A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere therefore weapons fuel food money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working are cooperating either being themselves the origin or the transit.

The West has been able to bring Afghanistan a much better health service better education better roads a better economy though some have benefited more some have benefited less from that economic well-being in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan I think it was the Soviet experience.

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being if anything bombed out of the Stone Age.