The iconic American sitcom Seinfeld has this episode where George Costanza, the show’s lovable loser, mopes to friend Jerry Seinfeld: “My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have..it's all been wrong.” Jerry deadpans back, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” Washington will eventually have its own George Costanza moment on Afghanistan, and the futility of an open-ended war. The only question is how many more dead soldiers and civilians will it take to have this epiphany. The Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) quarterly report for January makes for grim reading. At close to 30%, not only do the Taliban hold more Afghan territory than any time after the 2001 invasion, but they are “spreading …show more content…
The war is clearly unpopular back home, and much as I sympathize with progressive Afghans trying to rid themselves of Taliban reactionaries, when will Washington realize that it is part of the problem? “Our jihad will continue until the last occupier is expelled,” the Taliban keep repeating like a broken record. At some point, the US must realize its military presence in Afghanistan is a lightning rod for terrorists. The Taliban themselves view the Kabul government as a round-table of American stooges rather than representative of a new social epoch. Obama, of course, continues to single out Pakistan as the primary culprit in a combustible Afghanistan, insisting it “can and must” do more to dismantle Taliban sanctuaries east of the Durand Line. The real mystery is how he expects a neighbor choking from the blowback of a decade-old war next door to willy-nilly sever ties with assets originally curated at the US’s behest. Especially when Nicholson himself inspires little confidence by wistfully shrugging “This is Afghanistan, there will always be some level of violence in Afghanistan” at his Senate confirmation