"The Staggering Implications of Losing in Afghanistan"

Paul at Celestial Junk digs deep, his conclusions:

...
The implications for our foes are also profound. They can exist comfortably, knowing full well that as long as they don’t cross some magic line ... like bringing down two of the world’s tallest buildings, we will let them be. Our enemies have already figured out that they can become nuclear powers, can kill our soldiers using proxy forces, can meddle in our economies, can meddle in our domestic affairs, can fund political forces within our very borders, can meddle in the affairs of their neighbours, possibly even invade... and we will not lift a finger.

Sadly, the West may once again get its decisive conflict. My son, a serving Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, reminded me recently that we are in Afghanistan partially to avoid just that; a confrontation which will require us to take massive retaliation (think Iran) where Western might is turned against civilians in order to get at the villains. We’ve done it before. How sad, that our pursuit of decadence ( often masquerading as pursuit of health and happiness) just may be the cause of greater loss of life and destruction than anything we could envisage happening in Afghanistan today. It doesn’t take much to imagine the young men and women protesting the Mullah’s in Iran today being incinerated when the West or Israel take revenge for some future beastly crime perpetrated by Iran’s nuclear leadership.

Not only is our Western civilization one that seeks out decisive conflicts and avoids protracted ones, it is also a civilization that has time and again miscalculated and ended up in brutally bloody affairs simply because the price of vigilance was considered too high; and it was more important to live in ease at home, rather than deal with a barbarian while he was still a minor problem and far away on the frontier.

Further Readings...

Osama bin Laden, November, 2001: "...when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse..."

Update: An editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Running away from our promise