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.

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

Whatever military justice ultimately delivers to the soldier accused of methodically killing 16 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children in their beds, the case says all the worst things about how a few -- or even one -- American soldier going rogue can wipe out not only blameless civilians but years of nuanced and carefully constructed foreign and military policy.

The one that came to mind was the My Lai massacre, the March 1968 incident in Vietnam where as many as 500 civilians -- mostly women, children and the elderly -- were massacred by U.S. soldiers, in an incident that ended up shaping the outcome of that war.

The reason it came to mind is because, some years ago, Times photographer Robert Chamberlin and I were traveling the country, interviewing people -- some of them just at random -- about the impact of the Vietnam War on the nation's culture and psyche.

We talked to dozens: an exec with Dow Chemical, the maker of napalm; a musically inclined Vermont dairy farmer who stamped out 45 records of his patriotic songs on a device on his kitchen table; a brother and sister we encountered at a picnic table alongside an Oklahoma highway -- siblings whose father was still missing in Vietnam.

And in Columbus, Ga., the city alongside the huge Army base of Ft. Benning, we went into a jewelry store. We wanted to talk to a man who managed the store for his in-laws. His name was William Calley, and he was a former lieutenant and the only soldier convicted, by a military jury, of the premeditated killings of 22 old men, women and children in My Lai in 1968. (As many as 500 civilians were killed by Calley and others in his unit, but of the other service members charged, only Calley was convicted.)

The My Lai massacre was one of those seminal incidents that changed public perception of the Vietnam War, like the 1972 image taken by my friend Nick Ut, of the Associated Press, of burned children running screaming down a road after they had been accidentally napalmed by the South Vietnamese.

I thought of Calley when I heard of Sunday night's killings of the sleeping Afghans. It was immediately and forcefully condemned by military and civilian leadership -- unlike My Lai, when military leaders initially commended Calley's unit and the U.S. leadership resisted the idea that the Calley unit had done anything wrong.

When the news of My Lai emerged, the servicemen who had intervened in the massacre, putting their helicopter between Calley's soldiers and the civilians, actually received death threats; mutilated animals were left on their doorsteps. Their fellow soldiers called them traitors, and the helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, said that a senior member of Congress remarked that "if anybody goes to jail in this My Lai stuff, it will be the helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson." It took decades for their courage to be officially honored.

The soldier in the Afghanistan killings could face the death penalty. Calley's sentence of life in prison at hard labor was whittled away, and he ended up serving under four years of house arrest. President Nixon issued a limited presidential pardon to Calley.

Americans initially thought Calley's conviction was wrong; Americans' revulsion at the shooting of the Afghan civilians has been, by contrast, almost universal.

Whether this incident has the power to change the course of the U.S. role in Afghanistan, as the My Lai killings did in Vietnam, is another matter.

Back in that Columbus jewelry store, I tried to ask Calley about the incident. Years later, the local paper reported, he told a Kiwanis group that he was "very sorry" about My Lai. To me, he just walked away.

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Photo: Bodies of women and children killed by U.S. troops near the village of My Lai, South Vietnam, in March 1968. Credit: Ronald L. Haeberle/Life Magazine, AP Photo

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?

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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.

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

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"?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

If Israel really planned on attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, skeptics ask, would it be talking about it so publicly? Still, rumors that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may attack Iran before this summer has opinionators screaming waiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Waging war would backfire, they warn, ultimately causing more trouble for Israel and, subsequently, the United States. Some argue that even if this is simply Israel engaging in saber-rattling rhetoric, the threats alone are damaging enough and should stop immediately.

In a recent Op-Ed, Chuck Freilich, who was a deputy national security advisor in Israel during Labor and Likud governments, wrote in our pages:

So herein lies the dilemma: a potential risk to the nation's existence versus the uncertain results of military action, the likelihood of a devastating Iranian/Hezbollah response, the risk of an end to the peace with Egypt and even a military confrontation and regional war, severe international opprobrium and a partial rift with the United States.

Rather than wage war, Israel should wait for economic sanctions to cripple Iran, writes the New York Times editorial board:  

President Obama has spent three years rallying the toughest sanctions ever on Iran -- including a European Union oil embargo. Tehran is increasingly isolated; its economy is reeling. The administration was right to warn Iran against any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. We hope it is also looking to privately persuade Iran of the need for a negotiated solution.

Israel must defend itself. This country’s alliance with Israel is crucial. We hope for everyone's sake that Israel's leaders weigh all of the consequences before they act. A military attack would almost certainly make things worse. Tough sanctions and a united diplomatic front are the best chance for crippling Iran's nuclear program.

