Trick is, Afghanistan is very slowly slipping from our grasp because we don’t have enough troops there… because of Iraq.

Oh and saying that if we withdraw from Iraq we’ll immediately face the same situation in Afghanistan is (pardon the pun) poppycock. OBL was excited about the invasion of Iraq precisely because it was Iraq, and not Afghanistan, that afforded the best battleground on which to fight the Americans asymmetrically. Most locals in Afghanistan hate the Taliban and want NATO to win; NATO just doesn’t have the resources to secure areas so they can develop (and it wastes resources on fruitless gestures like trying to eradicate opium).

If the U.S. were to pull out from Iraq, I doubt very many would immediately transfer over to Afghanistan, in part because Iran would suddenly have a “real” stake in keeping the country stable, instead of laughing at all the negative spillover effects directed at the U.S. In other words, transfer the banner of “Foreign Invader” from America to Iran and suddenly you have a whole different ball game… to say nothing of the various rivalries and feuds between the dozens of insurgent groups that would continue to be played out for years to come. They’d remain too occupied to come after the U.S.

Afghanistan, though, still has a good chance of turning out well… provided Musharraf can be removed democratically (and his successor is not another repeat of feckless Bhutto or Sharif), enough troops can be thrown at that border to shut it down, and at long last it gets enough money to have a reasonable chance at building an economic and institutional foundation. At the moment, Afghanistan receives in an entire year what Iraq gets in about 6 weeks or so—and we wonder why progress is halting.

Whatever one may think about the war in Iraq, it’s difficult to conceive of any rational reason why we would abandon the people of Afghanistan to these death-cultists.

I can conceive of plenty of irrational reasons, though. And you can bet that the anti-war left, if they succeed in getting us to pull out in disgrace in Iraq, will use the exact same strategems in Afghanistan.

And of course, if we did abandon Iraq, the terrorist fanatics would turn their attention to Afghanistan, giving our anti-war types all the ammunition they needed to carry out their mission of humiliating the US whereever and whenever we attempt to get involved in trying to stop Muslim terrorists.

Look, I’d like to believe these folks have made rational calculations about Iraq, and theirs differ from mine just that they’ve seen too much biased presentation of bad news out of there, etc. But in fact, for most of them, I don’t believe that. Their obvious distaste for any good news that does appear, and their unwillingness to face up to the complete consequences of failure, belie such an intention.