Not many of us have an opportunity to read the Afghan Daily, but their October 6 story on the war in Afghanistan bears repeating: "The current military situation on the ground is a highly unsatisfactory stalemate, and the allied forces are actually losing."

The article continues by noting that since 9/11, Washington and London have tried to "Westernize" what is still a largely medieval society and to install a democratically elected government in Kabul and defeat the Taliban on the ground. "This policy never stood a serious chance of success," the story stated.

That point was underlined on Saturday, October 3, one of the bloodiest single days in Afghanistan for the U.S.-led coalition troops since July 13, 2008, according to news agencies such as CNN. Four coffins carrying some of the Americans killed during Saturday's firefight were scheduled to return to Dover Air Force Base on October 6.

At the time that the flag-draped coffins would be ceremoniously removed from a military plane, Pres. Barack Obama and senior advisors were scheduled to begin this week's debate on whether or not to send more troops to join the 21,000 the 44th president recently committed to Afghanistan. He met with 30 members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.

A website, Nationalpriorities.org, publishes what the war is costing the American taxpayer on an annual basis – U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan cost in 2009, $60.2 billion; the total since 2001, $228.2 billion. The group said that problems in Afghanistan are economic, social and political in nature; and require economic, social and political solutions. However, 90 percent of U.S. funding is for military purposes.

In the meantime, the Manhattan-based conservative think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is advising Obama that as he meets with advisors on how to properly resource the Afghan war effort "attention must be paid to rebuilding the nation's civilian institutions."

A senior CFR analyst writes that "improving" Afghanistan's governance capabilities will have a greater long-term impact and would enable a U.S.-led counter insurgency strategy to succeed in Afghanistan.

On September 28, the president of CFR, Richard Haass, was interviewed and that interview was posted on the group's website. Haass said that the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal's memo to Obama should have not been leaked to the press and McCrystal's prodding on sending more troops "was not appropriate."

When asked by the interviewer if Obama should follow the general's advice, Haass answered, "It would be premature to follow it at the moment."

He said, first there is a need to assess if doing more militarily would produce better results. "We are not convinced that would be the case," Haass added.

The CFR president also said that there is a need to "challenge" the assumption that what happens in Afghanistan is "critical" for the global effort against terrorism.

At the United Nations, another lawyer was added to the Afghanistan debate on October 5 during the daily press briefing by Michelle Montas, spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. But, first a bit of background.

The U.N. is running the show on the ground in Afghanistan in terms of building a governance structure through its mission known as UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), and part of that is running the elections. Well, recently a deputy special representative of Ban's in Afghanistan accused the U.N. of complicity in the fraudulent August 20 presidential election in Afghanistan.

Some people are asking, "Should we say former," because Ban recalled the guy last week, and the spokeswoman denied any such allegations. Montas said the UN is working closely with the Electoral Complaints Commission, the body mandated to investigate voter fraud claims; of which there are over 2,584 such allegations.

And Montas took pains to tell reporters, that the U.N. appointed three of the five members of the complaint board.

All of this is causing many observers to ask what happens if the Afghan people end up seeing their government as not being legitimate. And if our young people are there fighting for the Afghans' right to have a democratically elected government and it turns out just the opposite, then why are our young people dying in Afghanistan?

"Put that question at the top of the list," stated Sara Flounders, co-founder of the International Action Center. "Yes, why are our soldiers dying in Afghanistan?" she asked.

She said the U.N. "manufactured" an election; and no one is willing to put the stamp of approval on it, because now the whole world is watching. "The world sees the present government as being completely corrupt," Flounders stressed.

"People must also understand that there is a stampede to get President Obama to send in more troops. However, you rarely see on the news that there are also 100,000 contract mercenaries in Afghanistan, along with another 100,000 troops from coalition countries," Flounders told the AmNews. These are huge amounts of troops, and there is no [military] solution insight, she said.

Turning to what the anti-war movement needs to do, she said that there needs to be a connection made to the billions spent on the war and the problems Americans have getting health care and jobs. "We must challenge Obama to see that ending the war is the only solution," Flounders said.