Obama to announce decision on Afghanistan next Tuesday

That was al Qaeda, not the Taliban.

I don't think, I know that they've already been there as well as Sudan, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia, and many other places. I can provide documentation if you need evidence. Or you could just use Google.

In Af/Pak, yes. Outside, no.

Maybe I missed the part where wrote this. Could you quote it for me please?

See the phrase Af/Pak? You might want to Google it and figure out exactly what it means.

Yes he will. He has done is many, many times in the past. Undoubtedly, you weren't paying attention before 9/11 when this was happening, so I guess it is understandable. My guess is that the easiest place to move would be the lawless areas of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan where the IMU has free reign exactly like the Taliban associates in the FATA. Or maybe you can, from your extensive knowledge of the area, tell me why this is impossible?

The Taliban, on the other hand, is an entirely local phenomenon, organized in parallel with tribal affiliations. If you wish to invade Pakistan and create chaos in a nuclear armed state, you might be able to commit a massive genocide and get rid of them. But the real threat, al Qaeda, will have gone somewhere else.

So your answer is to stick your grubby fingers into the hornet's nest that is nuclear armed Pakistan and agitate everything to hell and back, so that those nukes go free and get picked up by a Jihadi? Sounds like al Qaeda's best case scenario.

More importantly, you need to learn the difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Any statements which say, "al Qaeda and the Taliban will..." display an inherent ignorance of the situation. You need to learn the difference between Jihad and Takfir.

The only way your military solution will possibly be effective will be to engage in massive genocide of a large portion of the worlds population. I hope I don't need to make it clear what an offensive prospect that would be. Failure to go to that extreme will only agitate the situation and make the blow back worse.

The point of terrorism is to make you freak out and react irrationally. It appears that in your case the terrorists have succeeded.

Our situation in Afghanistan is exactly like the British situation used to be in Northern Ireland, except that it was a whole lot farther away and matters a whole lot less from a strategic viewpoint. We have just as much chance of defeating the Taliban as the British did with the IRA, even 30+ years in. But if banging your head against a wall seems like a viable strategy, go for it.

And the British pulled out all the same sort of PLO/IRA links as "proof" that the British couldn't leave Ireland. Funny how that association seems to have dissolved once it became clear that it was no longer in the best interests of the IRA/Sinn Fein.

 

funny you bring up genocide so often, because the Taliban do happen to be a genocidal organization.

I hope Americans realize that in attempting to mollify the Taliban, they are dealing with the scum of the Earth. Which more or less hasn't been a moral obstacle for America for a lot of instances, but in our incessant deliberation of Al-Q vs Taliban, I would hope that we haven't lose sight of the fact that it's not an issue of good vs bad or even the lesser of two evils; it's just basically an issue of who can hurt Americans the most. They are both great evils. One just happens to be a local evil.

 

They are scary religious extremists, but they aren't irrational. They made a financial decision to align with al Qaeda. They didn't understand the full range of potential repercussions. It should be clear to them now, especially if we keep Bagram Air Base open and blow the crap out of anybody who houses al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's goals and theirs do not match. If it better enables them to lord their own ridiculously strict interpretation of Islam over the Pashtun (outside Kabul), they will keep their distance from al Qaeda.

I'm sure he doesn't and that fundamentally is the problem. I'm saying that if you are going to "win" in any way with military force, it will require genocide and killing on a massive scale. I'm saying that half measures will not work, and if you aren't going to go all the way then you are just wasting time and money.

That was what the Soviets figured out. They kept getting more brutal and more brutal until their tactics offended even their own meager ethical limits. I'm hoping that we don't have to throw away 1 billion dollars just to get to that point of realization. To be crude, we need to either **** or get off the pot.

There is a line from Jurassic Park to the effect that scientists spend so much time wondering if they could do it (resurect dinosaurs), that they bother to wonder if they should. The inverse is in effect here. We spend so much time talking about what we would do if we were unlimited by reality, that we haven't spent any time at all discussing whether we actually can do it or not, without throwing all the money and might of the USA into a bottomless pit.

I grow roses. Every spring I go out and my rose bed has a whole bunch of weeds growing in it. I would love to wipe all the weeds off the face of the Earth, but realistically, I understand that that such a goal would be beyond my means. Instead, it makes more sense for me to simply manage the bed, removing weeds when they start to grow.

Which is fine. I am not concerned that the Taliban doesn't like America or is sympathetic with al Qaeda or whether Mullah Omar will ask Hillary Clinton to homecoming or not. I am concerned that the Taliban not enable, house, protect, and provide material support to al Qaeda.

The Taliban has a very clearly delineated vertical structure based on the tribal structure of the Pashtun. If somewhere near the top the order was given to not work with al Qaeda, it would happen.

Whatever sympathies they have, there are no PLO training camps in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein understands that if they opened, the British would probably send soldiers to Northern Ireland and the IRA/Sinn Fein would loose all the gains that they have achieved. This is a rational balance that the IRA has made. Just because they are "the bad guys" in the British view, doesn't mean they have a irrational compulsion to eat English babies.

If you understand the underlying assumptions of the Talaban philosophy, you can predict how they will respond. My primary concern is that most people view al Qaeda/The Taliban as some sort of mythical or superhuman boogiemen. They aren't.