Taliban Claim to Have 'Drunk' US Captive; 7 Soldiers Killed

Big difference between wars and insurgencies. You can only win an insurgency if the people don't support it like in Malaysia or Oman. That's why armies don't like them--especially the one in Vietnam. If we had listened to Banks and supported Ho Chi Men before the French, there would have been no fight there at all. But noooo, we send 'advisors' because after Dien Bien Phu the French couldn't believe that people fighting for their own freedom will hand-pull cannons up mountains. And what Kennedy started Johnson continued because he wanted everybody to forget about Cuba. Then we tried to fight the same cannon pullers and found out what the British found out during our own little insurgency of Independence--you can't win against a rag-tag army when the people support you. And Patton who couldn't fart without government interference would beg to differ about Generals running wars. Lastly, the Domino Policy of Communist aggression was the same as yellow-cake uranium. If we had supported North Vietnam the Soviets would have loved it. They hated Communist China more than capitalism. This is history and there's no spinning it for right or wrong: there is only learning from it. Which nobody seems to do or the Soviets would have learned from Vietnam instead of sacrificing men and women for policy blunders and we wouldn't be doing the same thing in the same place for the same reasons. Now, ask yourself why everybody keeps doing the same thing? Double lastly, some Muslims want to destroy America and you don't fight them with an Army, you destroy them with the cannon pullers like we should have done after 9/11 when the SF had Bin Laden in their sights.

I am mildly surprised at the level of intolerance for others' opinions expressed in phrases like "I see you honestly know nothing of..." or "your ignorance of world affairs amazes me." Attacking me, instead of the ideas I have presented, is not very productive. One of the most common distortions of recent history is the canard that "the generals weren't allowed to win the war in Vietnam." Johnson and Nixon (and their foreign policy teams) were remarkably obtuse, and they did make the job much harder for "the generals." But those generals constantly underestimated the North Vietnamese and, especially, the Viet Cong. They gave those administrations contradictory and poor quality advice. If I have somehow missed where an effective strategy for "winning" in Vietnam was ever articulated and then rejected by policy makers, I'm sure that one of the other posters will be happy to point me in the right direction. All that said, I acknowledge that I am no expert on Vietnam, though I lived through the era, know people who served there in a variety of capacities, and have read about it extensively. I am arguably an "expert" on Afghanistan and radical Islam, however, to the extent that any American can claim to be at least. I lived and worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan for over five years and have had experience dealing with the Taliban, the former mujahideen who now have government titles, and the run-of-the-mill gunmen who have been such a big part of daily life there for the last twenty years. This war is ill-advised. It was ill-advised (though understandable) when it was launched in 2002, and it has only gotten worse, with the worst yet to come if we don't change our strategy. The reason I compared it to Vietnam, and Obama to Johnson, was the way that both wars started out as very limited engagements that seemed to be appropriate responses to the threats of the day. In both cases, it became clear fairly quickly that a traditional military victory was not possible, but no one stepped forward with a way out that wouldn't compromise our reasons for getting involved in the first place - and look like we were admitting defeat. There were ways out of Vietnam that would have used our military power more effectively, but Johnson and his generals either couldn't find them or refused to use them. There are ways to win in Afghanistan, too. Blindly throwing more troops at the problem with no real strategy or goals, however, is a recipe for disaster. No one, politician, general, or otherwise, has publicly articulated a realistic strategy for Afghanistan. In the absence of such a strategy it is foolish and immoral to simply "double down" on a bad hand.

Roger. Everything on line is like a rope and the point is to pick an end and dig in your heels. The big problem that I see is that we have become not readers of books which have fact checkers and editors and lawyers and a Library of Congress number so you can file suit for falsehoods, but a a nation of people depending on someone else to read the book. That knowledge by proxy invalidates the whole notion that a fact is a fact and truth really truth. You have to know something to google it. What has become very easy is for people to pick a side and then shove everything into it's pockets as if everything were black and white. It's hard but you must keep stating your comments in spite of rude personal comments. I'm pretty mean myself, but like lots of people here no matter the persuasion it is more from frustration than personal attack. We have been fed emotional gruel for so long that logic is attacked from the left and the right because it is no longer our nature to think that something can be both good and bad. We've forgotten that all public officials work for us and have fallen in love with half and demonize the other have. The half we love can shit on our head and we call it gold, and the half we despise can do something smart and we pounce. We ignore that this is not freedom but a perverse form of tyranny. I agree that we could do nothing in Vietnam. The only thing the Generals wanted that they didn't get were nuclear bombs. And people forget that Westmoreland was caught lying about enemy deaths because he wanted more troops; forget that if Kennedy had listened to the Generals the Missile crisis would have destroyed the world. The fact that people think that there were rules of engagement in Vietnam beyond 'don't shoot a kid in the face unless she has a grenade' is a belief based on a quest for an ideal. Washington hated the notion of ideals that set your brain to one way of thinking. For him everything was an item which in of itself had to be weighed on merit.

Good analysis, Deebles. I guess the trick is to stay nimble enough to keep the rope from being wrapped around one's neck and pulled tight...

JonmarkP....your just a idiot...there be no more comment......clueless one...........

Wrongthing, the sheer force of your intellect leaves me speechless.

You're argument is invalid on it's face. You are right only if you also believe that the Taliban have rules of engagement that specify how soldiers are to be treated. If that were true, I suppose they would also try to protect civilians from harm. After all, bombs walked into markets must be aimed at soldiers.

Why'd ya have ta do it, raht thaaang? This wonderful thread was on track to be the most intelligent, informative, civilized and epithet free debates among the newser regulars that I have ever seen. I forgive you for the "I" word, however. It came not as the usual shoot from the hip reaction, but only after you'd offered a series of good faith attempts to argue your point with logical assertions--the give and take just would not have been the same without you, raht thaaang, and it's the reason why "I just caint quit you !!! "

you just made my day 2-bit. Thank you :)

that is a crazy read.