'The War Is Still Wide Open'

A RAND analyst assesses the situation in Afghanistan.

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 17, 2009 | Updated: 10:48  p.m. ET Jul 16, 2009

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  • Posted By: Trooper101st @ 07/23/2009 8:37:38 AM

    Only when the "safe-havens" in P-stan are made very UNSAFE. Where ever they are, they must be hunted. The p-stanis won't do it, so why don't we?

  • Posted By: huntersthompson258 @ 07/21/2009 5:58:10 AM

    There is no Afghanistan. There are people who live in a place on the globe inside imaginary lines on a map that may consider themselves Afghanistanis, but more likely they consider themselves members of an ethnicity or a tribe. We cannot win an Afghanistan War because there is no Afghanistan. The best we can do is to help some Afghanistanis prevail over others. Hopefully we will choose secular, liberal nation-building Afghanistanis THIS TIME instead of the muhahideen and the murderous Talibanis that we backed LAST TIME.

    If we don't support them this time, we will have only ourselves to blame for the results.

  • Posted By: Wind Talker @ 07/20/2009 9:05:54 AM

    Something huge is missing from this and almost every discussion on Afghanistan, and that is: What, exactly, is our mission there? What, exactly, are we trying to accomplish in that country? And what justification do have to be there in the first place? I'm not saying we should or shouldn't be there . . . but until we have a clearly defined, legitimate mission, the results will continue to be haphazard at best. The mission is so fundamental it's often left in the fuzz somewhere in the back rooms of our national mind. Everybody from the foxholes & bunkers to the White House needs to have a crystal clear picture in mind of why we're there and what we're trying to accomplish--and right now I don't think they do.

  • Posted By: ikhilioju @ 07/19/2009 8:51:07 PM

    wow...two of the most brilliant and educated posts even typed....what next guys, Nobel Laureates?

  • Posted By: taniashaina @ 07/19/2009 9:01:15 AM

    You can always count on Newsweek to be beating the drum for surrender. So they trot out some character from the Rand Corporation to follow their script. What he and the interviewer ignore is the big picture. Afghanistan was a failed state that became the headquarters for radical Islamic terrorism. You remember the monsters that blew up the World Trade Center? They got their training and their orders from welcome guests of the old Afghanistan. Now this is just one front in civilization's
    counter attack against world wide Jihad. Islamo-fascism is on the march all over the globe. And their insatiable desire is to impose Islam on every human being and to kill anyone standing in their way. We must defeat this evil. We win in Afghanistan by keeping the savage terrorists on the defensive. And when we win, everybody around the world wins.

  • Posted By: Colin Cody @ 07/19/2009 2:49:35 AM

    There is really only one genuine solution to the Afgan problem and that is to nuke the entire country into the stone age, but since that is not politically correct, there is no acceptable solution.

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