their attacks increased in frequency and scope even as we launched an offensive against them. Yet all this is not the worst news. Worst is that our allies in NATO are showing clear signs of drawing down their force complement - and in a theater where their forces comprise around half of troops in country and considerable logistic elements, this is a critical loss to a fragile effort indeed.

Insurgent violence is at its highest level in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. Suicide bombings, for example, have climbed 30 percent in some areas, according to U.S. military officers.

Still, NATO commanders face long-standing shortfalls in troops, equipment and trainers for the Afghan security forces.

The United States has repeatedly urged NATO allies to dedicate more resources to the fight or risk losing gains. The Pentagon has 26,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, with about half of those troops under NATO’s 40,000-strong force.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States would take the lead in drafting a three- to five-year plan for Afghanistan outlining how reconstruction and development could be combined with better security

Even we are finding it difficult to run at anything close to an adequate capacity in the region we have committed most: Iraq. The massive shipments of Stryker vehicles and body armor are still in the works, and the Iraqi Army is still a ways from being trained, but the whistle’s almost blown for our men in country.

In order to assess what that means, one has to assess the objective of the surge mission. It was not merely to quell violence; from the beginning, planners suggested that the security it afforded was artificial. Its purpose was to afford the Iraqi government time and practical ability to draft, enact and execute much needed recovery and reconciliation legislation.

And no, loyal reader, it isn’t that you’ve missed an issue of the Foreign Affairs or an episode of Hannity & Colmes - the Iraqi government has really done nothing substantial to advance its crucial needs: Anti-corruption, provincial governments, constitutional drafting or revenue sharing. What progress has been made, has been made on the ground level, from dealings between our forces and the de facto regional powers like the militias - the very same people we’ve spent much of the last five years fighting. It isn’t Maliki and his Dawah party that are opening up shops in Adamiyah - it’s former Sunni insurgents. It isn’t Maliki who’s welcoming home the Sunni refugees into Sadr city’s markets - it’s radical cleric Mukhtada al-Sadr. And it is not Maliki that is instrumental in forging these alliances; if anything, he fears them. It’s Petraeus, getting the job done no matter what.

And now the question remains - when the surge forces leave, and we no longer have a ready reserve to allow us to both lock down key points and react to threats with total annihilation, will those forces of normalcy hold? Or will the jackals - like Iran, the Shiite Hakim who are duking it out with Sadr in the south, and the ubiquitous al-Qaeda - rip it up enough that people will find more profit in conflict than in peace?

…there are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about 30,000 more than in January. Commanders are planning to draw down the number to about 135,000 by July. Although Bush has not committed yet to going lower, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has expressed hope it could drop to 100,000 by next December.

“There is no question in my mind that an immediate pullout too quickly would be a serious threat to stability in Baghdad,” he said.

[Major General Joseph Fil, commander of Baghdad] said that although al-Qaida fighters “are not controlling any part of Baghdad,” they are still “lurking in the shadows.” Criminal networks also remain “very potent threats.” And coalition forces are still working in the east of the city against “special groups” — Shiite militants backed by Iran.

One thing’s for certain - we have experienced definite benefits from this balancing act. And in our military adventures abroad, as with our budget back home, it is 2008 that will show whether we can pay them forward.

How often have you been exhorted to “Remember 9/11″ , or told you live in a “Post-9/11 world”? Usually this statement is used to inspire resolve in the aggressive actions we have undertaken in the Global War on Terror, and to remind us that the caution in violence shown during the Clinton years is undue. Who doesn’t bristle a little when they hear of times when Osama bin Ladin was in CIA crosshairs - under Clinton or Bush - and prudence let him slip away?

The reason why we bristle is because it is an incident of a clear enemy, whose elimination would mean much, escaping because the world’s sole superpower held itself back. This, and because we suspect that no matter what the benefits of our prudence, the result of having such an enemy still alive and busy out there is far worse.

We are faced with a similar decision in Kurdistan today. The PKK, a party of no small power within the nation of our long-time ethnic allies - the Kurds - have been launching attacks from Kurdish land in Iraq against our definite ally, Turkey. As much as we like the Kurds, I assure you that we would strongly dislike a Turkish invasion inspired by fringe extremists in their ranks.

