Proof that while the foreign powers don't win, neither does Afghanistan.

Not only not win but those that toss aside international law & are stained with war crimes or the destruction of their own constitution....that is a loss in my mind that they did not need to lose.

How true! Thank God nothing like that is happening.

I'm not suggesting that the British Empire collapsed because of Afghanistan any more than the US one will.

It's just that in ten years after their withdrawal, whether they mark it up as a victory or not, the wretched Afghans will be back to living they way they were 2000 years ago. You, know, stoning their women to death and all that good stuff. (And they were doing it well before Mohammed's time too).

Proof that while the foreign powers don't win, neither does Afghanistan.

A large number of Afghans would certainly disagree with you there. Did you ever consider that they may not want well educated women's libbers, lawyers, divorce courts and flush toilets? These people are the ultimate conservatives, they pick up their Jezails if even a suggestion of change is even mentioned.

This statement highlight one of those liberal attitudes I hate with a passion (you're OK, please don't take it personally).

It reminds me of this MTV travel show with Cameron Diaz. You might remember the controversy when she toured Machu Pichu in Peru carrying a bag with a red star of Mao on it. Totally ignorant of the history of Peru with their Shining Path. ANYWAY, what the statement above reminds me of is the show she did where she was giving us a tour of someone's home - a hut made of DUNG. Carmen thought it was just the greatest thing! Wow! A house made of dung! Of course, the person in the dung hut wouldn't trade it for Carmen's million dollar home in LA because the poor woman just LOVES to live in a house made of sh*t.

Or like the shows that travel to some isolated hill tribe and think they are the crew of the Enterprise and it's somehow illegal to violate the Prime Directive about interfering with alien cultures (re: little brown people). It's ironic in our own countries the same people who argue that it's a human right to have healthcare, education, a house/flat - think that if you're poor and live in some 3rd world country living in a house of dung, no education and a life expectancy of 45-50 it is "culture" that must be protected. I'm not sure "ironic" is the right word. Maybe "liberal racism" better describes it.

Fahima, one of my colleagues back in DC is from Afghanistan. I'm sure she isn't the only one who was happy as hel_l to get out of that place to live in a place with flush toilets, a place where as a woman she could work without worrying about being taken to the local soccer stadium and shot in the head.

Modern society isn't perfect by a long shot but I'm willing to bet that 99.99978% of Afghanis under the age of 50 would move to a more modern place in a heartbeat given the chance.

Fahima, one of my colleagues back in DC is from Afghanistan. I'm sure she isn't the only one who was happy as hel_l to get out of that place to live in a place with flush toilets, a place where as a woman she could work without worrying about being taken to the local soccer stadium and shot in the head.

But has this changed? Do you think it's likely to change through foreign occupation?

I can't see that putting people like Karzai up as a figurehead is going to change it. Fahima would make a far better president but the tribes wouldn't accept her. They are no closer to accepting her, or anyone like her, now than they were under the Taliban.

All that has been done is return Afghanistan to the pre-Taliban days. The women that don't work, or don't go to school are no better off than they were 10 years ago. Saying they now can if they want to doesn't cut it, the end result would be the same as under the Taliban if they tried to break with tribal tradition. It happens in Melbourne and Birmingham.

Say what you like about liberal attitudes, my upbringing was Socialist, not liberal. (As I keep trying to drum into Ulysses G thick skull).

Modern society isn't perfect by a long shot but I'm willing to bet that 99.99978% of Afghanis under the age of 50 would move to a more modern place in a heartbeat given the chance.

CIA World Fact Book: Life Expectancy.

Afghanistan 44.64 years.

Modern society isn't perfect by a long shot but I'm willing to bet that 99.99978% of Afghanis under the age of 50 would move to a more modern place in a heartbeat given the chance.

CIA World Fact Book: Life Expectancy.

Afghanistan 44.64 years.

I didn't low ball it enough.

Besides, I'm sure they're happier that way. Not having to worry about Alzheimers, wearing Depends, wondering whether or not they qualify for the senior discount at the local cinema, etc.

Say what you like about liberal attitudes, my upbringing was Socialist, not liberal. (As I keep trying to drum into Ulysses G thick skull).

My upbringing was liberal too. Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks? 

My family back to my grandparents are all social conservatives; volunteer soldiers, pro-death penalty, caning in schools, patriots...etc, etc. and economic Socialists. Basically that meant that they believed some things are too important to be run by people who hold that the bottom line is always profits for the share holder.

You are a good man, but I still think that they would give you a good caning for some of your more "progressive" posts.

But my opinions are my own, not inherited. For most people it's easier to believe what Pop tells you than think for yourself.

Frustrated general wanted to send message to White House about Afghan war: writer

Obama just fired frustrated General McChrystal.

Frustrated general wanted to send message to White House about Afghan war: writer

Obama just fired frustrated General McChrystal.

Was he fired or did he turn in his resignation? I bet grunts wish they could get sent home for bad mouthing the pols.

You have to give Obama one thing, at least he replaced him with someone else that is competent. 

Well, there's plenty of jobs around.

I bet he regrets the phony apology now! 

Was he fired or did he turn in his resignation? I bet grunts wish they could get sent home for bad mouthing the pols.

just my 2cent but he was fired... Seeing how it transpired before & then after when he was not even allowed back to Afghanistan to collect his things? Or attend the meeting to hand over things to the new group said it all. Yeah fired & the speech said resigned because after all he is a General & was picked.

Face saving is not only done in LOS

Petraeus Now Taking Reins of a ‘Tougher Fight’

KABUL, Afghanistan — In late 2008, shortly after he had helped pull Iraq back from the brink of catastrophe, Gen. David H. Petraeus prepared to turn to that other American war.

