I don’t think a war is winnable in Afghanistan. Even if we won… how would we know???? I mean… Hamid Karzai is President of WHAT, exactly? A city block, perhaps? We KNOW he cannot speak for the entire country. So who does? Who will come to the surrender table and sign the surrender documents? Who?

Look, the Afghanis have been fighting, since, well, FOREVER! As far back as Afghan history goes there is the parallel story of an Afghan insurgency. Look it up! For the last 30 years Afghanistan has been fighting a civil war. Now, recall the trepidation our Congress had over US troops becoming involved in a civil war in Iraq. Remember? Now, however, with one of their own in the White House, it is perfectly OK to involve American troops in a civil war in Afghanistan? How do they figure that?

I learned recently that we have dropped more bombs on Afghanistan that we have dropped on Iraq! I also learned that the Afghanistan police force we have been training… well, it seems they are being killed off faster than we can get them trained, in uniform, and out on the streets! Afghanistan is a wild and wooly place.

Now, I am not one of those gung-ho armchair generals who is all for inserting US troops into a fight and when the going gets rough raise cries to Congress to get them out! No, that is not my way. BUT, having said that, I understand there is a time and a place to fight and a time and a place to not get involved. Problem is… we are already involved.

There is the story, and I cannot confirm it, that among the brave men in the Alamo, so outnumbered by Santa Anna’s Mexican Army and facing certain defeat and death, the commanding officer Travis brought them together and explained the situation and invited those who wanted to leave to do so. The story goes that one Frenchman, a former solider in Napoleon’s army, elected to leave. When asked why an obviously brave man would choose to leave, he answered that if there was even a slim chance of winning he would stay and fight to the death. But no such chance existed. Therefore to stay, and die, would be a waste. So he went over the wall and away to safety.

We cannot win in Afghanistan. Not ever. The best we can hope for is to be able to manage the fighting. But an outright victory is unattainable. It ain’t gonna happen. Unfortunately, we may even wind up with a “meat grinder” situation, much like Vietnam, with a steady stream of American bodies being flown back to the states for burial.

Some say we CAN win the war in Afghanistan, but first we must win the hearts and minds of the Afghanis. That is pure bovine scatology. Again, for those of you too young to remember, that was the policy in Vietnam. Winning the hearts and minds of the ordinary people. The problem is, you see, the ordinary Afghani does not think or exist as the ordinary American does. Where that policy might work on the people of a western culture, it has a snowball’s chance in hell of working on an eastern culture. It is not even worth consideration.

And there is the dope. The national economy is founded on the growing of Opium/Heroin poppies in Afghanistan. If we destroy the dope fields, and if, somehow, we make it impossible for them to grow the dope, what will they replace it with? Have you seriously looked at the land there?

“U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan — once the world’s largest producer — since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world’s supply, U.N. officials said. Opium — the milky substance drained from the poppy plant — is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said — more than all other countries combined, including the “Golden Triangle,” where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.” SOURCE.