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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