[Little Ray]

Sometimes you have to admit there are no good guys and pick your “b@st@rd.”

We need to stop trying to “unify” them. Instead, pick a tribe, preferably a fairly strong one. Raise a military force from it. Give it leave to rape, pillage and murder their neighbors with a special emphasis on anyone or any village or any town that provides support or sanctuary to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Provide weapons, training, technical and artillery / air support. Then let ‘em run wild.

With a little luck and planning, we won't suffer any casualties we care about, but the supporters for the Taliban and Al Qaeda will be annihilated.

And, maybe we'll end up with a “unified” Afghanistan, too. After all, if there is only one tribe it will probably be unified...

This should be combined with a war on Taliban and Al Qaeda money. We should hunt down any one who donates money to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, or to a "charity" that supports them, or runs such a charity, or otherwise handles money for them. No arrests, no trials, just a midnight visit from some very nasty people, a bomb in their car, or a PGM through their bedroom window at 3 AM.

[dirtboy]

There is a saying that the generals fight the last war. IMO a surge in Afghanistan will not work the way the surge worked in Iraq, because the two are very, very different entities. I think your bastard approach has a better chance of working - plus, it still gives the US and Coalition forces a footprint from which to maintain drone attacks against high-value targets. But I doubt the wimps in the White House have the guts to take such a hard-nosed approach. And their desire to move to drone combat in lieu of other approachs ignores the fact that, in a landlocked country such as Afghanistan, you need a secure base of operations from which to launch such attacks.

However, I think we can both agree that Obama is not giving the generals what they want for the wrong reasons.