I've looked at the demographics a bit and if you add the sum total of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Lashkar Gal, Herat, Konduz, and Mazur-I-Sharif, secure them (but for shabnamah) you will have have ceded to the taliban a vast in-country sanctuary along with most of the population of Afghanistan (and they AREN'T in the above cities) and made vulnerable the LOCs connecting these cities.

Time to withdraw. We can't get there from here while saddled with allies whose objectives and operational tempos/methods aren't in full accord, NGOs and our own dysfunctional civilian side completely out of alignment, and an afghan government and army who we underwrite to achieve next to nothing. In eight years they've not affirmed the social contract between themselves and the afghan people. That's being TOO KIND in any case. They still won't in another eight.

Reverse it? Don't kid yourselves. Train that army and you'll have a well-armed, well-trained bunch of brigands and hooligans six months after we leave.

None of you will like this but pull out en toto now. Cancel all aid to the GoA and GoP. Embargo all purchases of Pakistani goods and services and ENCOURAGE the full take-over of Afghanistan by the afghan taliban and their A.Q. cronies.

We in the west will be attacked, as sure as the sun rises in the east, by A.Q. More to the point, the afghan taliban and A.Q. will turn their tender ministrations upon Pakistan once the conquest of Afghanistan is complete.

The P.A. will 1.) finally fight full-throttle for the lands they freely aborgated in late 2001-2002 and win, 2.) fight and lose, or 3.) cut a deal that embraces a new and more firmly-grounded irhabist vision for Pakistan.

NOW return and exercise what it is we actually do quite well- the professional application of violence on a massive state scale to neuter their nukes. Do it right and they don't get a shot off at India. Do it wrong and they do where upon India finishes what we've began-the dismemberment of an utterly disfunctional Pakistani state.

Then permit the KSA and the UAE to clean up the mess...or not as THEY see fit. Not our job.

If anything has been learned in the last eight years it is that we are utterly incapable of nation building-not in Iraq and not in Afghanistan. Meanwhile we've conditioned the Pakistani gov't to believe it is OUR responsibility to underwrite their defense while their vaunted strike corps sits picking its noses on their eastern Punjabi border with India while knowing FULL WELL that India possesses NO irridentist ambitions within Pakistan.

This is a condition of utter B.S. Count me as a deeply disillusioned neo-conservative who saw our window of opportunity close about as quickly as it opened and it's been all downhill from there leaving me now firmly in the neo-isolationist camp.

Thanks.