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"Now the NA has lost any incentive to fight with the USA. They are merely dragging their feet, doing just enough so that the US will continue to arm them. This may come back to haunt us when we have engaged a large ground force." -rstevens Huh? Last time I checked self-preservation is a pretty compelling incentive to fight. Oh, BTW the NA was supposed to get 50 of the 120 seats in that coalition under the old King. Not only are the NA scumbags in their own right, they pissed away their chance when they had the country '92-'96. IMO, they're completely incapable of establishing a stable gov't on their own. We are absolutely correct to pursue any and all alternatives to minimize our reliance on them.

The point I was trying to make is to first win the f**king war, then decide, or let the country decide who will govern. Whether or not the NA would make good rulers of the country is not the issue, we should use them to the extent possible to gain militarily. We didn't think the Viet Cong were such great fighters either and the military initially ignored them, only to find out that about 50% of our military resources were spent in fighting them. This could happen in Afghanistan, if the NA believe the US is going to screw them, and thats when you will find out, they just may not be such a rag tag army.

Nation building and politics do not co-exist with a well waged military action. We saw that in VN and again in Mogudishu. We prevailed in the Gulf war because we followed a well thought out and defined objective and did not waver. Thank God no CIA were involved in that campaign, otherwise we'd have lost that one too. Politics did come into play at the end of the Gulf War and that is what saved Saddam's ass. But the military was able to do its job and did it decisevily.

Our objective here should be to exact a price against OBL his Al Qaeda and the Taliban who harbor him, NOTHING else until the military objective is accomplished.

No, it was around 1996 when the Clinton Admin decided to undermine them and cuddle up to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar because he was “the strong guy.” That was a disaster. They left Massood hanging. So AQ assassinated Massood before 911 to make sure.
CIA went back to the same vomit , Hekmatyar, when Obama took over, needless to say that was a disaster [again.]
Definition of insanity?