June 26, 2007 (LPAC)--Breaking what seems almost like a monolith of views that prevail among the U.S. House of Representatives and Senators vis-à-vis the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, chairman of the Air and Land Armed Services subcommittee, Rep Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) said in an interview that he wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan immediately, calling operations there futile in trying to effect political change in a country with a tangled history, The Hill reported.

"We are finished there, militarily speaking. There is no useful purpose for our troops there," Abercrombie stated in a recent interview. The military should withdraw now, he said, though he stressed that the U.S. could keep "isolated pockets" of special operators in Afghanistan.

Apparently, Rep. Abercrombie's views have been molded by increasing evidence in recent days that like the Tet offensive of 1968 in Viet Nam, which made clear to the Johnson Administration what the reality was then on the ground, the gathering strength of the Taliban over the last two years, in particular, the rapid "Talibanization" of bordering Pakistan's tribal agencies and the zooming opium production in Afghanistan, indicate that the US and NATO troops have not only failed in their immediate mission, which was to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and capture the al-Qaeda kingpin, Osama bin Laden, but have also failed to make any headway in its long term objective to stabilize Afghanistan. In fact, the occupying forces, not unlike in Iraq, are going backward by further destabilizing not only Afghanistan, but also the region around it.