Only 8,000 U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in Afghanistan--less than three percent of the 300,000 the Army says that it needs to properly "Marshall Plan" the country--and most of those are traipsing through the mountains near Khost in search of Al Qaedans who fled for Pakistan in 2001. Actual "peacekeeping" is limited to Kabul; the vast majority of Afghans live under the same feudal warlords whose brutality led to the rise of the Taliban in the mid `90s. Rape, robbery and violent clashes are routine.

We did Afghanistan on the cheap, and it shows. The place is such a mess that the main objective of the American invasion--building a trans-Afghan pipeline to carry landlocked Caspian oil and gas to the Indian Ocean--will likely never be realized.

We won the war but we lost the peace. Will we do the same thing in Iraq?

Count on it. -- from Ted Rall.