He thinks too short. The political failure lies much, much deeper.
The ISAF mission would be a stupid idea even if ISAF could accomplish its mission in one or two years.
The whole idea makes no sense, the involvement in Afghanistan with more than a few hundred specialists (military and civilian) was never about defence or prevention.
The wall of illusions is much thicker than Stewart thinks - he apparently didn't manage to see through all of it.
@ No matter whether you can totally disconnect from a problem or not - activism that harms you more than inaction would is always stupid.
The Afghanistan mission lacks relevance for our defence because it's simply not as essential to AQ as the public was led to believe in 2002. AQ has proven for years that it can sustain itself without AFG, AFG played a marginal role for 9/11 and the network of AQ and AQ affiliates in ~60 countries worldwide plus the AQ nests in Pakistan show that AFG is dispensable for them.
We're stuck in a stupid civil war among factions who live partially in a multi-ethnic state and cannot agree on power sharing.
The relevance for our defence is nil, as is the relevance in regard to terrorism. Well, except that there's the possibility that waging war in an Islamic country might actually worsen our security situation directly (KIA, WIA) and indirectly (motivation, AQ propaganda).
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