By Jim Sleeper – June 13, 2010, 5:27AM

No institution or movement is so wise and effective that it doesn’t need scrutiny and self-criticism, and, returning from a month in Tel Aviv, I feel an irrepressible need to offer TPMCafe a bit of both. Of the last 200 posts here, which take us back to early April, 43 are about Israel. (Three of them are mine.) But just one, by Jon Taplin on June 7, is about a little war in Afghanistan that’s draining our country’s strength and morale at least as much as AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu are endangering it.

My own last post on Afghanistan was in November and was basically just a link to a prescient Dissent magazine piece about neo-cons’ doe-eyed raptures over Washington’s promises to do more for civil society in Kandahar and Kabul than it has ever done in New Orleans or Detroit. The American venture in Afghanistan has become a blood-sucking folly that’s running deeper than even the hypocrisy of Max Boot and David Brooks, who’ve discovered noble success in our nation-building strategies there that they’ve never found in any such strategies here.

To its great credit, TPMCafe’s contributors on the domestic front have overwhelmed the neo-cons’ ignorance and dishonesty about America’s economic and social crises. Just scroll down and look. But notice also that, in foreign policy, it’s almost all Israel, all the time. I don’t say that our 43 posts on Israel shouldn’t have been written. I simply ask why there haven’t been 43 on Afghanistan, too. The situation in Israel is dangerous, indeed, fateful, for the United States and much of the world. But there are other, equal dangers, not least in the Muslim world, where a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem would actually solve far, far less than we tend to think.

Let the self-correction begin with the following words by Bob Herbert from yesterday’s New York Times. I don’t agree with him that we should just leave Afghanistan, but I do share his anger at our neglect of what this war has been doing to our fellow citizens and our civil society, not to mention to our foreign-policy options in the Middle East. Why isn’t all this pulling more of us at TPM into debate about the war in Afghanistan as powerfully as something else is conscripting some of us into Israel’s conflict with Palestine and America’s with Israel?

The heart has its reasons, and some of them are deeply compelling, even urgent ones that I certainly don’t need to reprise here. Moreover, everyone is entitled to his or her own interests and areas of expertise. Many contributors have earned it, the hard way, and they have valuable insights to share. Still, the stark disparity here at TPMCafe may be worth noting and its consequences worth weighing. Here is Herbert:

“There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.

“The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

“Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.’s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.

“Early this year, we were told that at long last the tide had turned in Afghanistan, that the biggest offensive of the war by American, British and Afghan troops was under way in Marja, a town in Helmand Province in the southern part of the country. The goal, as outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our senior military commander in Afghanistan, was to rout the Taliban and install a splendid new government that would be responsive to the people and beloved by them.

“That triumph would soon be followed by another military initiative in the much larger expanse of neighboring Kandahar Province. The Times’s Rod Nordland explained what was supposed to happen in a front-page article this week:

“’The goal that American planners originally outlined — often in briefings in which reporters agreed not to quote officials by name — emphasized the importance of a military offensive devised to bring all of the populous and Taliban-dominated south under effective control by the end of this summer. That would leave another year to consolidate gains before President Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops.’

“Forget about it. Commanders can’t even point to a clear-cut success in Marja. As for Kandahar, no one will even use the word “offensive” to describe the military operations there. The talk now is of moving ahead with civilian reconstruction projects, a “civilian surge,” as Mr. Nordland noted.

“What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent — and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times’s Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.

“There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.

“Americans have zoned out on this war. They don’t even want to think about it. They don’t want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.

“Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.

“Our government leaders keep mouthing platitudes about objectives that are not achievable, which is a form of deception that should be unacceptable in a free society.

“In announcing, during a speech at West Point in December, that 30,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan, President Obama said: ‘As your commander in chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service.’

“That clearly defined mission never materialized.

“Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

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