<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Michael O&amp;#039;Hanlon, whose holiday was ruined because only one of the pet wars for which he helped shill is still going on, has unlimbered his startlingly military-service-free resume again and co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times wherein he makes yet another pitch to be recognized as the lost Bundy brother. Against this backdrop, American officials should stay calm. It would be a mistake to let one man - increasingly detached from Afghan public and political opinion - determine the fate of the American role in South Asia. Even with Osama bin Laden dead, the stakes remain high: Extremist groups from Al Qaeda to Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Pakistani group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack) could easily put down roots again in Afghanistan if the country were to fall to the Taliban after NATO&amp;#039;s departure.  Yes, it would be a mistake to let our puppet actually pretend to rule his country. And look, here are some Mooooslim dominoes to worry about. And did you see the neat trick the two authors pulled there? They said that Karzai was &amp;quot;increasingly detached from Afghan public and American political opinion.&amp;quot; By &amp;quot;American political opinion,&amp;quot; the authors mean themselves and the people with whom they have dinner. They couldn&amp;#039;t go with the more logical, symmetric argument about &amp;quot;Afghan and American public opinion&amp;quot; because American public opinion wants us out of that hellhole yesterday, and that&amp;#039;s been the case for a couple of years now.There is no pea under shells. The recent assembly of Afghan tribal elders, a loya jirga, again demonstrated what we already knew - that the Afghan people want us to stay. After the defeat of the Soviets in 1989, civil war, state collapse and Taliban victory followed. The Afghan people have seen this movie already; they do not want the sequel. The loya jirga urged Mr. Karzai to sign the agreement; he demurred. The main candidates in Afghanistan&amp;#039;s 2014 presidential election also want us to stay. A poll by the Moby Group in Kabul, Afghanistan&amp;#039;s largest private media organization, suggests that the two leading contenders are former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani. Both are pro-Western; both are smart and competent. The same is true of Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul, said by some to be President Karzai&amp;#039;s choice to succeed him after elections in April. Other candidates also support a continuing American and international presence. Of course, they do. It keeps them from having to stabilize their own country and fight their own wars. How about we leave and the leaders of Afghanistan decide, you know, not to descend into civil war? How about they decide not to descend into barbarity and slaughter? Is this the argument for staying? That, if we leave, the people for whom American kids who were not Michael O&amp;#039;Hanlon died inevitably will inaugurate a bloodbath? If that&amp;#039;s the case, then the country isn&amp;#039;t worth another American life. If that is the case, then the Afghan people aren&amp;#039;t the only ones who are seeing a movie that they&amp;#039;ve seen before. And what is the actual end game? The authors don&amp;#039;t have one. The way you know that is that, ultimately, the justification for staying is that the living owe an apparently limitless debt to the dead, and rendered in fluent Westmorelandspeak. And finally, let&amp;#039;s not forget the progress purchased so dearly in this decade and more of war. We must not permit Mr. Karzai&amp;#039;s pique to flush all this down the drain. The United States can ride this one out. And given the enduring American strategic interests in this part of the world, as well as our huge sacrifice, that&amp;#039;s exactly what we should do. In the end, this is about the American and the Afghan peoples, not about Hamid Karzai. Jesus H. Christ on the bill at the Fillmore, it&amp;#039;s 1967 all over again. And, not for nothing, but there once was a country in that region where women were comparatively free. That was Iraq. Then, Michael O&amp;#039;Hanlon and his friends helped euchre us into a war there and now, well, not so much for that women&amp;#039;s rights thing. Turns out Poppy Bush was right. We have kicked The Vietnam Syndrome. We punted it all the way into the Brookings Institution. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19924/the-forever-war/>