I know the "reasons" given. We have had those same reasons since Bush took us there way back when this started. Karzi is in power, Bush is out of power, Karzi is working with the enemy, Obama's DOD is run by a bunch of egg heads who run the war by polls and fear of CNN.
A new generation, (not to disrespect the thousands dead Americans) has entered still clueless as to why we are there trying to change the minds of people utterly living in the Stone Age.
Read a little history, Alexander the Great ran over the world and his end came in Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union can come down to being out spent military, how much do you think they spent fighting a war without end in Afghanistan?
I have no ill feelings towards FReeper Maria, I wish for her family that her husband was home safe.
If the upper brass of the military refuse to fight this war in a matter to win, than Maria's husband, my friend and the thousands of other of troops are nothing more than easy targets for some nut with a bomb strapped on them! You are dealing with an entirely different method of thinking.
When the US started heading West in the early 1800s, many missionaries followed. Many of those missionaries were scalped and had their bodies chopped up and paraded by various Indian tribes. Some people will not be changed no matter how "nice" you want to be towards them. When they are born and raised on hate and anger, do you really think they are going to drop their guns, leave their goats and sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy"?
Get with reality, I've studied military history since I was a child down to the tactics used by the Romans against Carthage. And I can site wars dating back to the Mongols using bodies of their victims in order to climb over "indefensible walls". History repeats itself. Alexander the Great, the USSR, and now the US, it ain't going to work. You can't will something to happen.
And the truth is everyone right now is dying in vain and I don't blame the troops I believe the idiotic leaders of the ilk of Mike Mullen who simply refuse to use the weapons we have which could utterly obliterate the Taliban in three days.
Marie is the name of the freeper..not Maria..
You replied to my reply which was a reply about someone calling Marie a "kool-aid drinker." I know it wasn't you, but you were responding as if in defense of his comment. Therefore, you face the wrath. Know the posting history before you get involved.
You're demanding we, in the words of Ann Coulter, "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." Nothing would make me happier, but we live in the Real World, where political reality is always at play. I don't play hypothetical games where I demand all known realism to change at the drop of a hat. NO political will to do any such thing exists, nor would it. Therefore, the military does not execute in that manner. It's that simple. Yes, there are PC tools who have stars on their shoulders (GEN Casey being the most recent egregious example), but a General's not going to go against national policy if he wants to have a job for longer than 24 hours.
We do the best we can with what we have. Your notion that a couple of tactical nukes "would have ended this thing" is nonsense. It would've kicked Iraq even further back, but Afghanistan is already in the Stone Age. You can't bomb them any further back. We could do things like concentrate on destroying the poppy fields (that really draws out the Taliban), but consideration must be made for locals and their income. Destroying the Taliban in that case would likely harm the average Afghani. Stupid, but that's how it is over there.
Your friend knew what he was doing when he joined up. He could've gone to college, but he chose to join instead. He wasn't lied to, he wanted to do something, and that's fine. Don't denigrate his actions by claiming he's some kind of patsy for the military-industrial complex.