How does that deal with the dismaying tendency of Afghan soldiers to shoot our soldier?
no hope for that hellhole
Right up to the point when one of the sick bastards puts a gun to your head and pulls the trigger.
The vast majority of the Afghan population is rural and uneducated. The US and its western oriented urban Afghan allies can kill 95% of the jihadists there and fundamentally nothing will change. New violent ,barbaric jihadists will emerge from that population as sure as poppy flowers grow in the Afghan spring. Afghan culture after twenty years of warfare is unchanged. It is futile for the US to remain involved. Leave and let the Afghans work out their own consensus.
I seem to recall what worked in 2001-2002 was a balanced approach of a small number of ground based operatives, sometimes on horseback, calling in B-52 strikes. Shock and awe. Then it somehow evolved into the worst of both worlds, large numbers of American regular forces and Obama’s suicidal paddy cake rules of engagement. Just because some people are still in the stone age doesn’t mean you can’t move them even further back into a state of pink antediluvian slime.
One of the things that I have seen in Afghanistan that no one talks about is the fact that they are a land locked country. Their trade is mainly through one area, the Hindu Kush Mountains from Pakistan. There is another trade route that is opening (it may be open now) that will come through Iran.
Historically, the way cultures have grown and flourished is through trade. Through it, you exchange goods, services and more importantly ideas. None of that has happened to a large portion of Afghanistan so they have remained backwards and set in their ways for hundreds of years. They have the same problems in the Pashtun areas that existed when it butted up against Kiplings Indian northwest frontier. Ultimately education in the Pashtun area will be key to reform in Afghanistan.
:: go back to the model that worked, for a couple hundred years in the region, by the East India company, which used professional Western soldiers who were contracted and lived with trained with and when necessary fought with their local counterparts ::
Wasn’t that once known as “The French Foreign-Legion”?
I prefer the leave and blow up approach...
Mr. Prince appears to be angling to become Viceroy. Viceroy Prince; has a nice ironic ring to it.
Radiate and salt the land.
Don’t station troops there.
The best we can hope for is to buy some "friends" and get the hell out and not shed any more blood and treasure. That is cheaper and probably more effective both in the long and short run.
We are not going to "fix" a place run exclusively by the Devil and we are foolish to think we can.
“Cheaper, Lighter”
How about “Victorious”?
Can somebody do that?
Sounds like goddamn McNamara and “The Whiz Kids”.