I recently read of Taliban attacks in Pakistan being launched from bases in Afghanistan. Sorry, no success digging up a link, but I am sure I don't have that backwards. We delude ourselves thinking that jut hitting bases in Pakistan is enough. The Taliban have grabbed a big territory including both sides of the border.

Our attention has been on Iraq, but I could see history deciding that Iraq was the sidelight to the real Bush disaster in southwest Asia.

Afghanistan is a grave for all invaders and has been for a thousand years. It has always been what it is today and it will never ever be anything but. Investing a dime in Afghanistan is a waste of one dime. You would be better just airlifting the people who want to escape and letting the rest slide back to the 12th century.It's better for the people you save and everyone else also gets what they want. Trust me, Afghanistan is a black hole. Get out while you can.

Ahmed Rashid is a smart guy, but even so I'd disagree with the passage Andrew Leonard cites on one (relatively small) point. The US did not simply fail to accomplish what it set out to do (demolish al Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan, and set the groundwork for a stable, free government). It's more humiliating than that.

Inasmuch as al Qaeda was destroyed, the Taliban dispersed, and Afghanistan able to establish the beginnings of a loose, confederated government that didn't involve major actors shooting at one another as the basis for policy, the US actually substantially succeeded. It was only after that success that it then turned around and systematically ruined everything it had accomplished, leaving in its wake the miserable failures as documented.

It's generally fruitless to speculate as to the private, inner lives of people in public life — ultimately we can seldom say we know for sure what's going on in someone's head, especially when all we have is their public pronouncements, policies, or even their self-reflections after the fact. And anyway, what we really care about is action, not intent.

But that said, sometimes these questions come up and the fascination is inescapable. Certainly one may consider whether, given mistakes and systemic failures that seem to be repeated enough times, a regime may ultimately be pursuing ends that, on some level, are what it actually desires. Twice may be coincidence, goes the saying, but three times is enemy action.

Thus we may ask, after the third or fourth time that millions died from government agricultural policies, if the likes of Mao or Stalin were really, on some level, getting what they wanted — giving expression to some dark, bitter hatred of and contempt for their own people.

Likewise, at what point do we decide that the neocons made a bloody mess of so much, so many times, at home and abroad, that perhaps bloody mess was really what they desired? That the system they created, both in Afghanistan and everywhere else, was a system that was actually, fundamentally, designed to fail?

As the other saying goes: conservatives are so committed to the belief that government can't work that they'll do whatever they can to ensure that it never does.

HTWW review's Rashid's book and doesn't even mention Pakistan's ISI? Inexcusable.

To its credit, HTWW is spot on to recommend Rashid's book.

One of Rashid's KEY POINTS is the enabling role played by Paikistan's ISI (think Pak's CIA). It was the ISI that harbored and developed the Taliban. It's the ISI that evacuated key Taliban militants from Afghanistan, and its the ISI than provides sactuatry to the Taliban today.

Why HTWW omitted the critical information is beyond me.

I too am a fan of William Dalrymple, who lives in India much of the time. His review is well worth reading, as are all his comments about the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

The neocons have concocted a series of catastrophes, and Obama needs to think carefully before he puts tens of thousands more American soldiers into a situation where the best-informed people say the effort is counter-productive.