Winning in Afghanistan

If the war lasts many years then it will be lost.
Why ???
Because it will produce thousands upon thousands of deaths. And they will be mainly Afghan deaths.
Nobody is going to love and thank the invader nations for having killed the uncle, the brother, the son, etc ... of your own family.
There are also many thousands of children, women and old folk that die.
The longer the war, the worse for the invader or occupant.

Nobody thanks for three million Vietnamese dead.

Modern Wars are won or lost in the memory neurons of peoples and nations. These are not Massive Bombardments of the Second World War or Massive Tank Attacks like Stalingrad or El Alemein.

Vicente Duque

Lets ask the Russians how to stablize a mobil country, mobil tribes rule the desert, oh ya with OUR help with MONEY,WEAPONS,and TRAINING how to use STINGERS, Russia went bankrupt, like we are today but due to Iraq!! Not who we realy went in to find! Can't be done, with our deficit as it id today.. OBL lives, cause Bush don't listen,plain and simple.. McCain will not either, he is set in ways, which is "stay the course" "to profit and retirment"! Yippi ki ia mf, six shooters a blazzen, 2 countries over,, from the right spot???

For just anothervet, did the author reveal his political leaninigs? You sound very upset. I'm a democrat and a field grade officer in the Army. I disagree with many of the points made by the author. I will only address his assertion that a troop surge isn't required in Afganistan. On this point, the author is dead wrong. We have roughly 30-32k US troops in country. The vast majority of these trrops are support troops with a much smaller number of combat troops. The U.S. must deploy additional combat troops in order to increase our ability to conduct combat operations. And yes, if you deploy several Brigade Combat Teams, they must bring the much greater number of trrops which support them. Additioanally, the increase troop presence will increase our chances of capturing or killing UBL. As far as the Taliban claim that they will fight for 50-100 years, let them. Our job is to win the hearts and minds of the children who will one day become adults. When this pool of potential recruits dry up which may take a generation or two to accomplish, the insurgency in Afganistan will die. It is obvious the author has spent very little time if any in the military. This goes for republicans and democrats alike, if you haven't served in combat or in the military for more that a few years, you are not an expert and shouldn''t be allowed to provide analysis to policy makers.

We are fighting a war like the British against the Blue coats, and the United States are the British and Taliban are the militia, we need to start acting like militia, hit and leave. This will cause the Taliban to start moving around.

This type of approach Johnson is advocating has been offered before. It amazes me that any version of these approaches still have not been adopted. Aid agencies make the same mistake. Focus on the urban and largely ignore the rural---in a rural country.

Along with Johnson's recommendations, I believe the Oil Spot Theory should be applied. Pick a group of rural villages, secure them, develop them (water, power, medical facilities, schools) mindful and respective of local customs and culture and then expand out to other neighboring rural villages. Certainly, the military fortress "islands" are not the answer to pacifying this country. Forget the Soviets. This is looking a lot like Vietnam.

Military analysts are just Children in a real live terrorist world trying to do their commando analysis tricks off their computer and transfer their games expertise to Aphganistan.Most of you are writing about thigs you know nothing about and want to go form couch potato arm chair experts to quarterback positions on game day at the Super Bowl.Most of you are liberal light weight wannabe leaders with little or no ability to change a diaper or feed child a bottle of milk while your other half carries the real loads on a daily basis. You throw words around and don't know what you are talking about.Your minds are warped with liberal nonsense.

So far, our policy is a joke. Our allies are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Like the rest of the middle east, these countries conduct public beheadings and don't allow their women to drive or vote. Allies? Many of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is the current home of Bin Laden. Allies? The women are still subject to honor killings and occupy social status between cattle and the family pet. Allies??

So far, our policy is a joke. Our allies are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Like the rest of the middle east, these countries conduct public beheadings and don't allow their women to drive or vote. Allies? Many of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is the current home of Bin Laden. Allies? The women are still subject to honor killings and occupy social status between cattle and the family pet. Allies??

Oh, and if you are wondering about how good the Bush administration is at supporting the people of Afghanistan during a war halfway across the world, just look at how good a job it did supporting the victims of Hurricane Katrina in our own backyard.

Tne reason Bush tries to use brute force to solve all problems is simple. When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Considering the US accounts for about 45% of the world's military spending (despite only using 25% of the world's energy and having 5% of the world population), that is a really big hammer for Bush to use.

Our Govt. is probably profiting off of the Opium Poppies as well as Al Quida...Knowing Bush/Cheney and how friendly they are with the Bin Laden family, they are probably in cahoots with not only the Opium but also the oil...

The reason the Bush administration has not learned any lessons about supporting corrupt puppet governments instead of supporting the people, is precisely because the Bush administration IS a corrupt puppet government of Wall Street and the Oil Industry, as the current financial bailouts, the laissez-faire Bush policies that lead to the financial crisis, and the price of gas can atest to.

Good article pointing out that the Bush administration did not learn the lessons of Afghanistan from the Soviet mistakes of 20 years ago to the British problems of the 1800's. They also forgot the lesson of Vietnam in that we don't support corrupt puppet governments instead of supporting the people.

One huge mistake was to not pay the Afghani farmers to grow food crops, a littlebit of agricultural subsidy the past 7 years would have paid off in keeping the Taliban from profitting off of the opium trade. Now our troops protect poppy fields, while we claim to be fighting a war on drugs, instead of destroying them.

We need new leadership who will not make the same victory feever mistakes of the Bush administration and that's Barack Obama. McCain will do nothing but make the same stupid mistakes of the past 7 years!

Good article pointing out that the Bush administration did not learn the lessons of Afghanistan from the Soviet mistakes of 20 years ago to the British problems of the 1800's. They also forgot the lesson of Vietnam in that we don't support corrupt puppet governments instead of supporting the people.

One huge mistake was to not pay the Afghani farmers to grow food crops, a littlebit of agricultural subsidy the past 7 years would have paid off in keeping the Taliban from profitting off of the opium trade. Now our troops protect poppy fields, while we claim to be fighting a war on drugs, instead of destroying them.

We need new leadership who will not make the same victory fever mistakes of the Bush administration and that's Barack Obama. McCain will do nothing but make the same stupid mistakes of the past 7 years!

Maybe it's because we started a whole other war that became more controversial than this one, got more publicity, and was totally irrelevant to the objective at hand?

Ooo, oooh! Maybe it's because we dumped billions of dollars into graft-filled contractors instead of strengthening our own Army?

Hey! Maybe it's because barely any of our forces speak Arabic or can communicate with just about anybody there!

Or maybe it's because we keep spending Army money on tanks and other weapons designed to fight big wars instead of the small partisan conflicts that form the bulk of American military involvement now?

Support defense spending reform.

Maybe we should try McCain's way and just stay 100 years. GO MCCAIN's NAVY!

It appears they have bankrupted USA as promised .

The problem in Afghanistan is that we forgot, a long time ago, why we are there. We went to root out Al Qaeda. But the Bush administration decided to proselytize democracy instead. Now, the country has a democracy of sorts, but the real problem is worse than ever. What we are doing is simply occupying a country that no one has ever successfully occupied, and all the discussion is about how to successfully occupy it.

Only some sort of religious fanaticism could lead to such stupidity. I'm a Christian, but I see no connection between the NT message and what we as a country are doing. Bush and Co. seem to believe they are on some sort of crusade, and they're dragging all of into their Holy War on Terror.