Why are we still in Afghanistan?

[dcan]

Islam is just as tolerant as Christianity. In other words, it depends on the person, the culture, and the age. Right now Islam is predominantly defined, at least in the West, through Wahabism. Yes, Saudi Arabia for the past century or so has spent a lot of time promoting Wahabism which is essentially the Fred Phelps version of Islam. I think most people don't really understand that. And they started with their own people. So now they have a religious movement calling for their own heads and they don't know what to do with it. They created the snake, and now it is starting to bite them.

BTW sorry but you are Pollyanna-ish. I worked for a Provincial Reconstruction Team over there. Our job was exactly that: build infrastructure. We funded local workers to help boost the economy, evaluated projects for sturdiness, etc. We built water treatment plants, dams, bridges, and schools. We also went to villages and handed out "HA", humanitarian assistance. Think bags of rice, beans, cans of cooking oil, etc. Truckloads of it. We also had medical teams go along, providing medical care, checkups, immunizations, etc. Women's health teams would go and deal with only the women, wearing shawls to make them more comfortable. Hell we even did at least one vet visit and treated livestock.

And we were just one team. There were dozens of us around the country, at least one per province usually, convoying out to villages 7 days a week including Christmas. Heck, we even had a foreign service officer from the State Department and a rep from USAID with us. We also had a guy from the Corps of Engineers coordinating road paving at $25 million per mile.

And it didn't mean much of a damn thing. There is something fundamentally wrong when you go to a village to hand out free humanitarian aid, and you have to plan your approach days in advance, sweep for IEDs en route, quickly establish a wide security perimeter, and then drop your stuff and haul to avoid being a target any longer than necessary.

And a lot of people don't realize that when we originally went into Afghanistan Bush actually wanted to drop HA before we dropped bombs, and was talked out of it because we had to at least establish air superiority to keep the HA drops from getting shot down by missiles. So he ordered it dropped as soon as possible, and as much as possible during the bombing campaigns. But the HA drops were in yellow containers that looked a lot like cluster bomblets that were on delayed fuses, so people started getting maimed and killed by what they thought was humanitarian aid. And when that started happening the news started reporting on parents sending their children out to pick up the "aid" just in case it would explode.

Culture.

I do think the military has been used too much for too many things. We are worn thin. We can't be 100% on killers and the next minute be 100% off nice guys. It doesn't work that way. And you have people in the AOR who have to be both at all times. It's wearing people down fast.

If you are going to fight a war, then fight a war and all that entails. Get in, accomplish your mission, and get out. You can't play peacekeeper and war fighter at the same time. If we aren't willing to do that, which obviously we aren't, it is time to get out and stop losing young men and women while playing at war.

You guys will love this presentation. Trust me, set aside 25 minutes and listen to this guy. He has been giving a longer version of this briefing in the Pentagon for years. He wrote The Pentagon's New Map and lays out how to do just what you describe. He's a genius and has a hell of way of explaining himself that is both funny and poignant.

Interestingly, his idea sounds a lot like the proposal for a Department of Peace. I think there's some merit to it.