Leslie H. Gelb, author of "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy," agrees. In an open letter to Netanyahu posted on the Daily Beast, he writes:

Economic sanctions weaken and divide them -- and often produce constituencies for compromise. Give sanctions time to play out. […]

And if it is to be war, it won't be only Israel's war. Yes, Israel will bear the greatest risks in a war now or a war if Iran has nukes. But even if Israel attacks by itself, Tehran also can be expected to strike at America, Europe, and elsewhere. And Tehran likely will unleash terrorists worldwide, possibly with chemical and biological weapons, plus hits on oil pipelines. So the decision to go to war cannot be Israel's alone. Both U.S. and Israeli officials tell me that the Obama administration is urging you to be cautious. In an interview Sunday, President Obama expressed solidarity with Israel and also said that diplomacy remains the "preferred solution." But you know, Bibi, that most times this White House is too nice about saying hard things to you. And maybe you won't get the message.

Let me spell out what I think President Obama is saying to you: the unprecedented economic sanctions against Iran are already hurting and will hurt a lot more over the next year. Let them bite more. Meantime, the U.S. and Israel are both underlining to Tehran that all options are on the table. (That's not a trivial phrase from a great power.) Israeli threats won't reinforce the pressure from the sanctions; they'll harden Iran's heart. And we'll all be heading for an incredibly dangerous war.

Juan Cole also sounds a warning to Israel via CNN's GPS section. He lists 10 reasons why Israel shouldn't attack Iran, including…

Oil prices will spike. I imagine you could easily see $150 a barrel or maybe even more. This development could throw the U.S. and Europe back into deep recession.

And he concludes…

It seems obvious to me that if all these developments actually occurred, they would be much worse for Israel than if Iran actually did start a weapons program and Iran and Israel replicated on a regional scale the Mutually Assured Destruction of the U.S.-Soviet standoff of an earlier era.

For some, Israel's rhetoric is dangerous enough. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, explains on the Huffington Post:

If this is the game, then Israeli saber-rattling and American outrage play right into Iran's hand. […] My concern is that the escalating rhetoric by all sides poses a danger, in itself. The region is a tinderbox, and it is as if everyone is too busy playing with matches to think of the consequences of their behavior.

But then there's the Daily Beast's Niall Ferguson, who argues that an Israeli attack on Iran may actually be a lesser evil. (Note: The Atlantic's James Fallows calls Ferguson's piece "the weakest case anyone has made in public for going to war, from a celebrity professor.")

The single biggest danger in the Middle East today is not the risk of a six-day Israeli war against Iran. It is the risk that Western wishful nonthinking allows the mullahs of Tehran to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Because I am in no doubt that they would take full advantage of such a lethal lever. We would have acquiesced in the creation of an empire of extortion.

War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don't yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.

All of this commentary is beside the point for TruthDig's Barry Lando, who says we can't asses the situation honestly until we have the whole story. He writes:

Officially, however, Washington and Israel continue the ridiculous pretense that Israel has no nuclear weapons. To this day, Israeli reporters can write about their country's nuclear capacity only if they cite foreign publications as the source. And in the U.S., Washington's official silence seems curiously contagious: How often, in the current flurry of media reports about the threat from Iran, is there any mention of Israel's own nuclear arsenal?

The bottom line is this: Whatever your view about Iran or Israel's right to nuclear weapons, how can statesmen or reporters or anyone seriously discuss the current crisis over Iran when a key part of the dispute is officially hidden from view? How can the U.S. and Israel deal with proposals for a nuclear-free Middle East when they still refuse officially to acknowledge that the region is not nuclear free -- and hasn't been for the past 50 years?

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Photo: A worker rides a bike in front of the reactor building at the Bushehr nuclear power plant near Bushehr, Iran, in this 2010 photo. Credit: Majid Asgaripour / Mehr News Agency

So, America, remember the Vietnam War? Because the war in Afghanistan just gave me a bad case of deja vu.

On Wednesday, The Times' Ken Dilanian and David S. Cloud reported:

The U.S. intelligence community says in a secret new assessment that the war in Afghanistan is mired in stalemate, and warns that security gains from an increase in American troops have been undercut by pervasive corruption, incompetent governance and Taliban fighters operating from neighboring Pakistan, according to U.S. officials.

Could someone please tell me how in the world we've let this happen? Why is it that the best and the brightest keep getting Americans killed for nothing?

The British got run out of Afghanistan in the 19th century. The Soviets got run out of Afghanistan in the 20th century.

Yet we've allowed ourselves to get stuck there?

And according to the classified National Intelligence Estimate completed last month and cited by The Times’ reporters, things aren't likely to improve:

In a section looking at future scenarios, the NIE also asserts that the Afghan government in Kabul may not be able to survive as the U.S. steadily pulls out its troops and reduces military and civilian assistance.

