What If We Held a War and Nobody Gave a Shit?

We're going to find out. Soon, there will be over 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan fighting and dying in near total obscurity. You see, there won't be enough dying for us to take notice. There will be no showy battles. The troops will try to limit bombings in the cities while crushing any potential Taliban gatherings. The former is nearly impossible as the troops don't speak the language and don't know the culture. The latter, given we can't tell the difference between a terrorist gathering and a wedding party, really just means a lot of random killing in rural areas.

The bad guys are mostly thuggish warlords and drug dealers; the good guys are mostly thuggish warlords and drug dealers. Success is having our thugs in charge and profiting from selling opium to American addicts. Failure is seeing their thugs in charge and profiting from selling opium to American addicts.

Best Case Scenario: A repeat of Iraq. That means a wholly corrupt government, a tolerable level of terrorism, and a permanent military presence mostly hiding from the locals while bleeding billions from the American treasury in perpetuity. Hardly the stuff of rousing war rallies.