I’ve always said that Afghanistan would be the tougher fight,” General Petraeus said at the time.

Now the burden falls to him, at perhaps the decisive moment in President Obama’s campaign to reverse the deteriorating situation on the ground here and regain the momentum in this nine-year-old war. In many ways, General Petraeus is being summoned to Afghanistan at a moment similar to the one he faced three years ago in Iraq, when the situation seemed hopeless to a growing number of Americans and their elected representatives as well.

But there is a crucial difference: in Iraq, General Petraeus was called in to reverse a failed strategy put in place by previous commanders. In Afghanistan, General Petraeus was instrumental in developing and executing the strategy in partnership with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who carried it out on the ground. Now General Petraeus will be directly responsible for its success or failure, risking the reputation he built in Iraq.

General Petraeus, 57, brings an extraordinary set of skills to his new job: a Boy Scout’s charm, penetrating intelligence and a ferocious will to succeed. At ease with the press and the public, and an adept negotiator, General Petraeus will probably distinguish himself from his predecessor with the political skills that carried him through the most difficult months of the counteroffensive in Iraq known as the surge.

In those months of 2007, when American casualties were the heaviest of the war, General Petraeus not only prosecuted the strategy but also reassured his superiors, including President George W. Bush, in regular videoconferences from Baghdad.

In Iraq, General Petraeus helped turn the tide not just by sending 30,000 more American troops into Baghdad, but by fostering deals with insurgent leaders who had spent the previous four years killing Americans. As much as the surge, the movement in Iraq known as the Sunni Awakening helped set in motion the remarkable decline in violence there that has largely held to this day.

By helping to pull Iraq back from the edge, General Petraeus won a reputation as a resourceful, unorthodox commander and has since been mentioned as a candidate for president.

But Afghanistan is a very different war in a very different country. Where Iraq is an urban, oil-rich country with an educated middle class, Afghanistan is a shattered state whose social fabric and physical infrastructure has been ruined by three decades of war. In Iraq, the insurgency was in the cities; here, it is spread across the mountains and deserts of the country’s forbidding countryside.

Indeed, to prevail in Afghanistan, General Petraeus will need all of his skills — and a dose of good fortune at least as big as the one he received in Iraq. At the moment, every aspect of the war in Afghanistan is going badly: the military’s campaign in the strategic city of Kandahar has met with widespread resistance from the Afghan public; President Hamid Karzai is proving erratic and unpredictable; and the Taliban are resisting more tenaciously than ever.

To turn the tide, General Petraeus will almost certainly continue the counterinsurgency strategy he devised with General McChrystal: protecting Afghan civilians, separating them from insurgents and winning public support. But he will also have to convince his own troops, who are increasingly angry about the restrictions on using firepower imposed to protect civilians.

And General Petraeus will probably also try to employ some of the same novel tactics that worked so well in Iraq. Most notably, he will continue to coax Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with promises of jobs and security. And he may even try to strike deals with senior leaders of the Taliban as well as with the military and intelligence services in Pakistan.

A former aide to General Petraeus in Iraq who is now in Afghanistan put it this way: “The policy is to make everyone feel safer, reconcile with those who are willing and kill the people you need to.”

Perhaps General Petraeus’s toughest challenge will be to unify a fractious team of senior officials in the Obama administration who hold sharply differing views of how the war in Afghanistan should be fought. As the head of the United States Central Command, which oversees all military forces in the Middle East, General Petraeus has built a close relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well with Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for the region.

While his predecessor, General McChrystal, was on icy terms with the American ambassador here, Karl W. Eikenberry, General Petraeus forged a tight bond with his civilian counterpart during the Iraqi surge, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. General Petraeus and Ambassador Eikenberry, a former general himself, are old Army comrades.

The one uncertain point in General Petraeus’s political constellation is the most important one, President Obama. General Petraeus had bypassed his own senior leadership to become Mr. Bush’s favorite general. Mr. Obama made it clear that General Petraeus would no longer have a direct line to the Oval Office. The general accordingly assumed a lower profile.

For all of his political shrewdness, however, General Petraeus himself dislikes the rough-and-tumble of Washington. His displeasure reached its peak in September 2007, when, during the Iraqi surge, he and Ambassador Crocker were called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The violence had not yet dropped significantly, and both men were questioned mercilessly. General Petraeus, who suffers from a bad back, gulped Advil during the hearing.

“The most miserable experience of my life,” he told a reporter afterward.

General Petraeus prides himself on his athletic prowess. While in Iraq, he usually ran five miles six days a week, often besting the younger captains he took along with him. After the runs usually come a grueling regime of calisthenics; well into his 50s, General Petraeus could do 17 pull-ups. Recently, though, questions have arisen about his health. Last year, he underwent treatment for prostrate cancer; he said he was now cured. Only last week, while testifying before a Senate panel, General Petraeus fainted in his chair. He said he was dehydrated.

General Petraeus will take command of the Afghanistan campaign six months into an 18-month-long strategy that will almost certainly have to show significant progress for Mr. Obama to continue. Even before then, in December, Mr. Obama and his advisers will conduct a “strategic assessment” that will serve as a major progress report.

After that, it is anyone’s guess what President Obama will do. Some members of General McChrystal’s staff were not so optimistic. When a reporter recently suggested to a senior American officer here that he might, in the end, run out of time, he did not hesitate to answer.

“I think you may be right,” the officer said.

NY Times

General Petraeus? This must make the far left angry since they are the ones who called him "General Betray-us".