Last week I met an official who had arrived recently at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, but who was adamant -- almost vehement -- about America's prospects for success in Afghanistan. Sixty-five percent -- or some very high percentage -- of Afghans were under 25, and they were focused on their future, not on the terrible violence of previous decades. They looked for inspiration to the West, he told me, not the Taliban. And whatever the obstacles, it was a war we had to fight and win, because if we allowed a rump Taliban state to develop in the south and east, we would pay the price with suicide attacks in New York and London.

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So must the sturdy patriots of Saigon have sounded in 1968. We would win, and we could not afford to lose. But Afghanistan is not Vietnam 1968, or Iraq 2006, where any intellectually honest person had to recognize the fiasco in progress. It's true that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's jeremiads against the NATO coalition, the United States, the New York Times, and so on have reduced even the most optimistic officials to a tight-lipped "no comment," but do Karzai's obvious failings doom the whole enterprise? As 30,000 additional U.S. troops increase the pressure on the Taliban, and as the Afghan National Army continues, if haltingly, to mature, the yet slower process of standing up local governance might begin to take hold in secured districts and provinces. With a shift in momentum, even a thoroughly compromised President Karzai might find some Taliban leaders susceptible to reconciliation.

Well, maybe.

Evidence exists to sustain almost all views of the war in Afghanistan, and the first-time visitor --i.e., me -- finds himself gazing at a kaleidoscope of belief and disbelief. What beliefs should one credit? I constantly found myself wondering why the believers believed and the skeptics disbelieved. Is optimism a priori or ideological, but pessimism grounded in reality -- as any good pessimist would tell you? Does where you stand depend on where you sit -- close to the action or far, in a position of responsibility or not, on the military or the civilian side?

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