"Afghanistan: Who is to Blame?"

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at a NATO meeting in Edinburgh, has decided to change tactics in dealing with NATO allies in Afghanistan:

"We're going to try to look at this more creatively than perhaps we have done in the past when we basically have just been hammering on (allied governments) to provide more," Gates said in a post-meeting interview with a small group of reporters traveling with him from Washington.

Why the change? Maybe Gates was embarrassed when Europeans pointed out what happened just last Tuesday when he testified at the House Armed Services Committee with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. military's primary focus remained the war in Iraq, not Afghanistan, prompting criticism from Democratic lawmakers who want the Pentagon to devote more attention and resources to the Afghan conflict.

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the war in Afghanistan was an "economy of force" operation, a military label for a mission of secondary importance.

....

In any case, a retired four-star general speaking at a private meeting recently characterized the lack of troops in Afghanistan as a "sixth-order problem." The key problems are the lack of a coherent regional strategy, especially toward Pakistan and Iran, and the failure from the very beginning to invest adequately in governance and development and in any aspect of security but the Afghan National Army. All of these resulted from decisions taken by the Bush administration in 2001-2002, not from our European allies.

http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/12/afghanistan-whos-to-blame.html

Taliban, then the Northern Alliance, and al Quaeda through both makes any US finger-pointing more than a bit hypocritical.

This is a US funded and backed error. A large one. The US made the mess, starting with Jimmy Carter at the urging of Berezinski. The state of Afghanistan is directly attributable to US policies, and the fact that aid for the people of the region isn't forthcoming and that the plight of women and children is so desperate is so desperate is just another section of the butcher's bill.