The response contemplated by the US Administration has been the one that many an American would love to see translated from an action film on the silver screen into reality: The idea of sending in United States Special Forces to eliminate the PKK leadership and surgically excise their mechanism of terror against Turkey. Bad guys dead, Turkey appeased, no one need know about it.

But of course we do know about it, given that I’m talking of it, since columnist Robert Novak - he of the Valerie Plame expose’ - decided to channel his latest White House leak into a story about it. Novak clearly disagrees with the plan. No doubt that played a part in his exposing it so that the Kurds and Iraqis of whose nation the Kurds are a part can be properly offended and on the look out for our troops.

Novak’s galling actions aside, the revelation of the plan has made us face the tough question behind “post-9/11″ logic. Do we go so far to fight terror as to disrespect other nation’s sovereignty when actionable intelligence demands immediate action?

Let me put it another way: If we had bin Ladin on a drone plane’s camera in Afghanistan, should we send in the Tomahawk missile or Special Forces soldiers to kill him? How about if he was in Saudi Arabia? How about Pakistan? How about Britain?

It seems that, as much as many sigh and shake their head at Clinton and Bush passing up supposed “sure things” to hit bin Ladin, there is a line they are loath to cross: The kind of “turn him over or die” mentality that inspired the whole invasion of Afghanistan simply doesn’t apply to nations we’re supposed to like.

Why this is can only be due to people either not knowing the situation or not thinking things through. Do people who cry outrage or inexperience when Barack Obama talks of acting on actionable intelligence about al-Qaeda if Pakistan will not act, realize that his is the exact mentality that they criticize Clinton for not having?

And yet Clinton did have such a mentality - in Sudan, in Afghanistan, and in numerous other cases of violence, anti-terror intervention against states we were not at war at. And what happened? We are not at war with Sudan or with Liberia or with the Comoros. It’s funny - nations seem to be reluctant to consider our acts of limited, armed intervention aimed at covertly or surgically eliminating terrorists within their borders to be acts of war, even though, technically, they are. It’s like they don’t want to fight or something.

We are at war in Afghanistan, which Clinton bombed. Not because Clinton bombed them, though. We are at war in Afghanistan still because we had utterly shattered the Taliban and al-Qaeda in late 2001, but as soon as their bits and pieces bounced over the Pakistani border - likely with help from the Pakistani intelligence services who are closely tied with them - we did nothing to pursue them.

Let me emphasize this: We did nothing. We sent not one bomb into Pakistan, nor any troops. Oh, we fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda plenty whenever they were done with their time out, came across the border to Afghanistan, butchered several villages, attacked us, but then they just went across the border again and we let them have a little “me time” to recover unmolested. And, yes, we invaded Iraq, and now have to prevent al-Qaeda from ripping that country apart.

As much a statement of demogoguery “Remember 9/11″ may be and as vague its applicability to policy, we would do well to remember this much about it: Al-Qaeda was behind 9/11. Not the Taliban. Not Iraq. Al-Qaeda. And yet, though we scattered the Taliban and toppled Iraq, al-Qaeda has turned both of those locations into a crucible while still managing to carry out attacks in the West. And for nearly seven years we have let the perpetrators of 9/11 sit on the other side of the Pakistani border, amassing strength, while we relied on Pakistan - the original incubator and financier of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and a government loath to intervene in the dangerous tribal areas of its country - to do something.

And what did they do - with our billions of aid and apparently inexhaustible patience? Technically, fought. In reality? A lot more nothing.

Such power was not at al-Qaeda’s disposal before hand.

Do you remember the world then? Al-Qaeda was not easy to find in the news. They blew up the USS Cole, the Nairobi embassy; surely they were dangerous, but did people worry about them much? No.

And how far they have come! They now are an enormous threat in Afghanistan, where nervous NATO nations are stamping their feet and queueing up to leave that quagmire. They are described as “the greatest threat” in Iraq today by the US Administration. Yearly we hear of multiple plots involving al-Qaeda in the US, UK, and European nations. How many people had al-Qaeda killed before 9/11? Around 300. They killed 142 people in Iraq on August 1st alone.

Bush recently called the notion that US actions inspire terrorism to be “flawed logic”, when someone recently pointed out that all evidence was that al-Qaeda was not killing people in Iraq before we invaded. Well then what the Hell has happened? How did we go from “around 300″ to thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Afghanis, hundreds of Saudis, thousands of Americans, and the situation in the place we first went to strike them, Afghanistan, going down the tubes, by way of the 3,000 on 9/11?

