[darkside321]

I would define Victory in Afghanistan as “a country which acts as a continual bloody flytrap for the most violent 1% of Muslims from the entire world, while the heart of the country becomes Westernised.”

We can do that standing on our heads: - if our soldiers are allowed to shoot back at the people shooting at them.

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sorry but this is impossible. even in the wildest dreams. Afghanistan will never be something like a westernized country. there for “we” would have to kill every single Man, Woman and kid there and then replace everyone with someone from “europe” or the US. and even then this new “westenized” country would be the “new Israel”.

[agere_contra]

The heart of the country CAN be westernized, in the sense of “women being taught to read and wearing normal clothes”.

We’re not talking about turning it into Rome. We’re talking about stopping Afghanistan from becoming a country-sized Mogadishu.

Kabul and environs was doing sort-of-ok - not exactly a Pashtun Paris, but not breeding legions of crazy people either - until the Taliban invaded and put the women into burqas.

And that’s all we need Afghanistan to be. Sort-of-ok. We train and support their military, we help their fledgling democracy and we use Helmand as a place to kill crazies. We infect another Muslim country with the concept of liberty. This is the Bush doctrine (properly understood) and it is a good one.

What we don’t do is declare defeat just because we can’t make Afghanistan into a Utopia. Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good!