Republicans are livid about a comment that President Obama made -- unaware that it was being captured by an open microphone -- to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Referring to protracted discussions over the placement of a U.S. missile defense system in Europe, Obama said: "On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved.  But it's important for [incoming President Vladimir Putin] to give me space. This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."  Sounding like a spy, Medvedev responded: "I will transmit this information to Vladimir."

Were Obama's comments proof that he was "pulling his punches with the American people" and obscuring his plans for the missile defense system? That’s what Mitt Romney suggested.  John R. Bolton, whom conservatives would like to see as Romney’s secretary of State, called the remarks a "fire bell in the night" and a harbinger of capitulations  to come  if Obama is reelected.  Karl Rove contributed a piece to the Fox News site headlined  "Why Obama's Open Mic Slip Could Seriously Hurt his Re-Election Hopes."

The overheard Obama remarks were certainly a gaffe, but that was because they were overheard. The president should have been more discreet and wary of electronic amplification. But the comments themselves are defensible, even obvious.

The Russians don't need Obama to tell them that it's bad timing for him to accelerate negotiations that would bring exactly the sort of outcry from hard-liners that greeted his "private" comments. It's likely he or his emissaries have pointed to the election as a reason for patience on other fronts. It would be no surprise, for example, if the administration has been telling Palestinians it will be more likely to press Israel to stop West Bank  settlements after the U.S. election.

Obama insists that he isn't  trying to "hide the ball" from the American people about his plans for missile defense and said he would continue to work with the Russians on the issue later this year. He can now expect to be asked, by Romney or a debate panelist, if he would be willing to share details of the missile defense system with the Russians to assuage their fears that it might undermine their nuclear deterrent.

It's a fair question, and Obama should answer it, but he committed no sin in reminding the Russians that all sorts of issues, domestic and foreign, move to the back burner during an election campaign.

ALSO:

Sparring, again, over race

The drone threat -- in the U.S.

Candidates go PG-13 on the press

--Michael McGough

Photo: President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after their meeting in Seoul. Credit: Jewwl Samad / AFP/Getty Images

What is it about politics that makes some people lose all perspective?

Today's two examples come from near -- and far.

In the United States, we have Exhibit A, also known as Newt Gingrich.  

Exhibit B comes from Afghanistan: one Hamid Karzai.

Gingrich wants to be president, but he has no shot.  Karzai is a president, but if he's not careful, he will be shot.

Of course, one doesn't enter politics without a healthy -- some might say overinflated -- ego. The best politicians are, by nature, risk-takers. Where others hold back, they charge ahead.  It takes them to great heights sometimes but also brings great falls: see Clinton, Bill, and Nixon, Richard. 

(Thursday brought another reminder:  Former Illinois Gov. Rod Rod Blagojevich left Chicago for Colorado, where he'll be serving a sentence on corruption charges in federal prison.)

And ego certainly applies to Gingrich. Times staff writer Paul West on Thursday summed up Gingrich's motivation for staying in the GOP presidential race:

At 68, the former House speaker is making what figures to be his last fling at elective politics.  But it is his sense of himself as an epic figure that may well be what's keeping him going.

Gingrich hopes for a brokered convention, something that hasn't happened for decades but that appeals to the historian in him.  It may be a figment of his imagination, but it's a harmless fantasy -- unless you're Mitt Romney and hoping to wrap up the nomination.

Karzai, on the other hand, is playing a much more dangerous game.  On Thursday, Times staff writer Laura King reported from Kabul that the Afghan president "had demanded a quicker end to the Western combat mission and a pullback of NATO troops from rural areas."

Karzai's office said he told visiting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that by year's end, U.S. troops should be garrisoned only in large bases, abandoning outposts in rural districts like Panjwayi, the scene of Sunday's shooting deaths. 

"Afghanistan's security forces have the capability to provide security in the villages of Afghanistan," said a statement from Karzai's office.

