format_quote Originally Posted by
ahsan28
I think they are heading in the same direction, which is evident from the reluctance of several countries to invest further in Afghanistan. NATO has failed and that appears a reality now. As I said earlier in another thread that nature of such operations varies from conventional war. You cannot simply rely on massive firepower for a favourable outcome. The Soviets adopted same strategy and they failed. In counterinsurgncy operations, you have to win hearts and minds of the locals, only then you can be hopeful of some positive results. But when you start killing innocent locals, suspecting everyone as fredom fighter/insurgent, be assured, you can never win, even if you keep investing for next 100 years.
Look guy. Nobody has
lost anything, unless you mean the reatreat of Al Quaeda and the Taliban after a couple of dozen Rangers and a few B-52's showed up.
Afghanistan is an artificial country where warfare between tribes or clans of ethnic groups goes back many, many centuries. Few people there understand the benefits of cooperative national effort.
Do you think the Taliban were in complete control of the country when they were in power? Of course not. The neighboring country has "citizens" of some of the same ethnic groups, but they have a relatively safe enclave across the border.
Nobody is advocating a Soviet strategy. They dropped unguided bombs from 30,000 feet. They purposely exterminated whole villages.
BTW..the Soviets ultimately failed because US-supplied stinger missiles made their aircraft vulnerable.
Spare us the jingoistic crap about the immortal Taliban.
BTW...the CIA "misplaced" another Hellfire missile.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...ck=1&cset=true
U.S. won't say who killed militant
Peshawar
February 2, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military officer on Friday described the airstrike that killed a leading Al Qaeda commander in Pakistan as an important victory, but he refused to say whether the U.S. government had anything to do with it.
"The strike was a very important one, it was a very lethal one," Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference. He brushed aside questions about any role the Pentagon may have played.
The CIA and the Pakistani government also refused to say who might have fired the missile or missiles that are believed to have killed Abu Laith al Libi and perhaps other Al Qaeda leaders in a small compound in northwest Pakistan this week.
The U.S. government's reluctance to take public credit for the killing of Al Libi underscores the growing tensions between the United States and Pakistan over how to attack Al Qaeda as it entrenches itself on Pakistani territory, current and former U.S. officials and other experts said.