1- What exactly constitutes "winning" in Afghanistan?
2- It is a country run by tribal opium growers who are living in the seventh century. Can we really change it?
3- If we can change it, will they still put women into hefty bags and play polo with goats' heads?
I am 100% hawk and want to win the war against the muz, but these questions need to be answered. The Bear found out that they could not change Afghanistan.
Don't know about the nation building thing, they've never had a nation really and as long as they adhere to a death cult that gets off on human sacrifice, well...
They have to be made "not a threat".
Anyone with a minimal understanding of the Pakhtuns, the core of the Taliban, knows that is not possible.
They have fought each other for practice, when no foreign enemy can be found.
Nation building? There are no railroad tracks in the entire country, 10% of the population has some form of hepatitis, fewer than that can read.
Stopping the drug trade? After 8 years of military domination, they still grow, transport and sell 92% of the world's heroin, which sells for $3/gram in Kabul.
Their two largest cities never had a connecting road until we built one five years ago and it is a death trap.
1 - Defeat of Al Qaeda to where they do not have safe haven there.
2 - yes. If you are asking can we bring them out of the 7th century the answer is no. There are a billion people or more living in the 7th century but they all are not running planes into our buildings. So yes, it is possible for us to change them to the extent that they are not a threat to us.
3 - Yes (see #2)
As did the British.
It may be difficult to define "winning" if Afghanistan but I believe that the ramifications of not "winning" will become painfully obvious very quickly.
I’m with you on this. What do we win if we “win?” And HOW can we win with the new rules of engagement.
I’m also a hawk. But I question why we haven’t shut down the poppy trade—which funds and arms the Taliban.
I do believe these are fully legitimate questions worthy of discussion. This is true no matter who our President is when we go to war.
What has unfortunately happened is the politicization of the war. Bam (and for a long time the Demos) ran against Bush, against his decision to go to Iraq, often saying that we were fighting the wrong war. The message was that Osammy was in Afghanistan, why are we in Iraq.
Bam has followed up with that theme as a matter of policy and publicly. However, Presidents are allowed to change their mind, new info becomes available, new realities, etc. Not sure this is what has transpired here.
The problem is that the Demos have politicized the war, much like they have done since the 1960s. This has served them well politically as Americans do not like war, especially wars that take a long time to resolve. The Repubs have responded with their own politicization of the war, but usually not at the risk of the nation's security and far less vocally.
So Bam is seriously considering continuing down this path: make an expedient, short term decision based upon the polls. His base is not happy with him and Indies are very skeptical. So he will pander to his base, the anti-war, far left and we will pull out. A disaster will ensue of course, but the media will conveniently forget to mention Bam’s name when this occurs.
schu