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SecDef Gates to NATO: Waa-aaa-aaa ...

... puh-leaze send more troops to Afghanistan.

I love the logic here. The Taliban was a horribly repressive government that harbored enemies of the United States. So the United States, using the thinnest of international legal veneers, initiated regime change, overthrew the Taliban, installed the Karzai government, and played around at finding Osama bin Laden while also playing footsie with neighboring Pakistan (the only Islamic state known to possess nuclear weapons).

The Taliban, which went into the hills and never acknowledged the legitimacy of the invasion, and has now--officially--become the insurgency.

From the Times:

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, pleaded with Nato allies today to send more civilian personnel to Afghanistan after expressing “disappointment” at their failure to meet his requests for troops.

John Hutton, the British Defence Secretary, urged European countries to reconsider their decision not to send further troops, saying Britain was already “playing above our weight” and could do no more.

The pleas for more troops came as defence ministers convened for a Nato meeting in Cracow, two days after President Obama committed 17,000 more American soldiers to the fight, making Afghanistan his top foreign policy priority.

Washington had hoped to capitalise on the new President's appeal to bring further troop commitments from European allies but, so far, no pledges have been forthcoming. There is growing concern over the logistics of prosecuting the war with too few troops and dimishing supply routes into the country....

Nato is bracing for a tough year ahead in Afghanistan, with the Taleban insurgency growing in strength both there and in neighbouring Pakistan where it enjoys sanctuary in the tribally governed border areas.


Now I am by no means a Mullah Omar fan, but you have to wonder how the formerly recognized government of Afghanistan somehow turned into an insurgency.

What's really happening in Afghanistan, as it happened under the Soviets, and the British, and all the way back to Alexander the Great is a civil war with one side being supported by external forces.

So it's time to stop allowing the State to have its way by talking about the so-called frontline in the war on terror or the Taliban insurgency and start asking the question, How long are we willing to commit tens of thousands of American troops to fighting the Aghan Civil War?

Comments

Anonymous said…
You would think we would have read up on how the soviets fared over there.

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