U.S. Facing a No-Win Legacy in Afghanistan by Philip Ewing, Politico
As the war in Afghanistan winds to a close, the architects of the campaign face a decidedly one-sided battle with history.
At the moment, they’re losing and losing badly, as Washington is plumbing new depths of pessimism about the outlook for the nation that President George W. Bush and his team once vowed to transform.
There’s no talk of “victory,” or how the U.S. should spend its share of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, or how to use the peace dividend from a world made safe from Al Qaeda. Instead, the discussion has boiled down to a debate over whether the future will bring a quick implosion or a slow-motion collapse - and whose fault it would be…