What I hear is:

"We really don't care much about the Taliban, certainly not as much as you Americans do. We even compare our equipment to yours rather than to them. But even though our cultural divide is huge, and individuals of both sides of this alliance often upset each other, we want you to stay and continue to pump Billions of dollars into this corrupt system that enriches so many, to include myself as a Colonel in the ANA, and to do the lion's share of the fighting as well."

This is not a news flash, this has always been the case and it has also always been at least as much our fault as is the Afghans. We have attempted to define this problem in our terms and solve it in our way from the very beginning and we need to own that reality.

I have to believe that locally recruited and trained decentralized militias working for District and Provincial Governors that are actually selected through a local Shura process would be far more effective in providing appropriate Afghan-style security than the current centralized mess.

But then the current centralized mess was not designed to defeat or deter some foreign threat, but rather to consolidate the centralized control of the Northern Alliance over the remainder of the land and people of Afghanistan.

We are a victim of our own fears and lack of understanding, and our desire to control a particular political outcome for Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance has played those fears and lack of understanding and the knowledge that they are perceived as the "right answer" for that political outcome like the New York Philharmonic.

Fact is that we do not need to "win" in Afghanistan to deny AQ sanctuary in Afghanistan.

AQ feeds on populaces that are dissatisfied to the point of suppressed or active revolution with their own governments, who feel equally that the US and the West with their century of manipulation of the governance of the region are a major contributing factor to the current situation. What have we done in Afghanistan to reduce that perception across the greater Middle East? Not much, I think. What have we done in Afghanistan to increase that perception in South Asia and elsewhere? Very much indeed.

To paraphrase a movie about the last time we got into this type of quandary: "Every minute we stay in Afghanistan, we get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger."