Afghanistan

For those of you who don't care to read about political issues, you might just want to skip this posting. I have had the whole Afghanistan/Pakistan dilemma on my mind as a result of the latest news cycles, and because of reading Greg Mortenson's books. I know enough to know I don't know enough. But what I do know is that as long as we keep killing people, us and them, we will not "win". The Taliban is determined and will not give up. And it's their turf. The innocents that die or are horribly injured cause their families to turn against us. Our soldier death tolls are mounting again as predicted. And yet we here in the US are paying less attention to the war, a point that is leading to the frustration of the troops and their leaders. That was a major part of the cause of the fall of General McChrystal. I just read No good answers in Afghanistan by Thomas Friedman in our morning paper. You can find it at: Opinion The generals and the president have no good answers in Afghanistan Seattle Times Newspaper What it tells me is that we don't really know what we're doing over there. We don't have good answers to some key questions. Most important are these two: Do our interests merit such an escalation, and do we have the allies to achieve victory? Other questions that lead to those answers include: Why do we have to recruit and train Afghans to fight? They are very good at it when they want to be and have been fighting for 30 years. We don't train the Taliban, and they are holding us off. It's not about the way, it's the will. Any lasting action must start with them. The Afghans must have ownership in any lasting solution. We cannot impose order. The Afghan president stole the election and is corrupt. He will take care of himself and his cohorts before giving any thought to his people. If we "win", what do we get? Afghanistan has never been a principal player in the region. And what is "winning"? I have come to the conclusion, at least today, that we need to hold to our time line of beginning withdrawal a year from now, and we need to get the hell out of there! There are many humanitarian concerns that arise if we leave. But let humanitarians deal with those, not soldiers. Soldiers are trained to shoot people.