Obama Approves Small Troop Increase in Afghanistan

[Jackson50]

rocketpig said:

SlorgNet said:
Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Afghanistan is where Empires go to die. The British lost several armies trying to control it, the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 bankrupted the Soviet Union, and now we're following the same suicidal flight-path.

We should get out. Not now, yesterday. We're doing no good there, and much harm.

We have ZERO reason to be there. Al-qaeda is the enemy, and they're on the run. The Afghans are having twenty-nine different internal civil wars of their own, which have nothing to do with us, and all that expensive NATO hardware is just blowing up villagers and pissing off the locals.

One of the Soviet veterans of the Afghan debacle summed it up in an interview: "Those people simply will not be ruled by foreigners."

Yes, because leaving those poor bastards hang out to dry worked so well last time.

Oh, wait... That's why we're in this mess. If Reagan didn't fuck the Afghanis so damned bad the first time around, it would probably be one of the more "acceptable" (by Western standards) nations in the Middle East today.

They have no oil, they have very little going for them. Longterm occupation is the wrong answer but some tenant of stability MUST be found in that country. Before the Soviets, they were a pretty benign people if left to their own devices.

He fails to consider two important factors: 1) the overwhelming majority of Afghans, regardless of ethnicity, still think democracy is the best course of action for their nation; 2) the Afghan Army is the most respected institution in the nation. Now, the one possible problem is that some view Karzai, who is likely to be reelected in a few months, as corrupt. If the US and others can continue to train and bolster the highly respected Army, then Afghanistan could attain a modicum of stability. It is the Afghan Army that will have to achieve security, not the US and other foreign fighters.