A recent intelligence report on the future of Afghanistan, as outside support (from the U.S., largely and other NATA nations at the margins) is slowly withdrawn, is not encouraging. As reported in a Washington Post article by Ernesto Londoño, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller, the report:
… predicts that the gains the United States and its allies have made during the past three years are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017, even if Washington leaves behind a few thousand troops and continues bankrolling the impoverished nation, according to officials familiar with the report.
On the home front, meanwhile, the war has lost support so dramatically that, as Mario Trujillo of The Hill reports, a:
… poll released Monday found 17 percent of people supported the war, while 82 percent opposed it.
The poll also showed majority support for:
… pulling out of the country before the 2014 deadline for the United States to remove most troops.
Afghanistan, once “the war of necessity,” appears to have been orphaned. The leadership in Washington has lost interest and the people have learned to recognize the shape of futility.
There are, however, still almost 50,000 American troops, fighting and dying, in the nation’s longest war.
