Daniel Finkelstein
More British dead in Afghanistan and I suspect we have reached a tipping point.
Because the Afghan war was so much less controversial than the Iraq conflict when it started, deaths there have not made the same impact on the media and public opinion. When someone died in Iraq it was thought to prove someone right and someone else wrong, whereas in Afghanistan the killing just meant they were, you know, dead.
Thankfully this thinking is about to change. We are about, I am sure, to have a big debate about what we do in Afghanistan and, from some, about whether we should be there.
In this debate a central feature will concern President Karzai and his ability to govern.
There are broadly two schools of thought, although it is possible to belong to both of them.
The first is that Hamid Karzai has to go. He is weak and allows too much corruption. He needs to be replaced. A name often mentioned as a successor is that of Zalmay Khalilzad. He has, it is suggested, a real base of support and could get himself elected as President.
One little, little problem. He isn't actually a citizen of Afghanistan.
Khalilzad is the US ambassador to the United Nations. He is, however, an ethnic Pashtun born in Mazari Sharif in northern Afghanistan and he was popular and effective as special envoy and then US ambassador to the country for the four years leading up to the end of 2005.
The theory is that he could renounce his US citizenship, run and win.
The second school of thought says that Karzai himself isn't really the issue. The problem is our failure to create proper state institutions.
Clare Lockhart, in a superb piece in Prospect, argues that we have given all the cash to bureaucratic and disengaged NGOs and starved the government. No chief exective can succeed without an executive to be chief of.
If you haven't heard any of these names or idea, I suggest you get used to them. They are about to become a familiar part of the political landscape.
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