Afghanistan

[Banquo's Ghost]

Is it winnable? What would "winning" be, exactly?

I think that is the key to the campaign. It's very difficult to describe exactly what winning looks like for the US. Changing generals is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic without that clarity.

More to the point, the real challenge is that there is no effective border for the Taleban (amongst many factions) between Afghanistan and Pakistan, whereas there most certainly is for the coalition forces. Pakistan has always been the problem first and foremost. It's also a nuclear power that has Islamicist militant sympathisers right next to the button.

Then you have the economics of trying to develop a country whose main crop is heroin using a hierarchy of corrupt officials and warlords.

In other words, time to leave. Bin Laden was chased into caves and his network severely compromised. To me, that was the mission in Afghanistan - the rest is imperial, and doomed to the usual graveyard of imperial ambition in that benighted country.