(The Other) Mission Accomplished

Looks like Afghanistan is well on its way right back to square one:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban on Sunday executed three men accused of spying for NATO and government forces in southern Afghanistan, a local militant commander and villager said.

Separately, a suicide car bomber blew himself up Sunday near an Afghan army convoy in eastern Laghman province, killing five civilians, police said.

The three men from the southern province of Helmand were arrested and allegedly "confessed to their crime" of being spies for NATO and the Afghan government, said Mullah Abdul Qasim, a Taliban commander in the north of Helmand. Qasim said information from the three men led to the deaths of two Taliban commanders.

A villager from Musa Qala, Namatullah Khan, said the lifeless body of one of the men hung from the town's main street for three hours before villagers took him down and buried the corpse.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, immense loss of standing and credibility -- and not a goddamned thing to show for it, really. This is what happens when you have in charge a petulant child with no reckoning of the forces he sets in motion. This is what happens when people vote out of id and spite and ignorance.

Like Iraq, Afghanistan is becoming our mess again, whether we like it or not. And patronizing homilies about not wanting to babysit these societies we upturned are especially unhelpful -- not only does it further inflame sentiments in the region, but it results in a strongman who works both ends of the table, between our interests and those of the insurgents. The problems get deferred, instead of resolved.

It was obvious the day Bush first declared his candidacy in the 2000 campaign that he would be in over his head. More and more, that appears to be a tragic understatement, and contrary to some assumptions at the time, he did not surround himself with capable people who could offset his destructive incompetence. He and his crew have proven themselves to be spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with this (or pretty much any) situation, and if they spent half as much time figuring these things out as they have in politicizing every damned thing, they might actually get somewhere.

Meanwhile, the downward spiral continues.