... I've never seen the evidence that if we had just put more troops into Afghanistan we could have "won." It seems to me that this war in Afghanistan isn't really even a war --- it's a manhunt. And we're looking for a man who probably isn't even there, but is rather holed up in neighboring Pakistan, our ostensible ally. And further complicating matters he may not even be alive, but even if we captured him and "brought him to justice" we'll just make him into a martyr and create a whole bunch more terrorists, many of them in European countries and maybe even here. I don't get the end game of this great game.
So what's this "war" all about and why are we agitating so strongly to escalate it? Can we accomplish anything by putting more troops over there? I hope so. But the Soviets had their 40th Army in there for ten years and it didn't work.
And in defeating the Soviet army (albeit aided US guns, rocket launchers and money) the mujaheeden saw that the west could be defeated with guns, money, and Korans. One would be hard pressed to argue this interpretation.
I'm skeptical that the Democrats are using the notion of an Afghanistan escalation to bolster their macho street cred and that it's going to end up biting us all in the ass just like the last time a Democratic president escalated a war out of fear of being baited by the right.
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... because it looks like we're going to be in a full scale Afghan war, come hell or high water and with all that that implies for the foreseeable future, the powers that be of both parties undoubtedly feel it is necessary to keep up the fear and the fakery regardless of who is the president.
