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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jcky who wrote (113812)	9/3/2003 3:26:54 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I didn't mean that comment in any disrespectful way and I'm fairly sure Jochen knows that. Germans are incredibly full of contradictions. For example, it is a country with a martial and, yes, a brutal history which is now pacifist to the core. Where else will you a Green Party bigwig in love with a general? One would presume natural antipathy, but one would be wrong. Those are the kind of contradictions to which I referred; I'm sure Jochen got my meaning.

To: jcky who wrote (113812)	9/3/2003 4:38:14 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<...the Bush administration is going to jettison Afghanistan once they have either captured or killed bin Laden...> Right after Regime Change, in late 2001, we jettisoned Afghan Nation-Building, and put ourselves on the road to failure. The average Afghan sees zero improvement in his life, as a result of our conquest. They look back with nostalgia and longing, to the days of peace and stability under the Taliban (much like a lot of Russians look back to the GoodOldDays under Stalin). So the Taliban, from their untouchable Safe Havens in Pakistan, have regrouped, and are now on the offensive again. It makes little difference whether we catch Bin Laden now, the guerrilla resistance of the Taliban in Afghanistan will continue. Since their capacity for suffering is clearly more than ours, they will win, eventually. We made several basic mistakes in Afghanistan, and there is no fixing them now: 1. Allowing the warlord armies to assert control of the country. 2. Doing only token Nation-Building. 3. Using inadequate U.S. troops to capture or kill the Taliban and Al Queda leadership, when they were at their most vulnerable. 4. Moving on to Iraq, before we had finished in Afghanistan. 5. Allowing the guerrillas a Safe Haven along the Pakistan/Afghan border (this is a cardinal sin, in fighting guerrillas). 6. Not waging a hearts and minds campaign against the Taliban's ideology. 7. Failing, at improving the lives of average Afghans. Two years on, they have no safety, not the slightest hint of an improvement in living conditions, no rule of law, no liberalism, no democracy. We have to provide an alternative to the Taliban, and it has to yield tangible results, if we are going to win against them, and we just aren't doing it.