NEWS: Deja Vu All Over Again

Well you have the US, Australia, Britain, and even Canada come out strongly in their favor. At the least it looks like it would be a NATO op.

Afghanistan was always a much more multilateral effort than Iraq has been, I can't remember the exact number but somewhere around 30 countries contributed to the effort there. Of course, as you've pointed out, the US and UK contributed the brunt of them, but it's about as close to a "UN" force as you're going to find in most places without actually bearing the flag of the UN.

One of the reasons the Taliban is back now is because the US failed miserably in winning the people over.

We've horribly mismanaged the money going into the country. There was a Washington Post article last year discussing some of that. If I remember correctly, it's something on the order of 30% of the projects that were funded and supposed to have been completed were actually completed.

The US action also has offered some brutal warlords a return to greater influence - some who were far worse than Taliban ever was. You'd think we would learn our lesson about blowback someday, yet we still keep dealing with evil, corrupt men when it suits a more immediate goal.

Karzi probably isn't the man for the job. Especially when there's a perception that he's bought and paid for by the US government.

The US soliders are also widely reviled. One of my Pushtu friends went back to Kabul earlier this year and said that was nearly universal from what he heard. They have no training in cultural sensitivity and are needlessly aggressive and arrogant in their dealings with the civllians. The way they behave towards the people says more "occupiers" than "liberators." My friend reported waking up in the backseat of his 4-runner at one point with rifles pointed into the car - because the US military decided to close a road so that they could move their soldiers. Just blocking the road wasn't enough. Incidents like that certainly helps swing the public opinion back the other way.

There have also been a lot of fuck-ups on the part of the US military that resulted in civillian deaths. Accidents or not, that'll swing public opinion too.

A large US presence also draws "freedom fighters" from the entire Muslim world. Otherwise, the Arabs and Afghans don't really get along and the Afghans would prefer that Arab fighters weren't there either. My friend's dad has plenty of stories about the ill will between the Afghans and the Arabs in the conflict against the USSR.

Of course there's also Pakistan, and what the ISI decides to fund and support. You can rest assured that they're not on the side of the US, though they don't mind handling whatever money we've thrown their way since the Russian invasion up to recent years.

The border issue is a problem, too. The borders in that region were set to check potential power - not necessarily because they're natural, either geographically or culturally. Whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan, it's going to be a major issue in anything you do in that part of the world. A bunch of groups that don't necessarily like each other at all have been held together by authoritarian states throughout the middle east and that portion of Asia. Good luck when you get rid of the authoritarian powers.

We didn't fail miserably. The simple fact is the Taliban pays more than the Afghan government. Corrupt police and a sub-par military doesn't help either. But fuck it. Let them show up. We can't drop 'em unless they do.

I can't speak for the rest of Afghanistan, but money went wisely in our AO. Spent mainly on boosting the local economy and what-not. Especially truckers and the like. Some shit just wasn't getting done because we didn't have the man power. But the Army took over so it's getting much better, much faster.

The warlords always have been, and will more than likely be a problem for many, many years. At least until the kids who we built schools for grow up and realise that there's more to life than simple greed. The closest that we have ever come to dealing with them is the fact that the Afghan government has a "all is forgiven" type policy when it comes to them and the ilk. If a fighter wants to give it up, all he has to do is trun himself in and he won't get prosecuted and will be offered a job. But if they do that then the warlords would probably kill them and their families. Tough decision.

Can't comment on Karzi. Just another politician as far as I'm concerned.

We weren't widely reviled. We weren't loved, but we definitly weren't hated. And if you have to close off a road to make sure no one drives a car loaded with explosives into the middle of a convoy, then you better fuckin do it. Temporary inconvenience as opposed to death? Not a tough decision.

Yes, there were and are going to be civilian deaths. That's war. Yeah, that's a callous statement, but it's the truth. When we fuck up, we offer the families monetary and whatever moral/emotional support they need. Because not a one of us likes to hear when that happens. Sure we joke, but it still sucks. When the Taliban does it, which is on purpose by the way, they just say it's the will of Allah.

Yes, we draw many fighters to Afghanistan. Hell, the vast majority of fighters are foreign.