War on Terror Returning to Its Cradle

[Kefka]

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9789

Five years after the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was putting the final touches on a brilliant campaign plan to oust the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies from power, Afghanistan is back in the headlines, and the news isn't good.

An unexpectedly fierce and prolonged Taliban offensive that began last spring has U.S. and NATO officials deeply worried that they face a serious insurgency fueled by a thriving drug trade and growing popular disaffection with the government of President Hamid Karzai.

"My fear is that Afghanistan is beginning to look like Iraq," Richard Haass, president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, told the Washington Post last week. "We're seeing the beginning [of the] Iraqification of Afghanistan."

How 'brilliant' could this plan have been if the outcome is what we're seeing now?