As I was reading in the NYT of 27.iii.09 another typically lucid exposition by Paul Krugman of the Obama administration's persistent infatuation -- surely misguided, possibly fatal -- with the chimaera of reformed financial wizardry, I watched with unsurprised horror as the president made plain at the briefing referenced in the "War Room" item on which I'm remarking his commitment to mount and ride yet another mythical beast: the hallucination that is the concept of a pacified Muslim South Asia.

We're doomed.

Americans cannot, it seems, rouse themselves from the fever-dream of inevitable meliorism. The Afghanistan-Pakistan business is fated to fail; its congenital intractability guarantees that in and of itself, and our continuing martial presence in that culture-sphere -- that implying both the violence that we will be seen either to commit or to occasion and the pushing by reason of that former of a populace already weary of us in so many ways further and further into oppositional, revanchist radicalism of the facially religious sort -- will only worsen the outcome of the already hopeless project. It's the same with the money stuff: we're sure that we can make the pie higher, despite all rational counsel and sturdy empirical evidence to the contrary, through the once-puissant thaumaturgy of instruments mated with other instruments to spawn ever more instruments yielding ever more diaphanous wealth, like so many golems animated by the Shemhamphorash or spectral yet efficacious hoplites risen from dragon's teeth such as Cadmus sowed. In both cases we're out of common mud and magic bone, but we keep writing in the air where the foreheads should be and broadcasting with an empty hand onto salted fields.

And are therefore doomed.

Superpowers have been investing in Afghanistan's future since Russia and Britain competed at bribing Pushtun tribes for their allegiance and trying to set them up as national rulers back in the 19th century.

Brezhnev thought he was investing in Afghanistan's future when he gave huge amounts of foreign aid to Mohammed Daoud in the seventies, presumably to build schools and institute land reform.

But then Brezhnev found out that Daoud really wanted the money to invade Pakistan so he could take back Pushtun tribal territory as part of Afghanistan, and had pretty much started a civil war in Afghanistan over the schools and the land reform.

Brezhnev had a fit. Daoud made the mistake of arguing back. He was assassinated by his own supporters soon after returning to Afghanistan.

That's what led up to the Soviet invasion that brought Al Qaeda into the game in the first place.

I hope Obama gets it right, but this is an easy problem to get wrong. So far everyone else has gotten it wrong. The Soviet Union got it way, way wrong. America has gotten it wrong more than once.

Maybe we'll get it right this time. But if we don't, then the odds are, based on previous history, that we'll end up making things even worse.

God help us, that's all I can say.

Reading your post reminds me of Professor Dorr in "The Ladykillers".

No one not even Obama has anything resembling an end game view of Afghanistan. So you wipe out a few thousand Taliban. Then what? Afghanistan is, was and will always be a Medieval sewer mired in the tribal warlordism of the past thousand years.

Give Obama credit for clearly realizing the military isn't nearly enough. The Taliban has made gains because little gets better and the Taliban at least offers order. Crappy order, but sometimes people will take that. I took notice that Obama is adding resources to civilian agencies, and not just having the military do anything. This seems like a serious break from Bush policy.

This is an inside look at Afghanistan from a teacher building girls schools that's not exactly optimistic, but indicates some things are hopeful: http://imnotafraidinafghanistan.blogspot.com/