Poor planning along with ineptitude and an aversion to commitment seems to have defined the war in Afghanistan. Ahmed Rashid’s book Descent into Chaos makes all of this quite clear. The extent of these issues was even unknown to me. I knew the United States was losing Afghanistan, and that Pakistan’s intelligence services and military were partly to blame, it was the details of the failure by the Bush administration that came as a shock. The book provides an explanation for why the Taliban were able to rise again in the past few years: lack of coordination in reconstruction efforts, not enough boots on the ground, and the failure of the Bush administration to see past Pakistan’s lies. As I write this entry, Pakistan is undergoing political unrest, yet again. I could write about Pakistan and its failure to develop ad nauseam, however I’ll avoid that. The simple fact is that we need to send more troops there, get our ‘allies’ to send more combat ready troops, stop warlords, and do a better job at building institutions and other types of reconstruction. If Afghanistan becomes a failed state, then you risk further destabilization in Pakistan (and a possible return of military rule), which all leads to an increase in extremism. Anyways, if you want to read about the US’ failure in Afghanistan (and Pakistan’s idiotic strategies) in great detail, written by a credible person, then I highly recommend this book. It’s not a difficult read at all, just on the longer side of things.