How's that for "regional stability"?

Six years, billions of dollars, hundreds of allied deaths, tens of thousands of civilian deaths....

And for what?

* long when you get a chance (over 10 min.)

I agree with him that the surge was overrated, but I think there were other factors in addition to the ethnic cleansing that contributed to the declining violence (walling off sections of Baghdad and establishing hard checkpoints, clever use of Predator surveillance, etc.)

Still, the strategy of the surge itself is sound for securing a relatively small area like a city but it's absolutely ludicrous to try to attempt it on a country-wide scale as McCain seems to be suggesting. The number of troops required to do that would probably exceed the population of the U.S.

The reporter is absolutely right about Pakistan, and I like his analogy. We could turn Afghanistan into paradise, but the foothills of the Afghan/Pakistan border are turning out to be the new terrorist training center and there doesn't seem to be anything the current Pakistan government can do to stop it.

Oh yes, that's what the war in Afghanistan is about, killing brown people. Sure! I mean, the Taliban "aren't exactly feminists", as this exceptionally morally-discerning creature has noted, but it's not like they refused to turn OBL over for trial after he murdered 3000 innocent people from 80 different countries, its not like the Taliban crushed the minds and souls of hundreds of thousands of innocents under a steel fist of barbarism, and defecated, just for good measure, on the treasures of Bamyan. These Taliban, they are misunderstood, and just because they treat cattle better than women, and believe that democracy and tolerance are evil, this doesn't mean we can't negotiate.

>> ^qbert:
Oh yes, that's what the war in Afghanistan is about, killing brown people. Sure! I mean, the Taliban "aren't exactly feminists", as this exceptionally morally-discerning creature has noted, but it's not like they refused to turn OBL over for trial after he murdered 3000 innocent people from 80 different countries, its not like the Taliban crushed the minds and souls of hundreds of thousands of innocents under a steel fist of barbarism, and defecated, just for good measure, on the treasures of Bamyan. These Taliban, they are misunderstood, and just because they treat cattle better than women, and believe that democracy and tolerance are evil, this doesn't mean we can't negotiate.


The Taliban did offer to turn over OBL if the USA would only give them evidence of his involvement. They never did, and I doubt it exists. OBL was the boogy man for an inside job. 9/11 was an attack from within.

I'm also tired of people being called "terrorists" when all they're doing is fighting against the uninvited army occupying their nation.

We haven't achieved shit in Afghanistan, and we never will.

Because we will always use military methods to solve our perceived problems, and that is, in and of itself, the real problem.

*long

This video has been flagged as being at least 10 minutes in length - declared long by doogle.

This is the same Taliban who spent years trying to destroy the opium fields where almost all the heroin in the world now comes from, shipped out on CIA planes.