"Let's prop-up a corrupt, crumbling government that is rapidly losing its territory to

France has recently committed a good deal of air power and some 2,500 troops to pushing back the hard-line Islamist rebels in the north of Mali.  

It's like what we should have done in Afghanistan!  Wait, forget I said anything, and I definitely didn't bring up Afghanistan.      

Tell us the story, Time.

"On Tuesday, President Francois Hollande, said the goal of the operation was 'To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory.'"

In other News, French President Francois Hollande has admitted dismay over the lack of laughter during his recent stand-up comedy act.

"That’s an ambitious agenda given the conditions that prevail in Mali and its neighborhood..."

Well, you know what they say, shoot for a stable, pro-Western Democracy and if you miss, you'll land among the rest of the failed, unstable and corrupt narco-states.
I mean, I get why the Malian government isn't unhappy about having a superpower-light bomb the hell out of its enemies, but what I don't understand is why France is so eager to commit troops to what looks oh-so-similar to the war in Afghanistan that France only just left.  

Short-sighted doesn't begin to describe the problems with this situation...  I linked earlier to this article explaining why the US isn't involved; mainly because one of the Malian officers we trained launched a coup and overthrew the Civilian government.  Now maybe Mali is one of those really backwater countries where coups happen all the time, heck, this may have even been an improvement, but this doesn't argue for the stability of the current government.

I'll come back to this, but I'd like to pose the question; viewing the French action in the same light as the Afghanistan invasion in 2001-2002, do governments knowingly make military commitments of which they cannot guarantee any reasonable expectation of achieving?  Is this a problem with the Democratic impetus for short-term planning?