Someday soon, war will be history. Scripture promises it. Swords will be beaten into plowshares; nuclear bombs will be melted into playground equipment. God speed that day.

But guess what. That time of peace won’t be brought about through negotiations and treaties. It will come only after the King of kings returns, “and in righteousness he doth judge and make war” (Revelation 19:11). He will fight with a sharp sword and rule with a rod of iron (verse 15).

Any proposal that promises peace short of that solution is a sham. All of human history proves it. Afghanistan does so eloquently.

Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan were America’s first targets after 9/11. Before 2001 was out, so was the Taliban. Hopes of building a solidly democratic, Western-friendly nation were high as Hamid Karzai was made interim leader.

Eight years on, those hopes are gone. Afghanistan has proven impossible to bring to heel.

In the last three years in particular, control has increasingly slipped back to these radical Muslim groups. The last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency saw 272 American casualties there (compared to 197 the two years before, and 161 the four years before that). When President Bush left office, the International Council on Security and Development (icos) think tank showed that the Taliban had reestablished a “heavy” presence over 72 percent of the country and “significant” presence (defined as one or more insurgent attacks per month) in 93 percent. On UN security maps, over half the country was considered “uncontrolled hostile environment”—which, only a few years prior, none of the country had been.

Not a good showing after seven years of war.

When Barack Obama campaigned for president, he talked tough on Afghanistan. Iraq was a distraction, he said. Solution: Redirect operations there to the real theater of war. “[I]n 16 months we should be able to … bolster our efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda,” Mr. Obama said in the first presidential debate last September.

So—the first half of that 16 months has passed. Where are we? Despite the Defense Department committing an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan last spring, new icos data shows that the Taliban’s presence has grown: It is now “heavy” in 80 percent of the country, “substantial” in at least 97 percent. The U.S. has suffered by far the most casualties of any year since the war began—200 soldiers out of over 340 total coalition deaths this year. And it’s only September.

Don’t expect things to improve anytime soon—thanks to last month’s botched election. Operations against the jihadists will have to take somewhat of a backseat to efforts at patching up the wounded government.

President Obama called the election “an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future, even as violent extremists are trying to stand in their way. … I believe that the future belongs to those who want to build—not those who want to destroy. And that is the future that was sought by the Afghans who went to the polls, and the Afghan national security forces who protected them.”

It’s a nice thought. But anyone who still thinks democracy is the solution for Afghanistan should look closer. In the first full election in the nation’s history—full in the sense that there were multiple candidates—the obstacles and problems were too abundant to count.

Before the election, the Taliban threatened violence against voters; they launched rocket attacks and a suicide bombing that killed seven; they pulled one candidate from his car and shot him—the latest of 13 confirmed political killings since last spring. The intimidation worked: Voter turnout was estimated at 20 to 30 percent, and was especially poor in rural areas, which make up four fifths of the country. On election day, 73 more attacks were carried out, killing 20 to 30 people. Several voters had their inked fingers chopped off.

Right now the Afghan Elections Complaints Commission (ecc) is sorting through more than 2,600 allegations of fraud, including ballot box stuffing, bullying of voters and lack of access to polls, particularly for women. “Fictitious polling booths were set up,” reported Tim McGirk from Kabul, “and in some places, vote riggers were so brazen they did not even bother to remove the individual ballots from the booklets in which they were printed before marking them.” The ecc said last week it would throw out ballots from 83 polling stations.

Another body observing the election, the Independent Election Commission, is chaired by a man appointed by President Karzai. This commission was implicated in a voter registration fraud on a scale of millions of voters. And Karzai’s chief opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, released a video that he claimed showed an iec official stuffing boxes with votes for Karzai. “The problem is a basic lack of rule of law,” the co-director of the Afghan Analysts Network told Times Online. “In eight years we haven’t established a culture where you follow rules.”

Additional complications arose from the fact that most of the country is tribal, with local elders who have immense power over the people they are responsible for. “We have tribal agreement,” a laborer in an east Afghani village explained. “When tribal elders request anything we cannot avoid it.” Another individual said that the elders had simply voted for the people. “They helped us and spared all the women the trouble of going and voting,” he said. At many polling stations, 95 percent of the votes went for one candidate.

Two thirds of the population—including 85 percent of the women—are too illiterate to even read the names on the ballot.

At present, Karzai has enough of a lead to avoid a runoff against Abdullah. But UN officials say they believe if the fraudulent votes are pitched, that wouldn’t be the case. So, what to do? Another vote would take months to stage—months of instability that would open the door for even greater political turbulence.

And at the end of the process, the president will either be Karzai or Abdullah. Each man would have to reward the supportive regional warlord strongmen—some of which are Talibani—with whom they wheeled and dealed. That means giving them positions in the government or otherwise legitimizing their rule over regions of the country.

The bottom line is, democracy is an impossible fit in this country. The nation’s history of ethno-regional warlordism is simply too strong.

“Ironically,” wrote Stratfor on August 21, “attempts to impose a democratic political system in Afghanistan appear to be undermining the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy.”

Last Friday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said it was “premature to make judgments” on whether President Obama’s efforts there are successful, “because we’re only at the initial stages of that policy.”

You’re welcome to keep waiting to make judgments. We’ll stick with what we’ve said from the beginning. America is under a curse. The pride in its power is broken. That is why, as Gerald Flurry wrote, “we cannot win the war against terrorism.” As the Bible prophesied and Herbert Armstrong said as far back as 1961, America has already won its last war.

But thankfully, once Christ returns, neither America nor Afghanistan nor any other nation will have to wage another one.