Apparently, the promised spring offensive by the Taliban has run into some problems lately. They seem to be losing their leaders quicker than than they can wrap their heads in rags. Is Osama Bin Laden next? Stay tuned.
The Taliban is the true enemy here. They deserve our wrath. This made up crap in Iraq is just a fools mission. Even those of us that hate this current war, take some degree of pleasure in defeating Taliban fighters like Mullah Dadullah. It is a long time coming because of the distraction in Iraq. This man and his fellow Taliban fighters should have been dead a long time ago. We had the whole world on our side after 9/11 and within two years, the Bush Administration had so badly mismanaged the foreign policy response to that attack, everyone hated us. We had the opportunity to shape the world as we would like it to be but the most inept administration in history blew it completely. I am happy for every Taliban soldier that is used as fertilizer to push up the next poppy crop. They need to be wiped out without consideration and with extreme prejudice. They don't represent all Muslims and shouldn't be lumped into one group by anyone with half a brain. We would be so much further along in this war on terrorism if we had not bothered with Iraq but that seems to escape so many here. Some people don't want to hear this because they have too much invested in being right rather than sensible. We are attracting Al Qaeda to Iraq with our presence there when we could have just as easily attracted them to Afghanistan without destabilizing the Middle East. It is a well documented fact that the Neocons took aim at Iraq even before 9/11. 9/11 just gave them the opportunity to act when this country gave an incompetent administration carte blanche to go after those responsible for the attack. They used our national tragedy to implement their long-held agenda. Now that they have scurried off to their dark holes and hidden themselves from the public, we are left to deal with their failed plans and never admit mistakes were made. So I guess you can lump all of us together that see this situation in Iraq as unhelpful and distracting but we know the difference between the good fight and what the fool's mission is. It doesn't surprise me that you can't recognize natural allies in your midst because you can't even recognize the enemy from the innocent either.
Wow, I pretty much concur!!!! What/how would you have done different from the start, if you were calling the shots??? Who, what, where would you have gone after??? Would you have taken Saddam, then moved on to something else? Or left him and taken a different course???
The British couldn't pacify Afghanistan. Neither could the Russians. Despite any short term successes, I have my doubts that we will fare better, particularly when western Pakistan is a safe haven for the enemy that we dare not enter. This looks so much like Viet Nam that it is frightening. We probably have three potential outcomes, assuming we stay. We can depopulate Afghanistan and declare it safe, if empty. We can fight a perpetual draw. We can lose. The idea that one day the fighting will stop because all of the enemy will have been killed or put to flight permanently is an illusion.
Hindsight is 20/20 as we all know so you have to take this with a grain of salt. I would have forced an Asian alliance between India and Pakistan, sort of an Asian NATO, and used Afghanistan as a focal point to hone the alliance. I would have made it their fight and facilitated the outcome towards cooperation and regional stability between the two nuclear powers. It would have taken longer than the Rambo approach Bush chose but it would also have established a permanent ally in the region over time. Making India and Pakistan work together and emerge as the local power brokers in the region would have benefitted both countries and us as a by-product.
The difference is that we are not there to take them over and make them a part of our "empire" for lack of a better word, the way the colonizers of bristish, and the communist machine of the Soviet union were
not a belief but I think he has been dead for awhile. either that or he really buried himself well for there is no bips on him.
