Afghanistan: Let's Declare Victory and Leave

(Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been holding secret talks with Taliban officials in the hope of persuading them to make peace with his government, his spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday, confirming a New York Times report.

And there's more:

Increasingly vexed by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, Mr. Obama is trying to figure out what form a residual force might take after the bulk of American troops leave by December and what would happen if no Americans stayed behind at all. The debate has rekindled some of the tensions within the administration that divided it in its early days. ... Dysfunction reigns in Kabul. American aid dollars have disappeared. Terrorism suspects may be released from Afghan prisons. And Mr. Karzai has refused to sign an agreement for a residual force beyond December, and instead has been fruitlessly contacting the Taliban about peace talks that have yet to materialize.

While Washington has long been frustrated by Mr. Karzai, what little patience remains has ebbed in recent weeks as he blamed American forces for terrorist attacks on civilians, threatened to release prisoners deemed dangerous by the international coalition and likened the United States to a “colonial power.”

That the government of Afghanistan is corrupt from the top to the bottom has been documented ad nauseum. Afghanistan is a kleptocracy on a scale so vast that even Tsar Vladimir III is saying: "Guys. Really?"

That this is the outcome that we are seeing should have not come as a surprise to anyone. Trying to "fix" Afghanistan was a high-risk endeavor from the start.

It is far past time to leave.