Whither Afghanistan?

Barack Obama has been meeting with the Afghan leadership, and one of the few points on which he and John McCain agree is, we have to beef up our effort there and concentrate on "winning" that conflict. (The difference between their plans, basically, is that Obama wants to redeploy troops there from Iraq, whereas McCain, as far as I can tell, wants to conjure a bunch of magical gnomes to send, or something. He's a bit vague.)

I have to say, I'm less than convinced.

I mean, yes, invading Afghanistan was a sane response to 9/11, and invading Iraq was not. At the time, I supported the Afghan invasion, reluctantly. ("Reluctantly" is the only way anyone should ever support a war. War is horrible. It should be waged only when there is no other choice. Be extremely suspicious of anyone who enthusiastically supports a war, anyone who seems to be enjoying it.)

And I did think, after an event like 9/11, we were justified in going after the perpetrators, who were being protected by a godawful repressive government that gave them safe harbor for their training camps.

And I do think we should have kept our focus on getting the people who had actually attacked us, instead of going off on some loopy tangent in an irrelevant country.

But now? What exactly are we trying to achieve there?

"We're trying to win" is not a good answer. I actually hate the terms "win" and "lose" as applied to wars. Those are terms best resevred for sporting events with unambiguous outcomes. War is not a game and the objectives (and outcomes) are much more complex.

I haven't heard anyone state a clear objective for the Afghan conflict at this point. We can't be trying to get bin Laden, because he's in Pakistan. So what are we supposed to be trying to achieve there?

And really--and I doubt I'm alone in this--I'm sick of spending all our money on wars with no clear objective while the domestic situation goes to hell.

I'm quagmired out. I say get the hell out of both countries in which we're fighting and rededicate our resources to unbreaking America.