Ghost of a flea

"It seems to me the current mission is the best of bad options."
By "current mission", I hope you don't mean the mission as currently being carried out.
That statement might be true if the current mission were focused and effective and actually aimed at destroying the Taliban. By "destroy", of course I mean kill, not persuade, dialogue, achieve a consensus, come to a mutually acceptable compromise, etc., all on a shoestring budget. We went into Afghanistan to make sure it didn't become a training ground for al Qaeda again. We didn't go in to turn a shitty little Islamic "Republic" into a shitty little Islamic "Republic" with "democracy" brand lipstick smeared on it, which is what we're going to get, regardless. The Taliban have to be ruthlessly pacified and left with a promise to return and do more of the same if they come out of their burrows again. You can't do that with the numbers of soldiers now on the ground. It would take another 100,000 at least. That's a bit unlikely, don't you think?

First, I am delighted to find myself being criticized as a squish; this does not happen often. It is my fault for trying to sound reasonable... I am increasingly pessimistic there is much that can be done for Afghanistan/Upper and Lower Wazoo that does not involve dispersing radioactive cobalt.

That said, if we are to win this thing in any conventional sense it is obvious that, once again, we have to stop pretending a line on the map left by the British any in way confers sovereignty on some third world thugocracy or that we have not always already been at war with Pakistan. I think we should probably at least try to give open war a chance. Failing that, we are left with Belmont Club's Three Conjectures.

Frankly, I believe we are headed that way no matter what we do. Historical precedent suggests a few Hiroshima/Dresden events and permanent occupation are a working (if arguably temporary) fix. What is not going to work is pointing fingers and saying how difficult things are. But this is the only option of the left, an ideology whose robust revolutionary thinking in days of yore (ask the Tsar) has been replaced by Frankfurt School nihilism. Well, they have got what they never dreamed they could have: Their own man in the White House. Now we find out how many days the honeymoon lasts before they find this Daddy cannot make the world perfect for them.

The sooner the better. We have a war to fight. As to my perhaps ill advised rhetorical moderation; think of a Templar with a radioactivity warning icon in place of a cross of St. George and a Hospitaler with a biohazard sign in place of a Jerusalem cross. I say we go Gamma World on these savages.