A reader writes:

On your latest Afghanistan post, I'm not sure people understand how true your statement is: "What Bush and Cheney threw away Obama cannot recapture."

My wife has worked for Tolo TV, the station that hosts the Afghan version of American Idol. She told me a story very illuminating along the Bush-Cheney front. Tolo sent a crew down to Uruzgan province last year -- a clearly Pashtun, clearly pro-Taliban region, historically -- and the tribal chiefs were having a big meeting, at which many of them said that shortly after 2001 they decided they would back Karzai's government and the U.S., feeling that the U.S. could and would improve the country and their lives. But no investment, no aid, no improvement ever came. America's resources were in Iraq. And now Uruzgan is a province where a man with white skin dare not walk without a very large military force behind him. Uruzgan reverted back to the Taliban. And it will stay that way for a very long time.

We had our chance once. It's long gone.