Hat tip to KoW. A sharp article by the UK Conservative MP Rory Stewart, with an opening paragraph:
NATO has sent tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and spent tens of billions of euros. But why? British Member of Parliament Rory Stewart says we have adopted a set of unquestioned beliefs about the region. Acknowledging that those beliefs may be fallacious is almost impossible.
Try this for size:
The only way in which we could move beyond the counter-insurgency theory, or the hundred other theories which buttress and justify the Afghan war, is by rejecting their most basic underlying premises and objectives. Instead of trying to produce an alternative theory (on how to defeat the Taliban, create an effective, legitimate and stable Afghan state, stabilize Pakistan and ensure that al-Qaida could never again threaten the United States) we need to understand that however desirable such things might be, they are not things that we -- as foreigners -- can do.
The link to article:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...703408,00.html and to the KoW commentary: http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2010/07/sta...ing-the-blind/

KoW comment:
Europe is simply in Afghanistan because America is there. America is there just because it is.