Finally, an Honest Assessment of Afghanistan

The ''accidental'' burning of Islamic religious material last week by U.S. service members in Afghanistan created the first honest look at our policy there since the war started.

Free from a general's optimistic bravado or State Department spin, this incident draws a sharp contrast between reality and the rhetoric of success informed by American entitlement and exceptionalism that dominates political thought and policy practice.

The incident shows that after 10 years of deep involvement in the Middle East we still don't trust or understand its people, politics, or religion; a trust and understanding critical to winning any insurgency.

Religious mistrust and fear permeates our domestic policy as well. The New York Times recently outed the city's police and the CIA for regularly spying on Islamic centers and youth camps in this country.

Our lack of understanding of Afghan religous practice points to a wider lack of basic human respect that we extend to our partners and enemies alike. (Remember U.S. Marines peeing on Taliban dead) A recent survey found the U.S. military and State Department are seen as arrogant disrespectful occupiers by their Afghan counterparts. One senior Afghan military officer told the BBC that the men who burned the religious items should be publicly hung.

The divide is deeper than this latest incident. Earlier this month Afghan officials demanded the U.S. turn over control of a Bagman prison after independent investigators found the U.S. guilty of regularly subjecting nearly 3,000 prisoners to torture, sexual humiliation, and indefinite incarceration without proof of wrongdoing.

Sayed Noorullah, one of the investigators, told The Associated Press, "If there is no evidence...they have the right to be free."

America has lost the war of occupation in Afghanistan; it was never ours to win in the first place. The first rule of counter-insurgency is that only the home team, the Afghan people, can decide who wins. This is the uncomfortable truth generals don't tell policy makers, and politicians don't admit to an indifferent populace. Every U.S. soldier and innocent civilian who dies now tragically is dying for election year political expediency, not for any hope of success or peace for the Afghan people.

The burning of religious material last week gives us a valuable assessment of how far we haven't come in 10 years of killing and will only serve to further the divide and fill more body bags with soldiers that could careless about out Afghanistan.

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As war drags on, sex offense is on the rise for combat vets

Ten years of constant war has affected the less than 1 percent of U.S. citizens who are forced to carry the combat load for the rest of us - and the stress is coming out in unanticipated ways.

According to a recent Pentagon study, sex crimes are up 30 percent in the armed forces since 2006 while child abuse increased by 43 percent.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said, "After ten years of war with an all-volunteer force, you're going to have problems that no one could have forecasted.''

With harsh sentencing and a prison mentality that has made the U.S. the world leader in incarceration it is likely that a population that has spent a decade at war will now spend a decade or more behind bars.