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Pronunciation: \ËˆdÄ-ËŒma(É™)r, -ËŒme(É™)r\
: a nightmarish fantasy experienced while awake (Illustration of the Darul Aman palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, found here).

Afghanistan is one lonely country, and apparently so, becoming more lonely with each passing day.
Down through history, the Afghan motif has been the graveyard of empires, and right now it’s the US turn at bat, with a strikeout nearly guaranteed.
Milton Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989 (and author of the above-linked story), noted ominously in an interview last summer with Harper’s that half the fun is always in the leaving:

So now President Obama is in a dilemma — face history and attempt to bend it (Yeah! Right!) or do something else — and the biggest obstacle is lack of any kind of strategy.
There’s no plans yet put together to get out of the Afghan mess.

These boys have only had seven years to figure this shit out.

Yesterday, according to Reuters, Obama told US House Democrats during a short, private session at a retreat in the Virginia woods that Afghanistan could not be won by military might alone, but “needs a clear mission” and a key danger for U.S. forces is “mission creep without clear parameters.”
Obama is dispatching Joe Biden to Munich this weekend for a big security conference there and reportedly will match wits with the Russians, who apparently nudged Kyrgyzstan to close Manas Air Base, the major US supply route from the north into Afghanistan.
And so it’s up to jolting Joe:

And with the Russians, go Afghanistan.

Also yesterday, Defense Chief Bob Gates will hold off dispatching additional troops to Afghanistan until Obama has a clear plan on what to do there — which could take some time.
Three additional combat brigades or 17,000 troops were to be immediately sent into the failing war, with upwards of about 30,000 total of new GIs in country by summer’s end.
What now?

One indication of what’s to happen can be seen with a glance at Russia’s little foray into Afghanistan in the 1980s — once in, the old USSR found it hard to get out.
This commentary from Reuters:

Famous very-last words.

