"There is nothing to be gained by staying"

William Pfaff has a good article posted (link here) on his website this week. It talks about Afghanistan in depth. The gist of it is "There is nothing to be gained by staying". After having read 4 hard back books that were written in the last 3 years about the region (links here and here and here), I have to say, I agree with Pfaff.

We will never establish a strong central governed, Westernized, non-misogynist, equal rights, equitable, proud American-like Democracy in Afghanistan. There's too many fundamentalists, the environment is too harsh, the peasant subsistence farmers are far too desperate, the drug trade is far too firmly entrenched, graft and corruption far too wide spread, and we are funding the Pakistani ISI to the tunes of BILLIONS a year, who then fund and defend the Taliban.

It's time to draw down, and get the hell out of there. W and Gen Franks and Rummy and the Gen Sharif of Pakistan enabled 4000 Al Qaeda to escape, in Pakistani military airlift transports in 2002 (link here). Let Pakistan deal with it now. They hate Americans (95% of Pakistanis) there anyways.