The press so eagerly repeats the Republican mantra that the Democratic actions "embolden" the enemy, yet simple obervation reveals increased violence every time Bush or the evil dick, Cheney, profess success or victory or even advancement are just around the corner. And all seems to stem from Bush's "Bring 'em on" challenge years ago. Thanks, Mr. Blumenthal for the thoughtful connection--now how do we get this reported on ABC?

Once again Dick Cheney and his incompetence have left the US to be viewed as the world's laughing stock. The most powerful nation ever is nonetheless going full bore into the 21st century as buffons.

Here I was thinking the issue in a country we had clearly the right to invade was settled once that job was done. Symbolically, if nothing else, we should see Afghanistan as a place where terrorism will ALWAYS be abused.

But no.

They get to increase heroin production to record levels even when we know the money is funding the Taliban.

Now this!

Now I have to watch my Vice President threatened by a suicide bomber; and if that's not the equivalent of the sun trying to replace the moon I don't know what is.

As soon as he gets back on US soil he'll run his mouth. Blame it on the Democrats AND claim his efforts a success.

For shame....for shame!

my simple question is: what are the American people doing to stop these mad men? Isnt it about time that this country, claiming to be the worlds greatest democracy, bring them to justice? What are they scared of? or Do they in their deepest thoughts also believe that the rest of the world (read muslims) are out to get them and their precious way of life?

From 2001 to the present, the Pakistanis reportedly have not arrested a single Taliban leader. The Taliban operate their headquarters unimpeded out of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, the gateway to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

Aha, but is Quetta really in Pakistan? Or is it in Afghanistan?

That's the question nobody wants raised. That's why the Taliban are able to operate unimpeded. So that the question of whether Quetta is in Pakistan or Afghanistan is never raised again.

There's not much we can do about that. This typically mismatched post-colonial configuration of tribes and borders is not the fault of anyone in America of either party, and there's not much we could do about it even if we hadn't ended up in Iraq.

Sometimes I think that maybe Bush was so hot to get Saddam because he was told by the CIA that we weren't going to get bin Laden because getting bin laden could end up tearing Pakistan in half.

I have long felt that the abandonment of Afghanistan was the real tragedy of our invasion of Iraq. From its very beginning the Afghan intervention was almost an unqualified success. We routed the loathsome Taliban in a near picture-perfect campaign, with the support of virtually the entire world. The Afghan people were truly happy to be liberated, and they were full of hope for a better future.

This was, of course, before our obsessive and attention-span challenged 'Decider-In-Chief' decided to withdraw critical resources from Afghanistan before the conflict there had truly ended. I read today that we will soon have spent over a trillion dollars on Iraq. Just imagine what Afghanistan would look like now if we had invested even a third of that money in the country?

A thriving Afghanistan would have been a legitimate victory in the 'war on terror' and would have done wonders for our reputation in the Muslim world and the international community at large. You know, maybe the REAL tragedy is that if we could ever extricate ourselves from Iraq we could still do the right thing in Afghanistan...

James M

As usual, Sidney rants and raves and pulls out his best invective while missing the whole point about the Taliban and Afghanistan - they are and forever will be a creature of Pakistan and the ISI. The uncomfortable truth is that both the Bush and Clinton administrations have done nothing about this because Pakistan has nuclear weapons - and a culture of corruption (remember A.Q. Khan?) that would sell them in a second if they thought that they could get away with it. Couple that with the fact that Waziristan and Afghanistan share the Pashtoon tribe - who feel that they have the right to rule in Afghanistan - and you have the two prime motivations driving policy in the region.

Pakistan is a failed state - the tribal regions have essentially become independent, the army sucks all the money from the budget, and you have a security service that also operates independently, but is driven by it's own ideology (Islamic) and realpolitick (destabilize the neighbors) agenda. And the "recruits" for the Taliban these days seem to come mainly from Pakistan - from Afghanis who have lived there since the Russian times and from "ethnic" Pashto brothers in search of heaven.

If Cheney was in Pakistan delivering a message that the Pakistanis need to clamp down on the support for the Taliban - then it is about time that someone has finally figured out that the only way you are going to shut down the violence in Afghanistan is by shutting down the enabling agencies. And if you are dreaming that more "aid" in Afghanistan is going to suppress the outsiders - then you are just continuing down the same "build it up - they tear it down" road that has been going on for years. Cure the disease and the symptoms go away.

Ironclad, Your argument uses very weak definitions. For what it is worth, Pakistan *is not* a failed state. It has a government, infrastructure, and civil society.

Fragile as it might be, the Pakistani state apparatus has not yet collapsed, and can still (for now) reproduce the terms of its own existence. 'State failure' is a lot more complex than the security of a country's borders.

This sounds pedantic, but it is very irksome having to read semi-digested TV news punditry regurgitated all over the internet.