Even as the Obama administration has reiterated a pledge to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July of 2011...

... and at a time in which more than half of all Americans say the war we began in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks is "not worth fighting"...

... two new reports - one from the United States, the other from the United Nations - should give pause to anyone who believes that American troops will leave Afghanistan better than they found it.

On Monday, the U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs issued a report with the catchy title "Warlord Inc.," which warned that the American military's strategy of paying local Afghans to escort NATO convoys safely across the wartorn countryside may have inadvertently created a network of warlords.

Billions in American payments have created new power centers in Afghanistan's most lawless territories, the report's authors said, and that will undoubtedly undermine and even threaten the Afghan government after NATO leaves.

Meanwhile, according to the U.N., more than 800,000 Afghans are addicted to opium, heroin and other drugs, an increase over five years ago that makes Afghanistan one of the top five countries with the highest percentage of drug users.

To be certain, Afghanistan has long contended for the title of "Opiate Center of the Universe, owing to the seemingly endless poppy farms that have historically helped fund the Taliban and now help put food on the table for thousands of Afghans. Not surprisingly, some of those along the supply chain have found it easy and cheap to get high.

But the fact that addiction appears to be on the rise may be as good a metric, as any, that things have not gotten any easier for ordinary Afghans since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001.

"Many Afghans seem to be taking drugs as a kind of self-medication against the hardships of life," said Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime, told The New York Times.

Warlords and addicts. Is that the legacy that the U.S. will leave when it withdraws from Afghanistan? Perhaps.

But is there a better option? Perhaps not.

And that's what you call a quagmire.