What Part Of "Stay The Course" Don't You Understand?

Farzana Wahidy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Why doesn't the CIA just pack up and close their offices? Bushco doesn't need them.

A recent Central Intelligence Agency assessment found that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had been significantly weakened by rising popular frustration with his American-backed government, American officials say.
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The assessment found that Mr. Karzai’s government and security forces continued to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul, said a senior American official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The assessment also found that increasing numbers of Afghans viewed Mr. Karzai’s government as corrupt, failing to deliver promised reconstruction and too weak to protect the country from rising Taliban attacks.

“The ability to project out into the countryside, perceptions of corruption in the government,” said the official, listing Afghan complaints. “The failure to deliver the services.”

The assessment, which was conducted before Mr. Karzai’s visit to Washington in late September, echoes the frustration that has gathered force in Afghanistan since the spring, and American officials in Washington and Kabul are expressing increasingly dire warnings regarding the situation here. Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recent interview that the United States faced “stark choices” in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take “multiple years” and “multiple billions.”

“We’re going to have to stay at it,” he said. “Or we’re going to fail and the country will fall apart again.”

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