TheRealMafoo said:
famousringo said:
For the past 8 years, the moral authority of the mission has been eroded by mounting civilian casualties and the gradual deterioration of what little social order Afghanistan had. Eight years of failing to progress has lead to the idea that occupation forces either aren't capable of bringing order, or aren't interested in it.
External to Afghanistan, the moral authority of the USA has been eroded by an aggressive war launched with an excuse that most of the world regarded as flimsy at best and deceitful at worst. Further damage has been dealt by human rights violations in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and rendition programs to secret prisons around the world. This horrible PR didn't just undermine efforts to win over innocent civilians throughout the region, it provided groups like the Taliban with an ample supply of angry young men eager to overthrow Western oppression.
Life under the Taliban sucked, but it was stable. The people of Afghanistan and the world community were willing to give us a chance when we kicked the Taliban out, but we failed to even maintain order as well as the Taliban had, let alone improve the prosperity of the average Afghan. The chance is gone. Iraq, torture programs, and incompetent governance have burned up whatever trust these people could ever give us.
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This is the answer I expected. 100% political, and 0% tactical.
Everything you stated, has nothing to do with if we can win or not. We could not win then, and we can not win now.
If there ever was a path to victory, it's still there. We are the same military, they are the same Taliban, and that part of the world has the same outlook they always had.
Oh, and polls in that part of the country is almost worthless. They are collections of independent tribes. What one group of people think has nothing to do with what people 50 miles away think.
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That's because assymetric wars are 100% political. Our tactical superiority is not in dispute, but a tactical victory over ideas like this would require a level of brutality and violence that no modern democracy could stomach. The only way to win is to persuade your enemy that fighting is no longer in his best interest.
We can't kill all their people, so we have to kill their ideas.
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