Is the "War on Terror" really gone?

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a provocative headline -- "Bush's 'War' on Terror Comes to a Sudden End" -- which was an interpretive delight, a kind of reader's choice.

Was it suggesting that Bush's War has come to an end, or that Bush's War is suddenly over?

If the former, then we're in agreement. But if the latter, then the headline was profoundly misleading -- and the story that followed seemed to confirm just that.

It's true that certain tactical (and is there any reason to re-mention "illegal"?) elements of George Bush's peculiar prosecution of the so-called "war on terror" -- torture, Gitmo, secret prisons -- have been executively banished by Barack Obama, but the merely relocated war itself marches on, soon bigger and badder and more bewilderingly than ever.

I write of course of Afghanistan, the new, new central front in this, the vaguest and most elusive of foreign wars, presumably "on terror." There are media reports that it's already dominating -- nearly to the point of exclusivity -- the young president's national security meetings, and such reports are chillingly reminiscent of the mid-1960s, as another but not-so-young president grappled increasingly with an inherited and unfathomable mess.

But say, here's an unrevolutionary idea: How 'bout we send a special envoy, or let's tweak the title and call him a "special representative" instead, in the person of Richard Holbrooke? You bet, a Western, late-middle-aged white guy who will ride into the Mideast's Dodge and warn "Hold it right there," just before he's forced to blast away.

In self-defense? Ah, there's the rub. For is it self-defense? Or is it merely an occupational hazard? -- double entendre intended.

It's reported that Special Representative Holbrooke will report to the secretary of state, and "through her, to Mr. Obama," a curious ambiguity of phrasing and command. But I must hand it to Mrs. Clinton, because she seems to have pulled off yet another bureaucratic coup which strikes me, at least, as utterly brilliant.

For there's this, in the wording of the equally suspicious NY Times: "Underscoring the potentially tangled lines of authority, Mrs. Clinton said that the National Security Council, led by Gen. James L. Jones, would play a coordinating role on Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Damn that's smart -- predistribute the inevitable blame. Unilaterally take on no task whose odds of success are highly questionable at best; make sure there are plenty of others at whom to point a finger when the whole miserable thing goes kaplooey.

Will it? Well let's just say the contours of history aren't smiling on the Obama administration, any more than they smiled on the Brits or the Russkies or anyone else who gallantly (or not) ever attempted to tame Afghanistan's xenophobic if not feral interior nature.

The [American] soldiers came across three Afghan men. They were sitting on a blanket and listening to music on a radio. What followed seemed, more than anything, a game.

"So, seen any Taliban lately?" Lieutenant Holloway asked the men.

"We haven’t seen the Taliban in eight months," a man named Niamatullah said, looking up.

"Do you ever see anyone moving through here at night?" Lieutenant Holloway asked.

"We don’t go outside at night," said Mr. Niamatullah.... "When we do, you guys search us and hold us for hours. And you never find anything."

Lieutenant Holloway shook his head.

"The last person we stopped in this village, we held for 20 minutes," the lieutenant said. "We never detain anyone."

"We are afraid of you," Mr. Niamatullah said.

"Is there a Taliban curfew?" Lieutenant Holloway asked.

"Only a man with a white shawl is allowed outside at night," Mr. Niamatullah said.

"A white shawl?" Lieutenant Holloway squinted.

Mr. Niamatullah did not offer to explain.

"But he has no gun, so you cannot detain him."

After several minutes, Lieutenant Holloway gave up.

"Everybody knows something," Lieutenant Holloway said, walking away, "But no one tells us anything."

You tell me how to defeat that eerie glimmer of circa-1965 South Vietnam, as reported by the Times, whether with an additional 20,000 or 30,000 or even 100,000 troops.

We're broke, our military is spent and exhausted, our once-bloated will as world policemen has deflated, we're still mired in Iraq, occupations -- especially of Afghanistan -- are routinely doomed, and above all, global terrorism's soi-disant central front will simply relocate to new territory when hammered militarily in the old. We wind up chasing our tails.

What's the answer? If I knew that I'd be working for the United Nations. All I do know -- or at least all I'd wager on -- is that the habitual methodology of more troops isn't it.

Turns out there is indeed a job more demanding and possibly more impossible than Obama's, and Mr. Holbrooke -- et al? -- has it.