Friday, October 10, 2008

Fighting talk is self-defeating

As the generals say there is no military solution, Obama and McCain should cut the rhetoric and get real about Afghanistan

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 09 2008

"John McCain talks a lot about victory. But his personal experience of military action encompasses only defeat. McCain's war was Vietnam, where he served courageously as a US navy pilot. Even so, he spent most of his time there in a prisoner of war camp. And as the world well knows, America's south-east Asian adventure ended in calamity.

A generation or two later, the lessons of history stubbornly unlearnt, the US is drifting into another Asian quagmire, this time in Afghanistan. Like Vietnam, the conflict is ideological – confronting communism then, confronting radical Salafi or Wahhabi Islam now.

This latest American war is also being fought asymmetrically; that is to say, highly-trained troops using the very latest military technology against highly-motivated irregular guerrilla bands. The US is propping up an ineffective and corrupt regime in Kabul, as was once the case in Saigon......"

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