Rock and a Hard Place

The latest word on the Afghanistan war is that we can't strong arm Musharaf because his position is shaky at best. The world in which he lives is one of tribal independents. Each tribe fiercely maintaining their own jurisdiction and loyalties. Unfortunately for us those loyalties include the Taliban, based on the Muslim faith.
Our popularity in the Muslim world is lower than Bush's domestic popularity. That is very low and nothing to feel sanguine about.

Here is where the tactical mistake of diverting our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq comes home to haunt us. It becomes ever more apparent that the correct course would have been to finish the job there and not get embroiled in Iraq. As a consequence our forces have been worn down in Iraq and to no avail leaving us exhausted and broke from a military standpoint.

The President, addressing the governor's meeting in Wash. explains his position and defends his decisions based on what I feel is faulty logic based on erroneous assumptions. i.e. He claims we cannot afford to quit in Iraq because that would leave a vacuum and the terrorists would have a safe base from which to attack the U.S.
That whole scenario is open to analysis and challenge. His assumption is that Iran is scheming to undermine the U.S. Rather, the fact is, the U.S. is diligently trying to undermine the Iraqi regime. The forces fighting us in Iraq are mostly Sunnis and some Shiites who don't see the current Iraqi government working in their best interests and thus constitute the bulk of the insurgency with a small element of Al Queada being involved. Many of the insurgency disavow the AlQueada so there is slim chance that they would emerge from the conflict with any significant strength. Bush highly over emphasizes the AlQueada threat. The Shiite controlled government currently in power(?) in Iraq have always had close ties with Iran. So!! What are we bleeding for if in the final analysis the government succeeds in gaining stability, which supposedly is our cue to withdraw, and Iran is a close ally to Iraq?

None of the Administration's strategy makes sense. While our allies are withdrawing from Iraq our forces in Afghanistan appear to be woefully under manned for the expected resurgence of the Taliban which we allowed to escape. It remains to be seen if we get any help from anybody considering the debacle we engineered in Iraq. The Taliban have a far greater affinity with AlQueada than the Iraqis so here we do face a significant threat. Other than blaming Musharaf for not doing enough Bush is not getting out of Iraq in order to better face the real threat. Meanwhile the political wars rage on, Anna Nichol remains a headline, the Oscars come and go and the world spins merrily on. Yeesh!!!!!!