Which makes one wonder what country Karzai thinks he's living in. Especially because the Taliban announced Thursday that not only was it suspending talks with the United States on the war but that it would be "pointless" to engage in any talks with the Karzai government.

Karzai's response?

The president also called for a significant acceleration of the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, saying NATO should wind down its combat role in 2013 instead of 2014. "Our demand is to speed up this process, and authority should be given to Afghans," the presidential palace's statement said.

Perhaps Karzai could take a lesson from Gingrich and read up on his history.  Here's a name he might want to check out: Najibullah.

After the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, Najibullah was president.  Forced from office during the ensuing civil war, Najibullah took refuge in the U.N. compound in Kabul for four years.  But in 1996, the Taliban seized power. 

A Times' story from Friday Sept. 27, 1996, records his fate:

The bloated, beaten body of the man who also once headed the hated Afghan Communists' security service was strung up from a lamppost outside the presidential palace, reports said.

The Times' Doyle McManus wrote Thursday that given recent events, President Obama needs a Plan C for getting out of Afghanistan.  So Karzai may get his wish for a sped-up withdrawal.  

But if that's the case, Karzai's name just might end up listed next to Najibullah's in the history books of the 21st century.

ALSO:

Murohama enshrined [The reply]

Save the American West [Blowback]

Big government won't build you a snore room, that's for sure

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, meets with Afghan President Hamid Karza in Kabul on Thursday. Credit: Mohammad Ismail / EPA

The Kony video: You love it or you hate it. Or, if you're a truly world-weary Web troll who mocks memes rather than makes them, you're way, way above it. Meanwhile, if you're an opinionator for the dead-tree media, you wait until most of the fuss is well and truly over before getting around to blogging about it.

Actually, the fuss isn't quite over. Invisible Children, the advocacy group behind the Web video "Kony 2012," announced Monday that its next project will be a video defending itself from all the criticism generated by its last one. That's a good idea because powerful filmmaking is the one thing this group does extremely well (as opposed to, say, benefiting Ugandan children or actually achieving results).

Oops. To all of my Facebook friends under 25: Just kidding about that last sentence. I'm changing my profile photo to a red "Kony 2012" banner. Please don't hack my account and post embarrassing status updates under my name.

The almost evangelical zeal with which many college-ish-age people are embracing the Kony campaign is at once inspiring and distressing -- inspiring because it shows that with a little nudge, America's youth can be driven to care about more than midterms and Internet porn; distressing because it shows how easily public opinion on an obscure topic can be manipulated by savvy new-media marketers. The video, a recitation of the many crimes of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, has attracted more than 74 million viewers on YouTube alone, not to mention the millions more who have seen it elsewhere.

If you're familiar with the video (and if you're not, check out this Times story), chances are you're also familiar with the criticisms of its makers, which are many: Invisible Children holds itself out as a charity to benefit Ugandan kids whose lives have been torn apart by violence, yet examinations of its tax returns show that it spends most of its funds on making films; "Kony 2012" urges people to send the charity more money in the name of preventing Congress from withdrawing the small contingent of U.S. military advisors who are helping African troops track down and catch Kony, which is odd considering there was never any sign that Congress was considering any such thing; and the video glosses over the fact that Kony is actually no longer in Uganda and is hiding elsewhere, so his reign of terror is largely over.

What bothers me about the group isn't its financing, strategy or even documentary technique but its focus on a marginalized figure who, while certainly among the world's most wanted criminals, is only one of many international villains, and not the most dangerous. A list of better topics might include the genocide in Darfur, the tragic failed state that is Somalia and the deadly scourges of malaria and AIDS in Africa, any of which would be more worthy of public notice and more amenable to public influence. The fact is that all the money and advocacy in the world can't catch Joseph Kony; about the best Americans can do is to support their government's current work to help with the policing effort. That's hardly a great topic for activism. A few million calls to Congress about providing more funds to the Global Fund to Fight AIDs, Tuberculosis and Malaria, though, could really make a difference.

