off the hook. For this to be even considered the public would first have to be convinced that "letting the CURRENT incarnation of the Afghan taliban go" would NOT be letting 9-ll perpetrators "get away with it". Even if this is possible Obama is certainly not now in a position to make this case.

I think any notion that we are in somehow less trouble in Afghanistan is a fantasy foisted upon us courtesy of the Bush Administration. Because Afghanistan has been left to basically fester, the renewed focus there is going to be problematic in any case, and if not managed properly, another quagmire for an Obama or a McCain administration. We're not going to be able to ride in cowboy style and quickly bring the Taliban and others to heel. Not without help. And given the lingering wounds to our relations with our allies, we may not get the help we need so readily. With that said, I still believe Obama has, or will come to the better judgement about how to fight this war. To the degree that he can get Pakistan and others to cooperate with us to catch (or kill) Osama bin Laden, root out al Qaeda, and defeat the Taliban, he has a chance to end this in relatively smooth fashion.

Here we go again! Looking at yet another candidate with a resume'-lite, done nothing, and has even less understanding and perspective than Bush! Atleast Bush probably knew where the toilets were in the White House!

Barack Obama's judgment has NOT been scrutinized by the press. They have annointed him as "Golden Boy" and just like the press's piss-poor position regarding the invasion of Iraq, we can't count on the press or the media to now come back and say, "Oops we did it again."

Everytime Obama has to sit with average people for a photo op you can almost see him cringe. He picks at food like it's poison. His "hugs" are contrived. He's not interested in these people. They are distractions to him. He just wants to be President - by any means necessary including duping the American people to get there.

Don't vote for Obama. He's nothing short of being a political opportunist. He's never been about making America great. He's only been about making himself great.

The biggest problem with Prof. Cole's argument that increasing the level of troops in Afghanistan will not help is that the threat to America that came from Afghanistan reached the peak of its power when there was virtually no US troop presence at all. Unlike the situation in Iraq, the problems we have there were not caused by our invasion. Quite the opposite.

Iraq was stable before we came in, and destabilized as a result of our invasion- and, of course, our lack of sufficient US troops. Afghanistan was unstable, sheltered the organization which attacked us, and only regained stability after we invaded. The main point of supporting the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq was precisely that those troops were needed in Afghanistan, not just that the invasion of Iraq was illegitimate. And, most importantly, the resurgence in the Taliban's strength came after we withdrew the bulk of our forces to Iraq.

I am of course in complete agreement with the idea that we should do as little as possible to destabilize the civilian government- and massively increase the amount of reconstruction aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan both. If that means resisting the urge to launch strikes into Pakistan, so be it. Containment, however difficult, is a viable strategy and may indeed be the best one.

But that also means that our troops on the Afghanistani side of the border are going to need reinforcements. Otherwise, our troops will become increasingly desperate and reckless as they are picked off by resupplied Taliban forces, leading to more civilian deaths. That would further bolster the Taliban's recruitment, reinforcing a vicious cycle which would end in our defeat- and put the country right back in the hands of the people who attacked us on September 11th.

Has Prof. Cole come up with a definite, concrete formula for calculating the exact optimal number of US or UN troops needed to stabilize Afghanistan? Unless he has, I cannot yet believe that increasing the number of US troops available to fight a resurgent enemy is a bad thing.

Juan Cole has committed sacrilege by daring to utter "saying wrong things" (a fairly evasive use of words) in relation to The One and, before you decide to jump all over me, I'd remind you that it was Oprah who chose this groveling description of a neophyte politician. There are people on this thread who know sweet-eff-all about Afghanistan or Pakistan because they're too lazy to educate themselves and it's so much easier to castigate anyone whose opinion differs from theirs.

There is massive intimidation in Afghanistan where the Taliban is homegrown and where teachers, doctors, human rights workers have been accused of "crimes against Islam". The answer to this is a military one, is it? Guerrilla warfare favours those who know the terrain inside out and where any Western forces are regarded as infidels.

This is a nice article about Obama looking ahead. I last read that he was headed to Iraq, and to hear about him hitting the right notes there, and is looking forward makes me smile. I was reading the follow up to that story on www.urbanthoughtcollective.com on the homepage under Top Stories.

The problem with Afghanistan is not that we are the Soviets, but that we are allowing the situation to deteriorate. Cole seems utterly clueless about Afghanistan. The situation now v 1980 is totally different.

Additionally, the question now is "Keep troops in Iraq" (McCain) vs. "Move troops to Afghanistan" (Obama). It's as simple as that.

Then there would be no bogey-man ....... Bin Laden is of better use free ....... it keeps the level of fear higher .......

Critics of Obama for taking his whirlwind tour and, even worse, criticizing him for his lack of foreign policy experience are missing a few points.

Was Obama just showing off? Who knows? Maybe he did listen, as he said he intended to do, and maybe he learned something.

McCain, for all his military service and many years in the Senate daily reveals himself to be dangerously clueless. (It doesn't matter whether he never knew or is losing his mental edge.) McCain "misspoke" in his reference to the "Iraq-Afghanistan" border. The point is he DIDN'T CATCH himself. He also recently confused Sudan and Somalia and twice on his own trip to the Middle East had to be corrected publicly by Senator Lieberman on who was Sunni and who was Shi'a. He also is completely confused about the chronology of the Awakening movement in Iraq and the troop escalation, aka the "surge."

In 2000 candidate Bush thought the Taliban was a band and didn't know who was the president of Pakistan. Nothing much was made of his unbelievable ignorance.

So, at the very least Obama deserves credit for making foreign policy look important.

Like Juan Cole, I've been disturbed by Obama's comments about Pakistan, starting months ago. Obama, all of us, would do well to read Ahmed Rashid's books - "Taliban" published in 1999 and "Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia," 2008.

I think Obama may be conflating his (and many others') criticism of Bush's inept, half-hearted, and abandoned search for bin Laden in late 2001 with frustration and dismay at the resurgence of the Taliban. There is, however, surely no military solution. Karzai is repeatedly described as a weak leader and that may be fundamentally true about him, but it's also the case that he never received the support he begged for from us and the international community.

Here's from Rashid's conclusion to "Descent into Chaos"

pp 402-404, paraphrased,

"The region of S and Central Asia (needs) a new global compact and the leading players - the US, the EU, NATO and UN - to help solve problems from the Pak-India dispute over Kashmir, massive education (see "Three Cups of Tea") and job-creation in the Afghan-Pak borderlands. Holistic rather than piecemeal approach....Solutions do not come easy...but the peoples and regimes of the region have to undeerstand that unless they move their countries toward greater democracy chaos will overwhelm them."

"Much will depend on how the new U.S. president sees this region and what importance he or she gives it."

No way McCain could even take the first baby step. Obama has taken his. What's next?