Just when you thought the Afghanistan mini-series was winding down, it’s headed for another season – turns out all those goat herders and militants are sitting on one of the world’s largest deposits of valuable minerals. It will be like “The Beverly Hillbillies” with guns and turbans.

Let’s recap the show so far: Nearly 30 years ago the Soviets invaded Afghanistan where they were met by a stubborn resistance movement of religious fanatics – which neighbor Pakistan encouraged and the U.S. secretly supported. The Soviets became bogged down and ultimately quit Afghanistan, tail between their legs.

The Taliban took over and played host to Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization bent on destroying western civilization.

Al Qaeda attacked us on Sept 11, so we attacked Afghanistan.

In quick order we toppled the Taliban and drove the motley remnants of Al Qaeda into Pakistan.

We stuck around to bring democracy to a country where the vast majority of the population was illiterate and essentially living in the 15th century. The democratic government we formed under Karzai turned out to be corrupt and incompetent.

Meanwhile, the Taliban reconstituted itself, and headed back to into the fight, where they made inroads into Afghanistan’s south and east.

America elected Barack Obama, on his claims that Afghanistan was the ‘good war,’ while Iraq was the ‘bad Bush war.’ So Obama redoubled our efforts in Afghanistan; surging more troops and changing our strategy back to nation building, while but promising to withdraw U.S. forces in 2011.

And now, we’re in a fight that isn’t going so well. Americans are war weary, and Obama’s stuck in a conflict experts say it will take another 5 to 10 years to win.

And suddenly the planet’s poorest country is about to have the entire world, no doubt led by China, knocking at its door looking for cheap resources.

This is just about as complicated and confusing and frustrating as the TV series “Lost.”

Guests: Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey
Andrew McCarthy, Senior Fellow, National Review Institute

With the Detroit bomber we now have a clear pattern on how the obama administration deals with terrorists – try them in civilian courts with the full rights of American citizens.

When the young Mr. Abdulmutullab got off the plane in Detroit he had started talking to the FBI. He told them there were more like him – Yemeni trained suicide bombers – coming to America. But once we granted him Miranda rights, he got him lawyered up and clammed up. Does he know who the next terrorist attacker is, where he’ll strike, what weapons he will use? Now we’ll never know. Yet homeland Security Secretary Napolitano claimed the system worked.

The Attorney General has decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks, in public civilian courts – even though the evidence gathered against him might be thrown out of court, his testimony gives Al Qaeda a propaganda platform, and the trial presents a irresistible target for suicide bombers.
The Obama Administration remains committed to closing Gitmo and releasing some of the prisoners to Yemen, though previous Gitmo grads have returned to Al Qaeda, rather than join the Yemen Rotary Club.

And they’re so committed to political correctness that they refuse to use profiling to identify potential terrorists.
Contrast that to the way they’re treating three Navy Seals who captured an Iraqi terrorist. They’ve been court martialed for giving the terrorist a bloody lip.

President Obama believes many of the ills besetting America are the result of the Bush Administration policies and if we reverse course and apologize and are deferential enough, those ills will disappear. So far, it’s not worked. Al Qaeda’s spread to new countries, recruitment is up and they’re sending a new wave of suicide bombers to attack us.

The President is treating terrorists like citizens and citizens like terrorists. It’s not working – it’s not making us safer – and it’s time to stop.