Rolling Stone Revelations

Of the many troubling observations offered by Michael Hastings in his Rolling Stone piece about the Afghan war, two sentences stand out: "Even those closest to [General] McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan," he writes. "'If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular,’ a senior adviser to McChrystal says."

When the advisers themselves start advising the rest of us to pay attention, so we should.

We have been at war with Afghanistan for nine years, making this the longest war in American history, as Hastings points out. We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars, he writes, "on the fifth-poorest country on earth [and have] failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile."

Moreover, we have allowed General McChrystal to use Afghanistan as a testing ground for the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, COIN. As Hastings describes it, "COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve."

That we should invest in such a process in Afghanistan is bizarre. That we expect our military to die for this senseless cause is immoral. We have too many problems in our own country to pour money into a sinkhole. I’m afraid the emperor is wearing no clothes.

Speaking of whom, President Obama must acknowledge that a change of clothes isn’t all that’s needed. While General Petraeus can restore respectability to the mission, he can’t work miracles.

It’s time to end this war and bring our troops home.