Afghanam anyone?

Enough. This senseless folly in Afghanistan must stop | Peter Preston | Comment is free | The Guardian


Obama's pointless war?

"Why suppose that clearing the Taliban out of Helmand for a few weeks or months will solve any problems – as opposed to cost many more lives? While their fighters can flit back to Pakistan, it's a mug's game – but a mug's game, too, if they merely stay in Pakistan and run their schemes from there. The crucial mistake, made almost unthinkingly by both Brown and Obama, is to conflate that infinitely porous border, with its caves, ravines and hiding holes, into the heart of the problem. It's not. It is merely an area of extreme military difficulty, a reason why "search and destroy" doesn't find much to destroy. The real problem lies far deeper than that.

But can the plotters who invented the Taliban now see their benighted baby die? Yes, they can. That is happening already inside Pakistan as the army finally abandons its reservations and moves wholeheartedly into action after the recapture of Swat. The people of Pakistan overwhelmingly know now who their enemy is. They want the bombings and killings that target them, in their streets and homes, stopped. And if, with a lot of help from New Delhi and a lot of active diplomacy from Washington, the historically lethal confrontation with India can be pushed into history, what is there left for the Taliban inside Afghanistan, a puppet state without its old puppet masters?"