In the grips of crises abroad and at home.

• Author: Farrell, Lawrence P., Jr.
• Position: President's Perspective

* As Defense Secretary Chuck Nagel arrived in Afghanistan to meet with U.S. troops and to assess the state and the pace of the war there, our putative ally, President Hamid Karzai, asserted the most unbelievable charge against the United States. He said that "Americans and the Taliban had a common goal in destabilizing his country," according to news reports.

Considering that the Taliban harbored the man and the movement that planned the 9/11 attacks, the charge is beyond any reasonable understanding. To be fair, the United States has indicated that a final settlement there might have a place for the Taliban under certain conditions, but insofar as anyone knows, no agreement has been reached.

The points of friction are many. There are disagreements over the control of prisons, the conduct of operations by U.S. special operations forces, the handling of battlefield detainees and other unresolved issues. Beyond 2014, Karzai will have to deal with the Taliban essentially on his own, so one suspects that he is lining up the political support to survive once the United States departs.

The unbelievable part of all this is the tact that the Taliban and al-Qaida still survive after 12 years of war and expenditure of much treasure, and that we are negotiating our departure with our nominal ally and our declared enemy.

In Iraq, the Shiite-led government is firmly in charge and cozying up to Iran, while the Muslim Brotherhood is, at least for now, running Egypt. And in Libya, no one appears to be in the control. All this turmoil is running hard, just as the United States begins to unwind its engagement in that part of the world.

On top of all this is the crisis at home. The United States unfortunately finds itself unable to govern its affairs effectively. Washington cannot control its finances and balance its budget. Both sides have been unable to accomplish much, and continue to bicker over whether the nation has a spending problem or a revenue problem.

Some things seem certain, though. One is that trillion-dollar deficits can't continue indefinitely. It is also a fact that the nation has spent too much, promised too much and borrowed too much.

This leaves the country at a point where more borrowing is unlikely to dig us out of the hole we are in, and that the actions by the Federal Reserve to move markets along and keep interest rates at almost zero cannot keep up for much longer.

When considering the nation's budget problems at home--how do we fund...