A Self-Fulfilling Zero-Option

This wasn't the way it was planned to end, it wasn't the desired ending, it isn't the best ending ... but after the President's DEC 09 West Point speech, events were set in motion.

More often than not, it isn't what you want, what you think, what you wish, or what you believe ... it just is. The mature professional has to accept things as they see them. Over at NRO, I think Bing West has outlined it well.

President Karzai has put his ego above the future of his country. By his deceit, he has sown such distrust that events of the next month, let alone next year, are unpredictable. The U.S. does have the credible option of walking away.
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Karzai has so alienated the American public and Congress that it is unlikely we will pay $6 billion a year, regardless of what President Obama pledges on an agreement he has done nothing to sell to the public or the Congress.

The ironic thing is this; in the end we may wind up doing what some neo-realists wanted to do from the start - but the international community (cue the Bonn Agreement of DEC 2001) and those who wanted to save the world wouldn't even consider. We go in to AFG, fix the enemy as best we can, kill their people, break their stuff, and then go home and let our proxies try to make it work as best as they can.

Our second chance was to have Strategic Patience as an unstated Planning Assumption and take time to do Shape, Clear, Hold, Build right and move one. That is all academic. The Bonn Agreement became null and void circa early-2008, SCHB died in DEC 09, and we are where we are.

The wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.