We Do Remember September 11, 2001, Right?

Don't look for excuses to walk away from Afghanistan and let jihadis set up a sanctuary again.

It is shameful that we suppressed reports of child sexual abuse by our Afghan allies (yet don't forget the enemy from the same culture does the same thing). I know I've mentioned this horrific practice before.

But this is no reason to cede the field there to terrorists lest they become a sanctuary for another 9/11 as this comment implies: "What do we hope to accomplish with yet another Afghanistan surge?"

The implication is that we are doing the same thing and that the last one was futile.

The first surge ordered in 2009 (in two increments) was smaller than the Pentagon wanted and so the military planned a two-stage offensive that the Obama administration truncated after the first stage in the south in order to prop up the "Obama won the war" reelection bullet point.

And even without the second stage eastern offensive, we did knock back the enemy a great deal. Pity we didn't leave enough strength to defend the gains (just as we failed to do in Iraq in 2011 to even worse consequences in 2014)) that allowed the enemy to revive not only in troublesome Pakistan but in Afghanistan itself.

The Afghans have a lot more military power now than in 2009.

And the new "surge" of American forces won't even reach 20% of the earlier troop levels ordered in 2009.

And there is a new regional focus that doesn't try to resolve Afghanistan as if it is immune to actions in Pakistan (especially) and Iran.

So the situations are different although the objective remains the same.

Is it really an excuse for retreat that our deadly enemies are more determined than we'd like?

Are our deadly jihadi enemies really likely to bask in the glory of that victory over us and retire to a comfy cave to write their memoirs and abuse boys?

A lot of Afghans are willing to fight the jihadis if we give them enough help. Let's help them so we don't need a surge like the last one to fight.