Taliban evolves into nationalist insurgency

You're with us or against us.

If you're against us, we're going to hunt you down and kill you.

That was our response to Osama Bin Laden and his Taliban hosts after Al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States.

I supported that response as did most Americans including almost all Congressional Democrats.

George Bush took his eye off the enemy when he shifted the military's mission to a disastrous and unnecessary war with Iraq.

President Obama promised as a candidate that he would correct Mr. Bush's costly mistake and return our attention to Afghanistan. After all, that's where Bin Laden's terrorists and Taliban extremists are hiding. It was Al Qaeda that attacked us, not Iraq.

Things have changed in Afghanistan. Our once-sympathetic and promising ally, President Hamid Karzi, has proved corrupt and incompetent. The recent crooked election underscored both.

We have tolerated a certain amount of corruption and thuggery in allies in the past if they provided stability and protection. See Egypt and Pakistan. Mr. Karzi increasingly provides complaints about American and NATO military operations and an Afghan Army lacking in discipline and ability.

The most important change in the war, however, is the change in the Taliban's position. They have evolved from a ruthless, blood-thirsty regime of Islamist extremists into a ruthless, blood-thirsty nationalist insurgency trying to re-capture their homeland from foreigners.

That's a powerful, new stance for the Taliban and explains why their forces have spread to 80 percent of the country.

Judging from press reports and off-the-record military opinions, the Afghan people have lost faith in Mr. Karzi so much that they are willing to settle for the devil they know, the Taliban.

The U.S. commander in the field, General Stanley A. McChrystal, acknowledges this loss of faith. "The weakness of state institutions," he writes, "malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials…have given Afghans little reason to support their government." General McChrystal believes added American troops can salvage a democratic Afghan government.

No matter how good are our American counter-insurgency forces, they cannot hold the country together if the people themselves aren't willing to do it.

So far, Mr. Karzi has not done it. His army hasn't done it. And there is no grass-roots, anti-Taliban insurgency to do it.

President Obama promised change.

He's got it in Afghanistan, and it's not a neat and simple change for the better.