But that's a quibble. The filmmakers behind "Kony 2012" made the documentary because their lives were touched by Ugandan children and the devastation wrought by Kony's forces; somebody else can worry about AIDs. And it seems odd for the Western media to blame Invisible Children for being late to the game of raising awareness about Kony, when they largely neglected to tell Kony's story in the midst of his worst depredations. If Invisible Children spends its money making movies, that's because its mission is to raise awareness, and that's not a bad thing. American high school kids might not be able to find Uganda on a map, but at least they now know who Joseph Kony is.

So it's a mixed bag. But if you're itching to right Africa's wrongs with a little cash, there are better places to send it than Invisible Children. Here's one of the better ones.

ALSO:

Libya's nasty new friend

McCain: Bomb, bomb Iran.... Oh, and Syria

Colombian rebels say they want to restart peace talks

--Dan Turner

Photo: Image from the Kony 2012 action kit. Credit: www.invisiblechildren.com

I've never been a big fan of those alternative-history novels in which Hitler wins World War II or Richard Nixon becomes president for life, but recent events have me pondering a hideous prospect: What if John McCain had defeated Barack Obama in 2008? The answer, as indicated by McCain's recent posturing, is that we'd be struggling with a lot more than an economic downturn; we'd probably be in costly and unwinnable wars not just in Afghanistan but in Syria and Iran.

McCain has not only forgotten the lessons of his own generation's war in Vietnam, he's forgotten what this generation learned in Iraq. He is eager not just for Israel to bomb Iran, which would set off a devastating regional conflict likely to drag in the United States, but for Washington to bomb Syria. On Monday, he became the first U.S. senator to call for air strikes on that country, and during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting Wednesday, he admonished Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for failing to show leadership by "focusing on diplomatic and political approaches rather than a military intervention."

Panetta didn't take this sitting down; he said the administration was working to build international consensus, as it did in Libya, rather than taking unilateral action, and that as Defense secretary he has to know "what the mission is. I've got to make very sure we know whether we can achieve that mission, what price and whether or not it will make matters better or worse."

That's the part McCain either doesn't understand or doesn't care to discuss. U.S. military intervention in Syria in any form -- whether airstrikes or arming rebels -- would be extraordinarily risky. Syria is a powder keg of ethnic and sectarian factions with networks in neighboring countries; foreign intervention there would set off a proxy war that would further destabilize the entire Middle East.

To name just a few of the complications: In Lebanon, the politically powerful and heavily armed Hezbollah is committed to upholding the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it's not unrealistic to think that a broader civil war in Syria could spread to its fragile neighbor. If Assad should fall, it would almost certainly lead to reprisals, and likely atrocities, against Syria's minority Alawite community, the regime's most important domestic backers. The Syrian opposition that U.S. hawks would like to arm is an unknown quantity made up of Islamic fundamentalists and other groups that aren't necessarily sympathetic to U.S. interests. Taking out Syria's air defenses would be nowhere near as simple as taking out Libya's and would require a massive U.S. military commitment; it also presents risks that it would prompt Assad to use his country's stockpile of chemical weapons, which is said to be 100 times the size of Libya's.

I could go on, but I doubt I could say it better than the International Crisis Group, which wrote in a recent report:

Frustrated and lacking a viable political option, Western officials and analysts have toyed with a series of often half-baked ideas, from initiating direct military attacks to establishing safe havens, humanitarian corridors or so-called no-kill zones. All these would require some form of outside military intervention by regime foes that would more than likely intensify involvement by its allies. Even if they were to provoke the regime's collapse, that in itself would do nothing to resolve the manifold problems bequeathed by the conflict: security services and their civilian proxies increasingly gone rogue; deepening communal tensions; and a highly fragmented opposition.

