Some thoughts on Richard Holbrooke‘s oped in today’s Washington Post.

With regards to Afghanistan Holbrooke, a Democrat and possible Clinton SecState, writes:

This affair also highlights the conundrum Afghanistan presents the United States and NATO. There will be more successes like Khost as additional NATO troops, including 3,000 U.S. Marines, arrive later this year. But with each tactical achievement, Afghanistan will become more dependent on international support, which will always be better, faster and more honest than anything the government will be able to supply.
…
The effort in Afghanistan is vital to America’s national security interests, and we must succeed — as the team in Khost has. But even as the United States and its NATO allies move deeper into the cauldron, questions must be asked: When, and how, will the international community hand responsibility for Afghanistan back to its government? Will short-term success create a long-term trap for the United States and its allies, as the war becomes the longest in American history?

Before getting to the gist of that OpEd let me debunk some issues:

• The "better, faster and more honest" solutions are only such in a "western" view. Afghanis are likely to view these (solutions by indiscriminate bombing) very different. Holbrooke presents no base for his statement other than U.S. puppet Karzai government voices.
• Afghanistan has nothing to do with "America’s national security interests". The guys who did 9/11 where mostly Saudis. The pilots of those planes were not trained to fly in Afghanistan but, guess what, in U.S. flight schools. That the guy who is alleged to have come up with the general 9/11 idea was at some time a paying guest of some Afghan government hostel doesn’t make Afghanistan a "vital national security interest." That guy could have lived anywhere else working on the same plans.
• If U.S. national security interests are in the economic sphere, like access to resources, please Mr Holbrooke, explain to my why China got the contract for that huge copper mine in Afghanistan and the U.S. didn’t even bid on it.

That said, Holbrooke has a point in asking the right question.

What is the "western" endgame in Afghanistan?

With each month more "western" forces are injected there, with each month the casualties increase on all sides, with each month the situation there gets worse for the Afghan people.

So what IS the plan for Afghanistan? Is there anyone at all?

The only one I can determine from press reports is to demonstrate NATO’s "viability" – the NORTH ATLANTIC(!) treaty organisation. My globe doesn’t show the North Atlantic or NATO threatened by Afghanistan …

So why does NATO have to show up there at all?