Excellent editorial from an Albany NY paper (not sure if syndicated)

[karynnj]

Just imagine — the United States government debating whether to send yet more troops into a political abyss where the leading government figure had no standing. It now qualifies, not as progress, but a noteworthy development nonetheless that the Afghan president can be swayed by American diplomacy. A bad situation is not yet an entirely hopeless one.

It’s a notable victory, though, for Mr. Kerry. The past five years have had him lose the bitterly close 2004 presidential election after deciding not to formally challenge the contested results in Ohio, where he was defeated by just 118,000 votes, and see the job of secretary of state that he coveted in the Obama administration go instead to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“We may have just averted a crisis of government in Afghanistan. This may be the biggest thing that Kerry has done, other than run for president,’’ says Ralph Carter, a professor at Texas Christian University who has co-written a book on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Mr. Kerry now chairs.

< snip pargraph on Vietnam, Afghanistan and Kerry >

There will be more mistakes made in Afghanistan, almost certainly. In that context, then, it’s important to acknowledge the disastrous one that wasn’t made after all.

http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/mr-karzai-bows-to-reality/853/