“You’re gonna need a bigger mop.”

And yes, I have used the “Rummy-as-Quint” metaphor before.

Sadly, it has only become more accurate with the passage of time. And my PhotoShopping skills have improved to the point I can let graphics carry part of the narrative without embarassing myself.

Two years ago, this was the situation in Afghanistan.

You remember Afghanistan, right?

That other war.

In that place from whence the people that actually attacked us actually received operational direction, religious justification, training, logistical support, funding and so forth?

The one that has been used again and again as the Open House model when trying to sell the rest of the bungalows of Dubya’s Mideast Hegemony Vista Estates?

The one that had elections and a fabulously teevee-friendly government and everything!

That was just a little mop-up and a new screen door away from being such a raging hard-on of a democratic beacon that you could’ve slotted it right between Wyoming and Montana and no one would have noticed?

Well consider this snip from American Progress, and note that it is from May of 2004.

Afghanistan: Waiting for the Bottom to Drop

by Mirna Galic
May 10, 2004
Afghanistan is slipping – it's low on the Bush administration's radar screen, absent from the public debate, and spiraling once again into lawlessness and poverty. Though it may not yet be the quagmire that Iraq has become, Afghanistan too is beset by an insurgency, and serious obstacles threaten the transition to stability. Yet, the country's steady decline is somehow failing to set off the necessary alarm bells in Washington and other international capitals.

President Bush and his national security team, for their part, continue to tout Afghanistan as a victory, with statements such as "its a big success story," and "by removing the Taliban out of Afghanistan and introducing democracy into this country, al Qaeda lost safe haven." But the issue is no longer whether we ousted the Taliban government. Instead, it's what we have done – or can do – to eliminate the obstacles to security and stability in Afghanistan.

It seems that the administration, grown accustomed to dealing with its foreign policy engagements only in crisis terms, is waiting for the bottom to drop out from under Afghanistan before taking appropriate action. But in a country where the narco-economy is becoming increasingly entrenched, and where militants melt into the landscape with ease, it's not a sinkhole we're standing on the edge of, but a bog. If we fail to take corrective measures now, we risk finding ourselves waist deep in a crisis and unprepared.

The real prospect of Afghanistan relapsing into a state of conflict is apparent everywhere: in the rise of militant forces, the limited international security presence, the wanton warlords and the booming drug trade. Some forty Afghan soldiers and policemen, along with two American soldiers have been killed by militants in the past few weeks alone. This year has also seen a spike in the killings of aid workers. And last week's murder of two contractors working for the U.N. election effort risks further stalling a voter registration process that is less than one fifth complete. Elections have already been postponed once because of acute logistical and security constraints.

While Afghanistan may no longer be under official Taliban control, Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives are back in the country and fattening off the mothers milk of a vast drug industry. The Taliban appear to be reconstituted to such an extent that they have spokesmen who give interviews to reporters. And these are only the developments we know of. The Tajikistan Drug Control Agency estimates that there are some 400 clandestine heroin labs in Afghanistan proper.

…

So what was happening in Afghanistan two years ago was pretty grim, right?

Big, red flares shooting off in all directions. All the “dots” not only easily and clearly connected in the Big Administration Coloring Book using information available in any media outlet that was still bothering to do reporting, but forming a Very Alarming Picture.

Massive robots scooting through the corridors of the White House, waving their arms and bellowing, “Warning George W.! Danger! Danger!”

Sure, Afghanistan has always been the hind-teat runt of the Administration’s martial litter.

And, sure, our A.D.Dear Leader was never exactly the King of Koncentration and had long since lost his adolescent Kabul Krush on Afghanistan in favor of the lusty bombshell next door with all that light, sweet crude between her legs.

But there did seem to be at least a two reason for continuing to pay Afghanistan, Plain and Tall some attention that even the “Let Everything Slide and Blame the Press When Something Goes ‘Boom’” President might actually be capable of fathoming.

The Mercenary Reason: Letting his “Model Victory” collapse back into chaos would be a huge boost and a tangible as well as moral victory for the despicable people who we are supposedly bending every effort and tapping every telephone to fight. Afghanistan, remember, was the original “Over There” under the formulation that we were going to fight terrorist abroad so we wouldn’t have to fight them here.

This clause of Bush Doctrine -- based entirely on the loony assumption that there are only a fixed number of terrorists -- is, of course, insane and massively discredited except in the dank digital halls of warbloggers. But even if one were fool enough to actually believe that the ranks of the terrorists would never grow and their tactics never change based on changing conditions and the propaganda victories that the Bush Administration seems determined to hand out to them like candy, wouldn’t that mean you must, therefore, actually be serious about defeating groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan?

The Political Reason: Right now the common wisdom is that Republicans generally and George W. Bush specifically are either corrupt beyond measure, incompetent beyond redemption, or both. Well if for no other reason than pure political calculation, consider the last time this country stood united and purposeful behind George Bush on any issue, was when he took the decision to invade Afghanistan and go directly after the people directly responsible for 9/11.

It was, in the public mind, something of a “boutique war”. An easy win and a righteous slam dunk rout of cartoon villains on horseback by the B-52s, Predator Drones and smart weapons of the most powerful and expensive military on Earth.

It was the war we wanted, we had earned and that we cheered on. A massive stomping-flat of a cave-dwelling enemy so final and definitive that they could never recover.

So if this Failed President is so inept that he can't even hang onto that tiny victory...?

If he can allow his only slam-dunk win -- and the only one that was actually solidly back by the American people -- to slip away...

This from today's Asian Times.

Taliban's new commander ready for a fight
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - The Taliban's military offensive has begun in earnest in southern Afghanistan, with many key districts already captured by the militia that retreated from power in 2001 after the US-led invasion.

