Fafnir reminds us why we must remain vigilant against threats to our threatback complex.

It really has gotten to that point of absurdity, too. In Iraq, the promise was to draw down troops to a minor peacekeeping force by next June. There are no weapons of mass destruction there (the original premise for invading 6.5 years ago). Saddam and his sons are dead. The corrupted status quo has been preserved. Their army and police forces have been built up to be able to hold the fort against remaining rebels.

Those are the claims. So why are our troops still there in such overwhelming numbers?

In Afghanistan, there’s a different scenario. The masterminds of the 9-11 attacks are isolated in the wilds of adjoining Pakistan with minimal capacity to direct that organization to conduct the large scale terror operations that provoked so much fear eight years ago.

As I’ve noted on numerous occasions, they have no capacity to manufacture jets, trucks, autos or any other transportation vehicle that could be fitted with explosives. They cannot manufacture a nuclear weapon nor assemble a lab capable of putting out bio-weapons. They can build explosive devices and crude chemical weapons capable of killing hundreds at a time, if the right venue and conditions are available. Nothing EVER will be able to eliminate that possibility. It will always be important to develop better and better intelligence and keep pressure on any and all terror groups that pose a certain risk to a tiny percentage of our population.

Adding 40,000 troops to an effort to stabilize Afghanistan, however, goes well beyond such an effort to isolate and destroy the terror leadership. The last time an occupying force attempted to subdue the country two decades ago, they were bogged down in an unwinnable war and their subsequent economic collapse was, in part, a result of that.

Fortunately, our country has no similar economic woes to contend with now… hey, wait a second!

So let’s consider a range of options:

1) We escalate the conflict against a country whose principal trade is a blackmarket item (opium) that comes with a significant presence of well-heeled lawless overlords. The members of that vast network, from overlords to subsistence farmers, are more concerned with their personal economics than they are with ideology or democracy. And Al Qaida’s sympathizers, the Taliban, have aligned themselves with the drug traders.

2) We pull out and cede the country to the extremists and terrorists. Our troops come home to no jobs.

3) We provide enough troops to act as a community policing force in the principal southern region of the country (Kabul to Qandahar) where most of the population resides. In the mountainous Northeast border region with Pakistan, our troops keep the heat on to limit the cross-border terrorist movements that preceded our arrival there. In this way, the Pashtun population gains protection while it develops its own forces to eventually assume the community policing duties. (Yes, even this sounds pie-in-the-sky when weighed against the realities there.)

By no means am I suggesting that these are the only options or that I have an easy answer. I only know that options #1 and #2 come with serious drawbacks. Some middle option will have to be employed, but it must have a clearly stated goal, a real chance of achieving that goal - beyond wishful thinking - and a termination date.

As for Iraq, if the withdrawal deadline set by Obama gets broken by more than a few weeks, then he’s not deserving of re-election. Iraq’s leaders have had all the wake-up calls needed and if they can’t provide a successful government by now, they simply have to ceded responsibility to other leaders who can.

Otherwise, Fafnir’s analysis will best describe the situation.