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Fateweaver wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_afghanistan

Alrighty then. Obama is going to "finish the job in Afghanistan". Isn't that what Bush wanted to do with Iraq that brought so much hate from the left wing?

How are the lefties going to justify this little plan of Obamas now that it's essentially the same thing but a different region?

Since Bush's plans were brilliant I am a bit surprised you don't congratulate Obama for seeing sense and fulfilling them.

sexiest_hero wrote: Hey you can always become a one party dictatorship, communist, or african warlords.

All hail Bongolesia!

Fateweaver wrote:Let us turn it into a giant slab of glass just to be safe.

Only if we evacuate the tribal peoples of the area and replace them with extreme right wing armchair generals.

sexiest_hero wrote:
At Dogma, the Conditions for victory in afghanistan are as follows, Leave a government and security forces that's stable, kill or capture enough terrorist leaders to permanently disable the major network, leave a force able to secure the border to Pakistan.

Its that 'leave a force behind' thing which is the problematic part. The Border with Pakistan is massive, and our presence there is a double-edged sword for a state that is already extremely fragile (and nuclear). It isn't the same kind of thing that we'll get away with in Iraq, as the entire process is going to be much longer in duration, and far more personnel intensive in the aftermath.

The thing about Afghanistan is that it is actually 50% about Pakistan as a poor, unstable, nuclear power, not abou Afghanistan as such.

To put it another way, you can probably never achieve a stable situation in Afghanistan until Pakistan has been stabilised.

Kilkrazy wrote:The thing about Afghanistan is that it is actually 50% about Pakistan as a poor, unstable, nuclear power, not abou Afghanistan as such.

To put it another way, you can probably never achieve a stable situation in Afghanistan until Pakistan has been stabilised.

Hmmm... so we are going to continue a war, that possibly entails another war, to finish the war we started near a decade ago? OMG... my head just ran away...

We can't ignore that western actions in Afghanistan have had the effect of destabilising part of Pakistan.

We have three options in Aghanistan:

1. Continue as now with an inadequate force and bumble along for years.

2. Beef up the forces and really stick it to the Taliban. We also have to fix the Afghani govenment somehow. This is likely to destabilise Pakistan further by pushing Taliban elements into the country.

3. Pull out and hope it will all be OK. This may actually be the best option.

Kilkrazy wrote:3. Pull out and hope we don't have to go back. This may actually be the best option.

Fixed that for you.