When it comes to the Afghan war, it is impossible for U.S., NATO and ISAF troops to win, it is impossible for (an) Afghan insurgent group(s) to lose. The net result is that it is the innocent - the Afghan people - who will suffer the most. A major alleviation of the suffering will come when the U.S., NATO and ISAF militarily disengage from Afghanistan. The sooner the better.
The people of Afghanistan's fortunes took a turn for the worse the days the U.S. decided that Afghanistan was going to be the battlefield where communist U.S.S.R. was going to be destroyed by a covert war by the U.S. It was also on later days when the U.S. economy took a turn for the worse, and the Pentagon, the neocons and Dick Cheney looked toward Afghanistan and its mineral riches as a means of shoring up the U.S. economy.
Afghanistan is the richest country in the world when it comes to all strategic minerals. Even oil. The U.S. has collected evidence and estimates of the amount of oil there is in Afghanistan. The publicly quoted figures are way below the figures the U.S. Geological Survey and the Pentagon keep to themselves. There is also a lot of oil in the Caspian Sea Basin area near Afghanistan. The U.S. wants to check (like in a "Great Foreign Policy Chess Game") Russia's, China's, Pakistan's, India's and Iran's access to that oil and ability to ship oil west to Europe and east to Asia.
Finally, the U.S economy revolves around the military-industrial complex. With the Great Depression II we are now in, the ever increasing number of wars and their intensity is the result of this militarized Keynesian economics. Never mind the fact that the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Western European countries are bankrupting their treasuries (paid for by citizens' tax dollars) by enriching arms industries. Like any other business, arms industries maximize their profits and minimize their expenses by paying their workers as little as they can get away with, for example. The lion's share of the money goes to the arms industries to the destruction of global and national economies.
The product that is bought is either single use - bullets, shells, bombs, rockets, missiles - destroyed when used, or has a short shelf-life because the technology is rapidly superceded and a "better" more expensive "cadillac" version is soon sough after.
Stupid isn't it? Rather like tobacco products addictions: Expensive, single use products that are hazardous to health and life.
When it comes to war, everything the government, the military and the fawning commercial (i.e., mainstream) media tell us is a lie.
When I post on these threads it is to expose the lies.
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The Taliban appears to be holding its own against the U.S. surge in Afghanistan, counterterrorism sources told the New York Daily News.
Officials said morale in the Taliban ranks is high and years of fighting have hardened the militants.
"Most of the stupid Taliban are dead," a source described as a senior counterterrorism official in Washington, told the newspaper. "Even in the south, the adversaries are becoming more tactically capable."
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/05/Most-of-the-stupid-Tal...
