Does Afghanistan Have a Military Solution?

[StarfarerBill]

By Asheel Qayum, Afghani journalist

With President Obama's order to inject more troops into Afghanistan, tension has risen among the ordinary Afghans in the countryside, especially in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, where most of the new troops are expected to be deployed to tackle the spreading insurgency.

With 30,000 new American troops and another 7,000 to 10,000 NATO forces the number of the foreign forces in Afghanistan will reach over 140,000, which will match the number of Soviets solders during their occupation.

These days there is a famous saying among regular Afghans -- more troops need more targets. This is true. The more solders there are, the higher the number of attacks there will be. Then more civilians will be killed by the crossfire between the coalition forces and the insurgents. In their recent air raid in Laghman province, American forces killed civilians, including women and children. This triggered a violent demonstration in Laghman the next morning. This and hundreds of similar incidents can widen the gap between the Afghan government, foreign forces and regular Afghans even more.

Besides, with the increase of troops, insurgents will double their size and with every surge and raid by the Americans, new waves of young Afghans will be pushed to the insurgency. So far this has been one of the main reasons for the spread of the insurgency. Americans say that new waves of troops will drive out the insurgents from restive areas and will pave the way for social and development projects. People here believe solders are not trained to bring security, they are trained to kill. The only thing they are good at is killing.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/asheel-qayum/does-afghanistan-have-a-m_b_415074.html

[mmonk]

1. Depends on the mission. I don't think the reasons given are the mission.

[unhappycamper]

2. If the military solution is to run the American economy into the ground,

Mission Accomplished.

[sendero]

3. If there is any real reason to be there or..

.. in Iraq, it has be be oil. There is no way we are ever going to "win", if you define "win" as "create stable prosperous western-like societies" which seems to be what our leaders claim to be trying to accomplish.

But we can spend thousands of American kids' lives' and trillions of dollars we don't really have trying. Why not? Generals must have a war like junkies need smack.