Yup. And stop the war in Pakistan and the war in Yemen, while you're at it.

Are you somehow of the opinion that the President doesn't want to stop this war? Do you have some suggestions for how he can go about doing so in a manner that won't automatically result in social breakdown of whatever semblance of order there is in Afghanistan?

I honestly don't understand the direct or implied criticism of Obama when it comes to Afghanistan. One doesn't just snap one's fingers and overcome decades of ethnic infighting and governmental corruption. Pull out hastily and we'll end up with a festering breeding ground of militant discontent, violently oppressed minority groups, and abused women and children. But hey, if only Holbrook had suggested to the President that he "stop this war." What a novel idea, I'm sure Obama never thought of THAT one!

This would be a lot more interesting if Holbrooke weren't presumably drugged to the gills at the time.

Typical American male - his last words are about some stuff left on his desk back at the office.

Obama can not, and will not, stop this war. It has to continue until Afghanistan is successfully stabilized (which will be around the time that the cheese the moon is made of is available for sale at 7-11) or a Republican takes office. We are obligated to fight forever, with no possibility of victory. Just keep pouring money out onto the ground like blood forever and ever.

Once again, Fnarf shows how out of it he is.

Go read wikileaks.

That said, @2 is wrong about one thing. Pakistan.

Neither Pakistan, nor Egypt, nor Saudi Arabia are our allies.

They pretend they are, but they aren't.

@1: Now you know what's a "Neccesity"? The ability to properly articulate one's thoughts in text. In other words, you should learn to spell.

But propping up corrupt officials is the American way. How can we do that in Afghanistan w/o thousands of troops killing people, I ask?

The necessity of this war is to provide profits to the companies that manufacture the stuff that you fight wars with.

Just think what would happen to our economy if the military industrial complex were to close up shop.

@3 Looking for... (a clue?) - How is Dan's posting a criticism of Obama?

oh... and think how many more unemployed people there would be if they couldn't join the service and become government employees.

@6,

You think a Republican's going to end it? I guess that has some merit in a Nixon-goes-to-China sort of way, but there's nothing Republicans love better than a never ending war.

@12, a Republican can end the war, because he won't lose his pro-military bona-fides. Obama would get SLAUGHTERED by the press, the Republicans, and the voters if he pulled out of Afghanistan with anything short of a modern liberal state in place, which is obviously impossible to achieve, as is any kind of state at all, other than the current hopelessly corrupt, hopelessly dependent on American arms, hopelessly in love with the most repressive, retrograde practices imaginable.

A Republican ended Vietnam, remember. Declare victory and get the hell out. Republicans can get away with this, even if it's a lie, and blame Democrats; Democrats can't, because they are perpetually afraid of being labeled doves.

Why is Pakistani surgeon in quotation marks?

Because "Pakistani surgeon" is a direct quote from the Post obit. For some reason the Post decided the ethnicity of Holbrooke's surgeon was significant.

@3: "Pull out hastily and we'll end up with a festering breeding ground of militant discontent, violently oppressed minority groups, and abused women and children." As opposed to what? What we have now? What we'll have in another five years, or ten? Unless we want to kill every last person in the country, they're not going to have a "stable" (code for pro-USA and not likely to be overthrown by revolutionaries) government. Nor should they: the US is possibly second only to the Roman Empire as far as fucking-up things for other countries goes (we might also trail the British Empire, it's a close race; the USSR is up there too, and China's trying really hard to be #1 fucker). [To preempt any interested trolls (or even Sloggers): I don't hate America, though I do strenuously object to many of our post WWII foreign policy initiatives, and even more so our enabling of globalization through the 80's and 90's, and the Bush-II-era militant cultural imperialism. Unless that constitutes your operational definition of "America", e.g. a globalized-free-market capitalist Liberal (not the USA politics label, the branch of philosophy) Christian state pushing a poorly-functioning model of representative democracy, in which case it's absolutely correct to say I hate America, or at least that America.]

The opinion of the "leave now" folks, myself included, is that your worst-case is already a forgone conclusion. We're gonna wind up with this anyway, so we should cut our losses and stop pissing money away. Google "Vietnam War" if you're curious as to why we think this is the case. Never start a land war in Asia.

@10/11: "Just think what would happen to our economy if the military industrial complex were to close up shop." We'd build houses and grow food and make bicycles and hybrid cars and art and all sorts of other things that have utility other than killing people? Just because our public servants aren't shooting people doesn't mean we can't have public servants. Maybe we could use that cash to build and run public hospitals, and we could deliver the Universal* Health Insurance scheme the swift death it deserves.

@13: Second.

*Well, not quite universal. This was the thing that pissed me off most about Obama's recent speech about his tax-cut deal where he was admonishing people like me: he just plain lied. First, health care for everyone is not the same thing as health insurance for everyone, as one's particular insurance plan might restrict access to various health care services (especially birth control and abortion), and coverage can still be denied (out-of-plan providers or services, "experimental" treatments that may or may not be, preexisting condition loopholes despite the new regulation), albeit under fewer circumstances. Second, the bill didn't extend insurance coverage to everyone. It extended coverage under parents' plans for dependent children up to 27 (of course, the parents need an insurance plan, a more-expensive family plan, and shouldn't we really be covering all dependents, irrespective of age? They're not making their own money with which to buy their own insurance, after all...), actually gave insurance to people 55-65 (I think this is the only section where the law actually gives anyone insurance), and provided a tax penalty for anyone else who didn't buy (private) insurance (despite the fact that those without it, although they don't qualify for Medicaid, likely don't have it because they can't afford private insurance). Oh yeah, and we're also buying private insurance for a range of low-income people/families, despite the existence of a public program that already does that, supposedly (Medicaid), because we should really be giving tax dollars to private companies to have them do something that the government already does itself. Rally, all the recent health "care" bill did was restore the regulation over the health insurance industry that we had before Regan dismantled it, at the cost of a draconian mandatory buy-in/penalty that disproportionately impacts those who can least afford it. It's hardly "a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for a hundred years." The reason we care so much about that "one provision" that was kept out of the bill is that it was the bare minimum required to actually guarantee everyone health insurance coverage. Calling what was passed Universal Coverage is like calling a defense spending bill a piece of tax legislation: it's peripherally related to taxes, as it determines how they'll be spent (if it's tax revenue and not deficit spending, that is), but the text of the bill has nothing to do with tax codes, just like the text of our health "care" law has nothing to do with providing universal coverage.