In Afghanistan, failure is heaped on failure

We have failed in Afghanistan, and our government is beginning to admit it.

Numbers from the 41st quarterly report to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, offer a clear and bleak assessment, reaffirming what the public and lawmakers have long known, which is that President George W. Bush's ambitious project to build a nation-state in that remote tribal territory was flawed and unrealistic. It has failed spectacularly.

Despite thousands of American lives, billions of dollars, and more than 17 years of American military operations there, the Kabul government is losing, not gaining, control of territory, the Taliban fights on, corruption is endemic and rampant, elections are violent, democracy is incapable of taking hold, and the war on drugs is a failure.

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