Required Reading

Tom Ricks has compiled a list of 19 things general in Afghanistan know are true but cannot say. Here’s a sampling:

Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
We don’t know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we’re withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won’t talk, and the builders are corrupt.
Karzai’s family is especially corrupt.
Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe.
Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.

Read the whole thing. And don’t miss the comments, which are especially brutal.