Remember how earlier this year we were fighting a war in Afghanistan? Then after we won and set up the new government, we said that we wouldn’t support peacekeepers outside Kabul because we expected to help Afghanistan build a national army that would keep the peace? Well, things don’t seem to be going as planned. That national army doesn’t seem to be coalescing like we might hope, and American forces there aren’t doing much to help out. Instead, we’re handing out the weapons we capture to warlords that are helping us out on the wild frontier.

Of course the trouble here is that if Afghanistan’s future in any way resembles its past, the warlords that we’re arming today will start shooting at each other the second US forces pull out. Not only does it seem we’re doing as little as possible to give Afghanistan a chance at being a viable nation, things like this make it seem like we’re actively undermining those chances. If we do go to war with Iraq, what happens after we win? Judging from our performance in Afghanistan, I don’t see us committing thousands of troops, billions of dollars, and several years to rebuilding.