You need to read this assessment of our current quagmire in Afghanistan...

... because it makes points about this being an essentially unwinnable war that I have been attempting to make for months.

It's a McClatchy, and I am not going to excerpt it because you should go there right now and read the whole goddamn thing.

Here are three take-aways:

1) General McChrystal actually says we need 60-80,000 more troops to avoid a risk of defeat.

2) Even sending 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan only gives use a moderate chance of success [which is actually what a moderate risk of defeat is]

3) We don't have even 45,000 troops to send without risking the structural integrity of our armed forces. At best, military experts say, we could commit about 35,000 of the right kind of troops, and that would leave us with virtually no combat-ready uncommitted reserves.

Yet both nationally and locally there are folks who either ignore the whole issue or live in a fantasy world where we can just go in and win if we commit ourselves.

Get a clue: for years there were random people on both sides of the aisle warning Americans that the bill for fiscal irresponsibility in the banking industry would come due. We've just started paying that bill (admittedly in an idiotic fashion). Now there are a few people out there explaining (speaking slowly most of the time in words of few syllables) that the bill for our imperial hubris and military adventurism is going to be coming due very soon as well.