McCain's hawkishness is starting to turn off most of his fellow Republicans, and even if he had won the White House, he might not have been able to fulfill his neocon nation-building fantasies. Fortunately, it will take an alternative-fiction writer, rather than a journalist, to imagine the harm he could have done.

ALSO:

On Iran, patience and power

Holder's troubling death-by-drone rules

$3 billion in U.S. humanitarian aid buys little respect

--Dan Turner

Photo: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) talks to the press Monday after calling for air strikes on Syria. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

ALSO:

Afghanistan on edge

Staying out of Syria's conflict

Move over, Egypt, Iraq and Syria 

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The departure from Egypt of six American employees of nongovernmental organizations is good news for those involved and may dampen efforts in Congress to cut military aid to that country at a delicate time in Egyptian politics. But the price tag for their release -- $300,000 in bail  per defendant -- makes the  resolution  look more like a hostage deal than a victory for due process. Indeed, the Americans were hostages of a sort, having  taken refuge in the American Embassy in Cairo. One is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The  Egyptian government has not ended its investigation of  the National  Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (LaHood's group), which walk the fine line between promoting democracy and interfering in Egypt's internal affairs. A State Department spokeswoman warned  that the decision to allow the activists to leave "doesn’t resolve the legal case or the larger issue of NGOs in Egypt," and noted that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton must certify to Congress this spring that Egypt is abiding by democratic principles.

The crisis might be finessed if Egypt's new parliament were to repeal the registration law the NGOs were accused of violating. But the initial reaction from Egyptian politicians  has been criticism of the military government for caving in to the United States. Investigating the NGOs may have been the brainchild of a holdover from the Hosni Mubarak regime, but perceived U.S. interference in the Egyptian judicial process offended even reformists.  Nor are the NGOs necessarily welcomed even by Egyptian parties that took advantage of their expertise in the past.

Meanwhile, the imagery of the Americans' ordeal isn't likely to do a lot for tourism.

ALSO:

Israel's risky option on Iran

Move over, Egypt, Iraq and Syria

The West to Syria's rebels: You aren't Libya

-- Michael McGough

Photo: American activists arrive to the airport to leave Egypt aboard a U.S. military plane, in Cario, Egypt, on March 1, after the government lifted the travel ban. Credit: STR/EPA

America, it's time for a little presidential poker. Republicans and Democrats need to go "all in" on Rick Santorum vs. President Obama.

Yep, it's "put up or shut up" time for all you political Texas hold 'em folks out there.

Now, the Obama bet you probably understand. After all, he's the incumbent, and he's running unopposed in the Democratic Party.

But why Santorum? After all, he's not only anathema to Democrats, it's not clear whether most Republicans favor him over Mitt Romney (not to mention Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul).

For the good of the country, though, the GOP needs to run Santorum.

Wait, wait, hold the comments, angry or otherwise. I didn't say "Santorum would be good for the country."  If you're asking me personally, well, it's a secret ballot, but no, I wouldn't put my ink spot next to "Rick Santorum."

But I'm also sick and tired of the partisan divide. It's time to call everyone's bluff.

Conservatives maintain that Obama and the Democrats are destroying the country; that we need to return to Christian values, to exceptionalism, to less government, less regulation, less spending and less taxation.

Sure, Romney touts all that too.  But he just wants the Republican nomination. With that secured, he'll pivot to the center, and pretty soon you'll never know he said half the stuff he did to get the GOP nod. With an Obama-Romney clash, should Romney lose, plenty of Republicans would complain that he wasn't a true-enough conservative.

Santorum, on the other hand, is nothing if not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He might pivot to the center too, but he's so far right that he can't even see the center at this point. With an Obama-Santorum battle, we'd be able to settle the liberal vs. conservative debate that's stifling government. 

And here's where the "all in" part happens.

