Two days after unveiling his new plans for Afghanistan at West Point, positive reactions to President Obama's speech are hard to find -- even among some of his most reliable supporters. Even our own Joan Walsh, over at Big Salon, was seriously unenthused.

One thing she wrote, though, really caught my eye.

"Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't stress, once again, that the president faced only bad choices in making this decision, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration."

I don't make it a habit to disagree with Joan, and I sure as hell don't make it a habit to defend that execrable administration, but I have to say: I don't think it's that simple. Even if Bush-Cheney and their commanders had competently executed the war, even if we had never fought in Iraq, Barack Obama would be facing pretty much the same situation in Afghanistan today.

That is the problem with Afghanistan -- it never presents good choices.

If you accepts at your starting point, as President Obama and his predecessor do, that it was right and proper for us to target both al Qaeda the Taliban and in the fall of 2001, then we were screwed from the start.

This is not to say that the Taliban were misunderstood poet-warriors who deserved only to live in peace. Obama alliteration of "a ruthless, repressive and radical movement" was right on the money.

But, as we saw with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, removing a repressive ruling power does not mean an entire country is suddenly going to start rowing the ship of state in the same direction. That is especially true in Afghanistan, where there is no widespread sense of nationalism to act as a catalyst for the development of democracy. For Afghans, primary affiliations are tribal and ethnic.

Broadly speaking, there are at least four different types wars going on in the country right now: war between international security forces and insurgents, civil war between various factions and and the central government, small-scale tribal wars in the more remote regions, and narco-wars between drug traffickers for control of lucrative poppy fields. Depending on who you believe, we might also add proxy war, with rumors of India providing funds to the Taliban to destabilize Pakistan.

In short: it is a swirl of agendas and ideologies, awash in dirty money and dirty weapons, and riddled with corruption.  It is a failed state.

President Obama's argument is that, had we not gone into Iraq, we would have put more into Afganistan, and the situation would now be dramatic better. It's entirely likely that I missed it, but I've never heard him explain how he has come to that conclusion.

Even in 2001-2002, even before Iraq, there was never the public or political or miltary will, in the US or in Nato, to send a huge force into the region, or to keep them there for years.

Our initial foray was based primarily on the need to lash out at the enemy and, in this case, its patrons, in the aftermath of a frightening assault. But once we regained our senses, we were left with some serious problems.

Controlling Afghanistan gives the West no great strategic advantage in return for that huge investment of men and materiel. Unless you count heroin, it has no natural resources. While many of us are moved by the plight of Afghans, especially its women, it's hard to instill lasting social or political change at the point of a gun.   

The counter-insurgency theory favored by the U.S. military these days, known as COIN, says and ideal ratio of troops to inhabitants is 50:1. That would mean a "troop density" for Afghanistan of 560,000. The number most military and diplomatic types come up with is 400,000. About 400,000 well-armed troops would be able to hold the country.

Not pacify it. Not make it dramatically better. Just hold it, maybe long enough to win a few more hearts and minds, maybe funnel a little more aid into the places that need it.

(Its the same number of troop that the Soviets believed they would have needed to hold the country in the 1980s. Their force never exceeded 120,000 at any one time, fighting against 140,000 Mujahideen, and after a decade they withdrew in defeat -- after sustaining 48,700 casualties, including 13,300 dead and leaving 10,700 permanently disabled. Estimates of Afghan deaths range from 700,000 to 2 million.)    

Howard Hart was CIA station chief in Pakistan during much of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. In a recent talk at the University of Virginia, he estimated that this force of 400,000 plus an aid package "of monsterous size" might, over the course of a decade, result in a "small democratic country kind of making its way into the 13th Century."

If we stay, he says, we have to understand that "they will never stop fighting us. They never stopped fighing the Soviets. They never stop fighting each other."

A question I wish the President had considered more fully, or at least publicly, before announcing his new war strategy is: can we sleep at night without a free and democratic Afghanistan? If we left today, are the consequences really all that serious? Al Qaeda has moved on. There is a line of thought that says allowing the Taliban back into Afghanistan would stabilize Pakistan. Fewer coalition forces would mean fewer military and civilian casualties.

I tend to believe the answer is yes, we could sleep safe and sound. Leaving right now would be the best bad choice we could make.