Direction, what direction?

When General Sir David Richards announced recently that the British Army should prepare to be in Afghanistan for 30 or 40 years, I presume he had some sort of plan envisaged for what they´re going to spend that time doing.

Clearly Karzai is getting enough flak from his handlers (for instance, the foreigner dominated Electoral Complaints Committee has major concerns over the election) that there are obviously divisions on whether to let him rig this election or not. Compare that to his first election where he basically won by being the only visible face and dominating 80-90% of all radio and tv time (which, if not outright rigging, certainly counts as manipulation).

Meanwhile the Americans are getting caught doing lewd acts, our government´s grand plan to reduce our commitment by increasing participation in key theatres from NATO Allies has unsurprisingly (like the other 50 times they asked) not worked out, which basically calls into question the existence of the alliance, beyond a sort a group of mostly reluctant cheerleaders for US foreign policy.  In any case, the Germans don´t listen when their busy bombing large numbers of civilians, rather than risk anyone actually having to die, something that pissed off the American´s new  ”hearts and minds” commander.

 So Karzai limps over 50%, the Allies consider whether or not to call him out for electoral fraud, or stand by their man for convenience´s sake. Most of the Allies don´t want to be there, and aren´t really committing serious forces anyway. Beyond saying, “we have to win”, nobody seems to have any idea what exactly they want to win, how to achieve it, and want they want to commit to doing it.