The scale and frequency of the Taliban's revitalized insurgency can be attributed directly to the recent appointment by Taliban leader Mullah Omar of legendary mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani as overall military field commander.

In the latest action - the biggest since the Taliban's ousting - in Helmand province, between 300 and 400 heavily armed Taliban fighters stormed a remote village. At least 100 people were killed, including 15 or more Afghan police and a female Canadian soldier. Haqqani, a cleric, rose to fame during the decade of opposition to the Soviets in the 1980s. Coincidentally, at that time he was an ally of the United States

Mullah Omar has provided Haqqani with major powers, funds and huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition and, most important, hundreds of youths who have been trained by the Iraqi resistance in urban guerrilla warfare.

Mullah Omar has demarcated specific areas of Afghanistan to different commanders, but now Haqqani is commander-at-large. He has also been charged with coordinating suicide attackers throughout the country. He is authorized to wage battles anywhere he chooses in Afghanistan.

Haqqani was not part of the Taliban movement when it first emerged from Zabul, but he was the first and most powerful commander of the Afghan resistance to surrender to the Taliban, unconditionally, in 1995. The defection paved the way for the Taliban to secure territorial advantage and finally victory in 1996.

Haqqani, in his 50s, had stunningly captured the first major city since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 - Khost - in 1991, from the puppet communist government of president Mohammad Najibullah.

…
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Haqqani was invited to Islamabad, where the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with which he had close ties, offered him the presidency of Afghanistan, but on the condition that he break all ties with Mullah Omar and carve out a "moderate Taliban" faction. (In declassified US State Department documents, Haqqani is described as the tribal leader "most exploited by the ISI [and US] during the Soviet-Afghan war to facilitate the introduction of Arab mercenaries".

Haqqani refused the offer and went back to the Ghulam Khan mountains between Khost and Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area and began his campaign of pitched battles against US-led forces. He then became a prime US target, with a number of attacks aimed specifically at eliminating him.

But although Haqqani still commanded great respect all over Afghanistan and especially among the tribal elders of Khost, Paktia, Paktika and Gardez, he still did not belong to the Taliban core - Mullah Omar's "kitchen cabinet".

He thus was not given a central role in the Taliban resistance, although he continued to mount random attacks in his area.

Mullah Akhtar Osamani and Mullah Dadullah were the central commanders, but they were not able to make any significant military breakthroughs when the Taliban's spring offensive was launched last month. Thus Haqqani's elevation.

Fresh funds, arms and human resources, and Haqqani's unquestioned military acumen honed in years fighting the Soviets, have revitalized the insurgency. An immediate spinoff was that veteran Afghan resistance figures, such as Saifullah Masoor, the commander of the renowned resistance leader Nasrullah Mansoor, who were previously sitting on the fence in Gardez and other areas, are now hand in hand with Haqqani.

…

"Once again we are facing a mid-1990s-like situation when bloodshed was everywhere and the situation went from bad to worse and these circumstances allowed the Taliban movement to emerge and boot our government out," said former Afghan prime minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzaid in a telephone conversation with Asia Times Online. Ahmad Shah was the acting premier before the Taliban took power in 1996.

"The Karzai administration writ is nowhere, and the Afghan nation is once again in limbo," Ahmad Shah maintained.

Solid spadework
While Haqqani has provided the spark for the resistance, he could not have succeeded had thorough groundwork not been laid over the past year or so.

The Taliban launched a major recruitment drive last year. This coincided with the government of Pakistan clamping down on jihad activities in Indian-administered Kashmir.

This played right into the Taliban's hands as many former members of Pakistani jihadi organizations, including from the banned Laskhar-i-Toiba and the banned Jaish-i-Mohamed, gathered in North and South Waziristan, where the Taliban have established a virtual Islamic state along the lines of the former uncompromising fundamentalist religious Taliban regime in Afghanistan. All have pledged their allegiance to Mullah Omar.

According to authoritative estimates obtained by Asia Times Online, about 27,000 fighters are gathered in North Waziristan alone. More than 13,000 are believed to be in South Waziristan. The Taliban leadership there had formed about 100 suicide squads by February, assembled under the motto "fight until the last man and the last bullet".
…

Consider that a genuine Afghan war hero of Soviet Occupation vintage now stands at the head of the Taliban Army. A man charismatic and powerful enough that George Bush actually offered him Karzai’s job -- the presidency of Iraq -- and who turned it down.

A man who now commands large formations (“between 300 and 400 heavily armed Taliban fighters”) in substantial battles, and wins them.

These are not the “final throes” of a beaten enemy in retreat.

This is, instead, the direct consequence of a Commander-in-Chief who never took his Drive-By war in Afghanistan or the men and women who he sent to die there seriously as anything other than the opening act for PNACs Real War -- the one they had been plotting to launch for a decade.

Who never saw the grief and rage and sincere desire of the American people to find and punish those that attacked us as anything other than emotions he could callously hijack, exploit and ride into Baghdad.

But all the Dauphin’s Horses and all of his Men are no match for Reality, and the moderate Republican and independent electorate are already skewing hard in the direction of horrified buyer’s remorse at having been stupid enough to re-elect these clowns and criminals.

So consider the political judgment that is already being rendered on this Administration, and then add in a failed state in Afghanistan. Add in as the God Damned Fucktard Cherry On Top of this disaster of a Presidency the fact that the one "good" war we thought we had already won, buttoned up, and could leave behind is now erupting as yet another Administration Levee Breach.

Because if Dubya manages to leave office with Afghanistan in chaos and the Taliban on the march, history will not have to wait a respectful few years to pronounce its verdict:

"George W. Bush -- The first United State President to quite literally fuck up Every. Single. Thing. He. Ever. Touched."