If Santorum wins, liberals should acknowledge that the country is on the wrong path. America doesn't want gay marriage, or legal abortion, or government healthcare, or environmental protections. It wants to slash the size of government and reduce or eliminate entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. It wants religion back in public life; it wants the government out of schools. It wants to spend big on defense; it wants to back Israel no matter what. 

However, if Obama wins, all those conservative Republicans would have to acknowledge that they were wrong. That they're not America's voice. That America is OK with gay marriage and a woman's right to choose; it wants affordable healthcare for all, and a safety net that includes Medicare and Social Security.  It agrees with the separation of church and state and believes that while generating good-paying jobs is important, so is protecting the environment. It doesn't want a 1% and a 99% but a 100% that favors social and economic justice for all.

So after election day, that's it. Someone rakes in all the chips. 

If it's Santorum, then Republicans in Congress, the tea partyers and the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity crowd can crow all the way to the inauguration and beyond.

But if it's Obama, those same folks need to face reality. They need to stop the scorched-earth warfare and let him lead.

And we can go back to the old days, when elections mattered.

Did someone say "deal"?

ALSO:

The Dow is climbing! The Dow is climbing!

Issa's House hearings on contraception: Where were the women?

Presidential giants of our generation, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton

 --Paul Whitefield

Illustration by Wes Bausmith / Los Angeles Times

What do you call a 10-year-old boy in Afghanistan? Apparently, a suicide bomber.

The Times reported Tuesday that two 10-year-olds who had been arrested for trying to carry out suicide attacks, then released last year, had been rearrested -- for trying to carry out suicide bombings.

Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

A statement from provincial officials quoted one of the boys, named Azizullah, as saying the pair had undergone training at a madrasa, or religious school, in Pakistan. The mullahs there told the boys they would be unharmed when they set off their bombs, Azizullah reportedly said.

News of the boys' arrest came the same week that Muslim militant Umar Patek appeared in court in Indonesia to answer charges related to deadly bombings a decade ago in Bali that killed 202 people in a nightclub. Oddly enough -- or perhaps not -- he was captured last year in Abbottabad, the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

But unlike the 202 people killed in the bombings, Patek gets a lawyer. And surprise, he downplayed his client's role: "His involvement in the Bali bombing ... [was] not as big as is being described. We will challenge that in a defense plea next week."

Also this week, a radical Islamic preacher, Abu Qatada, who had been under detention in Britain for most of the last 6 1/2 years, was released from jail Monday.

British officials consider him extremely dangerous, saying he encourages suicide attacks and terrorism, and they want him sent back to Jordan to face terrorism charges.

But Abu Qatada also is being given the benefit of the doubt in some legal circles. Last month the European Court of Human Rights blocked his deportation, saying he could face conviction on the basis of evidence obtained by torture.

And what do these cases have in common?  

They show the difficulty -- perhaps even the futility -- of trying to fight terrorism within the judicial system.

When religious leaders find it acceptable to use children as bombs, it says something terrible about the values of our enemies.

And although it's a tribute to modern society that we remain committed to legal rules, those same legal rules can be -- are being -- manipulated by those committed to our destruction.

It would be nice if there were an easy answer.  Perhaps the madrasas that are training children to be terrorists should be shut down?

Not likely.  As the recent controversy in the U.S. over health insurance coverage for contraceptives shows, government interference in religious freedom is a tough sell everywhere.

No, we're stuck. We must stick to our legal system. We must allow freedom of religion.

And we must fight our enemies and safeguard our soldiers and our nation.

But it would be nice if we could keep 10-year-olds out of the fight.

ALSO:

On Iran, a stark choice

Obama's contraception compromise

Goldberg: Free healthcare? That's rich

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Taliban fighters walk with their weapons after joining the Afghan government forces during a ceremony in Herat province. Credit: Aref Karimi /AFP/Getty Images

So what have the Syrians done wrong?

When rebels in Libya revolted against the regime of Moammar Kadafi last year, the West rushed in with air power when it appeared that the insurgents would be slaughtered by government forces.

