Canadians Not Crazy Aboot Afghanistan

Barack Obama's first foreign trip as president was to Canada. The first foreign ally to back out of the war effort in Afghanistan under Obama's watch will be....Canada:

Remember way back in the early days of the Obama administration when the president went to Canada on his first foreign trip and as soon as Afghanistan came up in the concluding news conference, the well-briefed new U.S. leader pre-empted a key question by saying he had not asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper for more Canadian troops?

Good thing.

Because, as it turns out, Prime Minister Harper thinks victory for the allies in Afghanistan is simply not going to happen. In a fascinating and surprisingly candid interview with CNN’s ever-thoughtful Fareed Zakaria on “GPS,” here’s what the leader of the United States’ closest military ally there said:

“In fact, my own judgment, Fareed, is, quite frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.”

Coming just days after Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. combat troops into that forever-fighting land as a mere holding action, pending further study and possible additional deployments, that’s got to be a stunner to the new White House team.

Afghanistan as long been known as the "graveyard of armies". That was the complaint from the left when Bush decided to invade, and they may well have been correct in assuming we couldn't have prolonged victory there.

I still think going after the Taliban and the Al Qaeda camps was the right thing to do, but defeating the ongoing insurgency may well take more effort than we are willing to give. Canada has already come to that conclusion.