Calpundit takes a look at Afghanistan and
finds that it does not auger well for Iraq:
I realize that we can’t be expected to keep a huge occupation force in Afghanistan forever, but we have
less than 10,000 troops there right now, we’re planning to pull out within a year, and our financial
commitment isn’t very impressive either. It doesn’t bode well.And am I the only one who finds it peculiar that we’re “optimistic” about the UN doing a sterling job in
Afghanistan, but convinced that they would bring nothing but infighting and corruption to nation building
in Iraq? What exactly is the difference here?President Bush keeps saying that we’ll be in Iraq “for as long as it takes,” but our increasingly weak
commitment to Afghanistan makes that increasingly hard to believe. We should be watching closely to see if
Bush’s famed resoluteness extends beyond dramatic gestures to the hard, messy work of actually seeing
things through to the end.