Explosions Near the US Embassy In Kabul Are Not a Sign of Progress

Just after 8 a.m. on Wednesday local time, an explosion in the diplomatic neighborhood of Kabul put U.S. Embassy workers on high alert. "An alarm started going off at the U.S. Embassy, warning staff to take cover," the Associated Press reported just before midnight in the States. "Kabul police chief spokesman Hashmatullah Stanikzai says that there was some sort of attack in Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood and he expected that there were casualties but he had no further details." NATO and local police had no idea what was going on either, but CBS News's sources say that two died after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive near the home of Afghanistan's chief Justice.

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No matter which way you cut it, explosions near U.S. Embassies in that part of the world is the last thing that Obama and company need right now. As American troops struggle to get a handle on the ever escalating attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. soldiers and international forces, attacks are on the rise across the country. A couple of weeks ago, several explosions across southern Afghanistan killed 20 people, and U.S. allies are already getting spooked about the prospect of pulling out in 2014. A day before the explosion near the U.S. Embassy, a British Foreign Office official told Parliament that leaving the country so soon would risk pushing the country into civil war. ''If we raced for the exit then all of the fears that we have about Afghanistan's future would become that much likelier," he said.

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Things have been unravelling in Afghanistan for weeks now. Based on what we know about this latest bombing, there's no reason to believe that we're on the cusp of an escalation of violence or urban warfare in Kabul or anything like that. It's just more bad news for a country that's seems to be built out of bad news lately.