And the airstrikes continued to the bloody end -- Kadafi's bloody death included.

But in Syria, antigovernment protesters have been fighting -- and dying -- for months trying to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad.

So where's the NATO air power?  I mean, what's a rebel group got to do for a few 500-pound bombs? Are the lives of Syrian rebels less important than those in Libya?

The cold, hard answer is yes. Syria's rebels aren’t going to get NATO's help.

Why? 

As we used to say in the Cold War days, it's realpolitik.

In truth, what happened in Libya is the exception in foreign affairs.  Just when you think a precedent has been set, there hasn't.

An example? Nuclear weapons.  North Korea -- all Western bluster aside -– is allowed to have the bomb. But the fact that Iran is trying to acquire one brings talk of World War III.

It's much the same with Libya and Syria. The West could afford to challenge Kadafi, who in the end had few outside friends.  But Syria, and Assad, have powerful outside allies, including, as we saw this week, Russia and China.  And, of course, Iran.

Overt Western action to promote regime change in Syria, then, risks a wider conflict.  The Libya action didn't pose as big a gamble.

For an excellent update on the situation in Syria, read Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter’s story this week.  As they point out, the situation in Syria is more like that in Saddam Hussein's Iraq than in Kadafi's Libya. And we know how Iraq turned out.

So is the world forced to stand by while Assad butchers his own people?

Of course not. There are diplomatic tools available. The Obama administration and others are using them.

But that's cold comfort for the people in Syria fighting -– and being killed daily by -- an oppressive regime.

Unfortunately, it's the only comfort they're likely to get.

ALSO:

Daum: Tiger Moms vs. 'Bébé' moms

Germany, the Eurozone's reluctant driver

Afghanistan's future? Same as it ever was: Bloody

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Two Syrians evacuate an injured fellow opposition member in the northwestern city of Idlib this month. Credit: Associated Press

OK, show of hands: Who thinks Afghanistan is headed for a peaceful future?

Yeah, me neither.

In an Op-Ed article Wednesday, Peter Thomsen, who served as U.S. special envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, argues that any solution to the country's civil war must be brokered by the Afghans themselves.

He quotes a Jan. 24 statement by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul: "Only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan."

But in a news story, also on Wednesday, Times reporter Laura King writes from Kabul that U.S. officials increasingly see Afghan President Hamid Karzai as "a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations" with the Taliban.

Hmmm. Seems to me that what we have here is a failure to communicate.

If the Afghans themselves have to solve the problem, but the Afghans themselves can't agree on how to solve the problem, how is the problem going to get solved?

And what's really frustrating about the situation is that you get the feeling everyone involved knows how it's going to end but just doesn't want to admit it.

Actually, you could just go read about the Soviet Union's adventure in Afghanistan, then extrapolate:

• The United States and what's left of our NATO allies will pull out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
• Karzai and his corrupt cronies will be out of the picture shortly thereafter.
• The Taliban will slug it out with whatever warlords are left.
• A lot of Afghans will be killed in the process.
• Whichever side proves the most brutal -- and has the backing of Pakistan, so probably the Taliban -- will seize power.

Meanwhile, there's the little issue of the American lives that will be lost -- and the American dollars that will be wasted -- in this process.

At home, we're quarreling over cutting the social safety net. In Afghanistan, we're throwing dollars down a corrupt government's rat hole, a government that doesn't exist without those dollars and won't exist when American boots start walking.

So here's an idea: Pull out in six months. Save those lives. Save those dollars.

And yes -- sadly -- leave the Afghans to do what they've done for hundreds of years: Solve their own problems, in their own brutal way.

ALSO:

Jonah Goldberg: A U.N. -- but for good guys 

Clint Eastwood to Karl Rove: "Do you feel lucky?"

A U.S. author's book, an Iranian translator's peril 

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: President Hamid Karzai last month in Kabul. Credit: Shah Marai / AFP/Getty Images