State Of The Mission: Afghanistan

I stumbled on a funny (but yet in some ways very sad) video dedicated to the "cut and run" from Iraq crowd.

But before you cut and run out on this blogpost to watch it, allow me to share something with you.

Much of the cut and run crowd has used the excuse that we have severely neglected our commitment in Afghanistan, for what has been termed "Bush's war for oil. They claim we are losing in Afghanistan because our resources are overly committed to Iraq away from where the "real threat of terrorism" exists. And if we would only begin withdrawing from Iraq after Obama is sworn in, things will miraculously go our way.

Well, here are the words of a commanding officer (a family member of the Sunsett household) of a sizable organizational unit assigned to Afghanistan for the specific purpose of weeding out Taliban and eliminating them:

"...I can tell you with complete honesty and all confidence that we are truly breaking the back of the Taliban and as long as we keep the operational pressure up and keep hitting them where it hurts them the most, we can start rebuilding this country in earnest by this time next year."

It's been a tough road, for sure. And we can make a good argument that the Administration didn't take into account some potential unintended and unforeseen consequences. As a result, it's taken longer than we were all led to believe. But progress is being made and to "cut and run" after all of this hard work would be the epitome of stupidity.