The costs? Cover your eyes:

Some in Congress and the Obama administration are concerned that the bleak assessment suggests little progress was made in the last year. During that time, the U.S. has suffered more than 400 military fatalities and spent more than $100 billion. As of Wednesday, 1,873 Americans had been killed in Afghanistan since U.S. forces invaded in late 2001, according to the website icasualties.org.

In 2001 and 2002, when the George W. Bush administration launched the war in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, 51 U.S. soldiers died.

Imagine if we'd had the good sense to declare victory then and get out?

Instead, we've doubled down on a bad bet. The result? Steadily rising casualties, with 499 killed in 2010 and 418 last year.

Now you might say that's not so bad, really, compared with the Vietnam War, in which more than 58,000 Americans were killed.

Sure. Try telling that to the families of the dead.

Tell that to the family of Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan. The San Clemente native and Tesoro High School graduate is to be awarded the Navy Cross next week. What did he do? In August 2009, while on patrol in Helmand province, he spotted an explosive device and hurled himself into the body of a fellow Marine to protect him and others from the blast.

This California hero died saving others. I'm sure his family is proud. I'm also sure they'd rather have him home, safe.

Some will say that if we leave now, the sacrifices of Hogan and others will have been in vain.

But I say we can't afford any more such tragic sacrifices for a lost cause.

We can't do much about Afghanistan now. President Obama says we'll be out by 2014. Good. Hopefully he sticks to that plan. And hopefully a Republican hawk doesn't become president.

But we need to make sure there aren't any more Afghanistans. And to do that, everyone in this country needs to have some skin in this game.

We need a military draft. We need to make sure that all of America's sons and daughters are subject to combat duty.

That way, the next time war fever hits, we'll be sure that everyone has caught cold before we go into battle.

It's time to put a stop to politicians doing the deciding while only a few do the dying.

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Photo: The remains of Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan are returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Hogan is to be awarded the Navy Cross for bravery in Afghanistan. Credit: Associated Press

I guess now we can call it the "Iran rule."

You know: It's the rule that says the United States must go to war with a country or risk loosing another Hitler on the world.

In 2003, of course, it was the "Iraq rule." Remember how George W. Bush and other administration officials and conservatives justified the invasion of Iraq by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler?

Although, to be fair, Bush was just following in the tracks of his father, who also invoked the Hitler comparison in deciding to oust Hussein from Kuwait in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

If I didn't know better, I'd say too many U.S. policymakers have seen "The Boys From Brazil" and assumed it was a documentary.

Today's Hitler, though, is -- take your pick -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the mullahs who rule Iran. And they want Iran to be a nuclear power. And they must be stopped. And the U.S., of course, must do the stopping. And all options must be on the table, including military action.

Who says so?

Well, except for Ron Paul, every Republican running for president, for starters. Here's Mitt Romney:

"If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney stated unequivocally. "And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

But this is a bipartisan stance, it appears. As The Times quoted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Sunday:

"Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon?  No," Panetta said. "But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, 'Do not develop a nuclear weapon.' That's a red line for us."

"I think they need to know that ... if they take that step, that they're going to get stopped," Panetta said, adding that he was not taking any options off the table.

Gosh, fellows, maybe you could all take a break from the Xbox and Call of Duty for a bit?  You know, get out for some fresh air?

Because honestly, I think the American people are just a bit tired of playing Hitler whack-a-mole.

And this is starting to give me 2003 deja vu: Everyone knows the Iranians are building a bomb, just like everyone knew Saddam Hussein was pursuing a bomb.

Except he wasn't. 

And even if the Iranians are, what makes everyone so sure they'd use it?

Ah, you say, just check what Ahmadinejad has said.

OK. Check what Romney just said. Check what Panetta just said. Does that mean we're automatically going to war?

If we went to war every time someone said something bellicose, we'd be going to war a lot -- uh, I mean a lot more.

We didn't want the Soviet Union to get the bomb, but it did. We didn't want China to get the bomb, but it did. Ditto North Korea. And Pakistan.

Each time, some argued -- as some, especially Israel, argue now about Iran -- that it would be Armageddon if the bad guys got the bomb.

Well, the United States has lived for more than 60 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at it.

It's no picnic, but we're still here.

Plus, sanctions against Iran are starting to take their toll. They might work. At any rate, they don't cost nearly as much as a military action.

So why don't we give the war talk a rest. Hitler, after all, is dead.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: A U.S. sailor in a safety boat observes a boarding team from the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Kidd after Iranian fishermen were rescued from pirates in the Arabian Sea. Credit: U.S. Navy