Two words:

Pakistanti border.

Consider whether risking not offending Musharraf - who doesn’t seem to be willing to do much to fight the foreign al-Qaeda presence, let alone declare war on us - is a good enough excuse for all the above.

There’s no doubt that Iraq is a significant conflict affecting the global war on terror, but it’s now time to take the temperature of the war that started of the now-disheartening “GWOT” - especially since it seems its starting all over again.

To quickly review the status of things in that nation - to be realistic about how politics actually work there, “borderless region of warring tribes” - we’ll look at each of the players and how they’re doing.

NATO
NATO is suffering some fierce casualties at a greater rate than ever before, tangling with both Taliban and local warlords who think they’re getting a little bit too interested in the opium fields that sprang up overnight when the country fell in ‘02. Many NATO nations contributing forces to the effort there are seriously considering withdrawal - most of them European nations with little to prove. Former Warsaw Pact nations have shown no sign of flagging support.

Taliban and al-Qaeda
While somewhat inappropriate to lump these two together, they nevertheless have developed such a tight operational bond during the GWOT that they may as well be treated as a single entity for the purposes of discussing Afghanistan. And both are doing much better there, thank you for asking, as their regrowth since fleeing the Safed Koh nearly six years ago has been practically unmolested. This is as much due to US complancency as anything - the kind of attitude exemplified by President Bush’s comments on the report linked above, saying that al-Qaeda is not as strong as before 9/11 when, in fact, that is precisely what the report says - but Pakistan helped too. But just as it is Pakistan’s protection and quiet support of the Taliban and al-Qaeda that has aided them, it is difference of opinion over what to do with the fickle, duplicitous military junta that has al-Qaeda reportedly undergoing an ideological split.

Pakistan
Yes, nobody really knows what to do with Pakistan these days, though growing public awareness of this in the US due to the report on al-Qaeda prompted the White House to state that “no options were off the table”, including invasion. Not that this is untrue, but it is a poorly timed statement. Firstly, I doubt it was as reassuring to Americans already wringing their hands over a ghastly, insoluble war and wondering whether their overstretched military will ever get out a country less than a fifth the size of Pakistan as it was disturbing to the people of Pakistan. It may come as a shock, but people generally react badly to when you say you’re seriously considering invading them. This is especially the case when President Musharraf and the army of Pakistan had been enjoying a surge in popularity as regards his policies of opposing Islamic militants with open force since the Red Mosque siege. But America has a right to be doubtful, what with Pakistan’s ISI being a long time supporter of Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups it seeks to use as its foreign strong arm of plausible deniability. It surely makes policymakers in Washington eye some very long odds, and ponder whether to go all in on a bet that might be less of a sure thing than the support of Afghanistan’s people.

Afghanistan
Ah, yes. The people of Afghanistan are somewhat of a factor too. How’re they doing? They’re still locking their women up. They’re breaking records for opium cultivation, now providing 92% of the world’s heroin. And they’re getting a touch disgruntled over the increasing amounts of civilian casualties we’re inflicting on them. But by and large, they are the same “rustic” guys as ever, and as likely to side with whoever’s standing beside them at the moment as shoot him in the back when he looks away.

Of all the nations in the history of the world, Afghanistan is the one classically notorious for grinding armies down into dust with malaise, confusion and the stubborn unpredictability of the people. It happened to the Aryans, to Alexander the Great, and on and on, up to Russia and Britain playing their “Great Game” and both losing to the dusty house dealer, and, now, to us. This is not to say we should withdraw from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda leadership is a tempting - albeit perpetually regenerating - target. Bagging bin Ladin would be a solid blow and some good PR for the GWOT. It would hardly slay the hydra and doesn’t even scrape the skin of curing Afghanistan’s ills, but it would be a mark of pride.

It is time, however, for the US to consider how expensive pride can be, and how many great empires found South Asia to be the collector of that tally.

At this moment, as we consider our relations with Pakistan and our stance against al-Qaeda, we might take another page from the books of Alexander and the British, and remember that getting the natives to do your fighting for you always ends up more cost-effective in the end.