The Other War - Afghanistan is winnable, but victory can't be taken for granted

The Weekly Standard ^ | June 4, 2007 | Michael Fumento

[gpapa]

Our convoy pulls into Forward Operating Base Lagman at 1200 hours. After three embeds in Iraq, I'm finally visiting "the forgotten war," fought in a truly exotic land rich with history. In fact, I've just seen The Castle, an amazing fortress the locals claim Alexander the Great built. So what am I thinking? My butt hurts. It's been six straight hours in a Humvee along Highway One from Kandahar Airfield and the only exercise I've gotten is shifting in my seat. My escorts are from the Romanian 812th Infantry Battalion. It might have been easy to dislike them because I was exhausted from my flight the previous day and they made me get up at 0300 to grab that oh-so-uncomfortable seat. But of the 37 NATO countries providing 35,000 personnel in Afghanistan, Romania is one of only six (besides the U.S.) that actually allow their men to fight. They deserve gratitude.

[Red Badger]

If the war in Afghanistan looks winnable, the Dhims will pull every string in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen..........They cannot let “Bush” have even one victory before ‘08..............

[2banana]

I remarked to Stofan that I thought they liked me a bit too much because our frequent chai chats were cutting into my work time. He offered that I ought to see them on Thursday nights when they dress up as women and commented on the pervasiveness of homosexuality in the Pashtun culture, a result of severe segregation of the sexes.

Danger Will Robinson - never, ever go to parties in Afghanistan on Thursday nights...

[George W. Bush]

Bump for our Romanian NATO allies. They really get it.

[rogue yam]

Chai, drag, and buggery. Thursday is the new Saturday!

[marron]

at some point we're going to start wondering why we fight so hard to keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan when they've shown they're perfectly capable of running operations out of eastern Pakistan.

They don't actually need Afghanistan anymore, they already have their own country. Its called Waziristan. That is their new headquarters. Works just fine.

If the Taliban were uprooted from Waziristan, it would not only destroy al Qaeda's new headquarters but tremendously shorten the length of the war.

Bingo. That has to be the next phase of the war. Sitting on defense in Kandahar, you risk letting the clock run out, people back home get tired of endless war with little to show. Letting the clock run out tends to favor the baddies.

Of course, for what it costs us to maintain the present pace, we could just write this off as live-fire training and plan to do this forever, but politically it probably will run out of steam at some point. Better to clean out the snake pit, and get it done.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl