[oneolcop]

Perhaps I'm traumatized by my experience in Vietnam but I'm concerned that the war is unwinnable. Not because of any lack of courage or dedication by our superb military but because that county is not really a country but an accumulation of tribes and medieval warlords who are, at least for the present, beyond redemption.

We need to get our minds around the fact that there is a strong justification for assigning collective responsibility for any tribe(s) in Afghanistan that supports al Queda.

We can't bomb them into the stone age but we may just have to obliterate whole tribes to wipe out those who support our enemies.

[refermech]

Naw, you’re just a clear thinking individual!

[USNBandit]

The tribal issue is a problem, but the taliban is a single enemy. The biggest problem we face is that the Taliban are freely operating out of a neighboring country that we have to ship supplies through. The intelligence service in Pakistan is totally in bed with the Taliban, as well.

There is a huge downside if we quit in Afghanistan. We will leave the country in the same shape it was before, in a state of civil war. The Taliban will continue to host terrorist training camps. The Pakistani government will continue to allow travel in and out of Afghanistan of terrorists.

We are going to have to fight this war. The question is whether we fight it in Afghanistan or on the streets the Western World.

[naturalized]

We can't bomb them into the stone age but we may just have to obliterate whole tribes to wipe out those who support our enemies.

A tried, true and ancient method: Hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.

[TexasRepublic]

So far, all we have done is stomp an anthill and watch ‘em swarm up our leg. I’d dust the hill, but I’m not holding the insect powder. We can never pacify them, only kill them.

[Little Ray]

We can’t ask our troops to do what is necessary. I wouldn’t let my troops wipe out a village for supporting Al Qaeda - these guys gotta live with themselves and we have to bring them home someday.

Fortunately, there IS another way.

As you pointed out, there is no “Afghanistan.” There are a bunch of tribes whose attitudes toward each other range from distrust to outright hatred and contempt. We should exploit this and keep our troops out of harm’s way.

We need to recruit a “colonial” force from a single, favored tribe to do the things we can’t and shouldn’t ask of our troops - like wiping out entire villages for supporting or sheltering Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Our presence should be limited to providing the air support and other support (mostly technological) functions the various tribes are incapable of providing themselves. With a little luck, we don’t sustain any casualties that we actually care about.

Hopefully, “our” tribe will eventually become supreme. Then there might be some hope of a “nation” of Afghanistan.