Racing for Broke

The Afghan prison in Kandahar is, or was, the largest in Afghanistan's penal system, holding more than 1,500 inmates from the bloody fighting in the southern part of the country. Many of those held were Taliban fighters and commanders.

But after pulling off an audacious escape yesterday through a half-mile tunnel which was dug under a major highway and several checkpoints, the population of the prison is down by at least a third.

More than 500 Taliban back in the game at the start of the Afghan "fighting season" is very, very bad news for the American-led International Security Force, which was hoping to begin transitioning more control to the Afghan army and police forces this year.

This massive security fail, however, shows that the corruption and incompetence of those same forces may mean the U.S. and its allies will have to carry the load much longer.

You may remember the president's speech in December 2009 where he telegraphed his intention to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Well, that's about as likely to happen as the closing of Guantanamo Bay by January 2010.

Hopefully the President is learning through these leadership gaffes that one can't win a war by sheer force of will. Conditions on the ground will always be the key. Nevertheless, Obama and his commanders must do something to speed progress in the war, as the extent of the U.S. budget crunch becomes more and more obvious.

We're not just broke - at this point, broke would be a good goal to shoot for.

Stepping up the pressure in Pakistan is beginning to cause serious tension in our relations with that country. The Taliban may very well win the war in Afghanistan when the history books are written, but they will have done it by making the war too expensive to win.

And they are doing that by hammering our supply convoys coming in from Pakistan. As of yet, nobody has been able to figure out a better way to get the bulk of the materiel we need to fight the war into the country.

It was reported in 2009 that the Pentagon was paying $400 a gallon to get fuel into Afghanistan, and that number is surely higher now. Add that to the massive cost of each new mine-resistant vehicle being shipped into the country, (about a million apiece, shipping not included) and it becomes clear that we just can't afford this forever.

We owe it to those who have fought and died there to give them every resource we can to win this war. Unfortunately, much of the fighting will have to be done in places where the U.S. military isn't - Pakistan and the halls of power in Washington, D.C.