Afghanistan. The black hole of American foreign policy. After the brief war following the events of 9/11, most of the American people were behind the overthrow of the Taliban for harboring Osama Bin Laden, and felt that there was not only a purpose but a plan to defeating the Taliban and the liberation of the Afghan people from the oppressive yoke of Talib rule. A real war of "liberation", sort of... The unfortunately awesome truth is that the war in Afghanistan was not sufficiently "sexy" or profitable for the men and women selected by the man selected by the Supreme Court to "run" this country.

The stunning success of the invasion of Afghanistan should have been no surprise -- our military was (and is) second to none -- but it was being misused by the powers that be who saw an opportunity to divert the national will to an invasion of Iraq and subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Our Preznit, whose mantra has been "spreading freedom" left the small sapling he planted in Afghanistan and took our national gardening tools and went on to Iraq, where we are reaping the bitter fruits of that bad policy. The resurgent Taliban has proven to be a more formidable foe than what we defeated in the early winter of 2001, and has captured the popular imagination for being able to stand up to the combined US and NATO forces, not in and of itself a good thing, but one that was eminently foreseeable given the lack of focus, funding, follow-through or planning to succeed (sound familiar?).

After the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001, a new future for Afghanistan was mapped out at the Bonn Conference and then at the Tokyo Conference, where plans were laid out for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Afghanistan. Yet they failed to materialise due to the international community’s unfulfilled pledges of aid.

Dividing the Afghan operation into two sides, political (everything the 1600 Crew does is political) and military it becomes interesting to see how the whole Afghan operation becomes one of the most complex foreign policy failures following a "won" war ever. But no one ever said that the men and women running this government could not screw up cashing in a winning lottery ticket, especially the Loser-in-Chief who has been ostensibly running the show over the last seven years.

Let's take a look at a recent example; the supposedly defeated Taliban broke 450 of their fellow true-believers out of Kandahar's Sarposa prison in this weekend.

After investing large amount of money in reconstructing the prison (but 10 million less than finding the stain on Monica's dress), training the staff and locking up "evil-doers" there was a breakout...

Yesterday, Sarposa's entire population of 1,100 inmates – including murderers, bandits and about 450 hardened Islamic militants – was enjoying freedom after an audacious Taliban attack engineered one of the biggest mass jail breaks in history.

"One of the biggest mass jail breaks in history"... on whose watch again? Oh, yeah.

In a spectacular raid which confounded hopes that the Taliban was now on the back foot, a group of about 30 heavily armed insurgents launched an assault on the prison on Friday evening, using two suicide bombers to blow open the gates and then massacring at least 15 dazed guards as they tried to put up a fight.

The jail break is symptomatic of a larger problem that we have in Afghanistan, a country where after 2001 we had an opportunity to make a real difference. The fact that the Taliban can so easily organize and move across the isolated Pakistani border is another tribute to the failed policy of Afghanistan by the 1600 Crew. The reality is that every day brings greater challenges that are being ignored or pushed aside because of the ill-conceived and badly executed war in Iraq. And now the Neocon Saber-Rattling about Iran has begun in earnest over the last few months. Notice if you will that the NeoCons, up to and including Dick Cheney really never talk about the foreign policy failure that is Afghanistan but will bring up that four-letter noun, Iran, at every chance.

Meanwhile American casualties are still falling in Afghanistan.

In the worst single attack on U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan this year, four Marines from a unit based at Twentynine Palms, Calif., were killed by a roadside bomb yesterday, the military reported. A fifth Marine was wounded in the attack.

It's amazing that in a war we "won," we are still incurring casualties. I don't seem to remember that in Germany or Japan we had quite those issues six years after the surrender documents were signed, but then we had both a foreign policy and a plan. And a leader who could execute something other than prisoners on gurneys on the advice of Abu Gonzales.