"Once the fanatic learns that it can attack, kill a soldier and get away with it---your first basic round against the insurgency is lost. Once you lose that first round---it is always a catch up game."
Understood. See my previous post.
I call it punative exigency. Under dire circumstances, a SUSTAINED, violent, decisive, radical affront to the collective sensibilities of your opponent makes sense. Bluntly, Afghanistan would have been perfectly acceptable by the prevailing world mood at the time. In fact, I think most of mankind thought bloody hell would commence at any moment in the skies over Kabul, Kandahar, Mazur-I-Sharif, and Herat.
So too most Americans. That wasn't Rumsfeld's plan, though. His very creative minimalist SOF/N.A. campaign was attached umbilically to the U.S.A.F. Thus, all the overt muscle necessary to leverage the Taliban out of the government game.
No doubt the N.A. was the vehicle that, first, America, and then the rest of the world rode. I don't see by the least stretch, however, this insidious cabal by the U.N. and NATO (including America) to cut Pashtu interests out of Afghanistan. Nobody's that completely far gone to exclude 42% of the nation from the political process and expect that it'll still work.
Karzai's presence alone makes that clear. Cries here of "puppet" are nonsensical but steeped in a transparently bitter envy. Naturally, The Taliban and Mullah Omar's displacement has caused much gnashing of teeth on this board. Regardless, the U.N. and NATO's choice trumps the sentiments displayed here. Nonetheless, familiar homes in Quetta and elsewhere throughout Pakistan lay available for the taliban.
Both OIF and OEF represent brilliant military successes squandered by the bankrupt vision of a not-so-"new world order". We've hardly displayed the nuanced insight which made the occupations of W. Germany and Japan such stunning contributions to the collective good.
"S-2 the u s army should have seeked the advice of some used car sales people---what to do when you have a customer on the car lot---there is no be back bus."
Most of us from either side of the aisle know we blew it. Our troops have educated themselves much faster than our key political leaders to the realities of COIN. So too, I think, for other countries including Pakistan.
Afghanistan was imposed upon my nation. Iraq was not. Regardless, the solutions haven't yet been equal to the tasks. Our army is now, I believe, VERY on top of it's challenges. I'm certain that the rest of my gov't lags sadly behind.
