Toughing It Out in Afghanistan

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Toughing It Out in Afghanistan

Wilber ; in collaboration with Elizab Foucher ; avec la collaboration de E. Bazin-Foucher Le royaume de l'insolence: Members of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Maori communities are advised that this catalogue contains names and images of deceased people. Book , Online - Google Books.

Health care is also getting better. Also, the violence in Afghanistan today is far less severe than it was in Iraq. Before the troop surge in , more Iraqi civilians were killed every month than have been killed from war-related violence in Afghanistan each year.

Five myths about the war in Afghanistan

In other words, Afghanistan is less than a tenth as violent as the Iraq of Communities were displaced and sectarian tensions were inflamed far more in Iraq than they have been in Afghanistan. This was a core philosophy for the incoming Bush administration in -- until the tide of history made George W.

Bush the president most preoccupied with nation-building since Harry Truman. The debate about whether the U. The terminology has shifted, to be sure, from "nation-building" to "stabilization and reconstruction" missions, but these include efforts to improve governance and the economy as well as security and stability. Among top civilian and military leaders, there is no real disagreement about whether the armed forces should engage in these types of activities -- at least not in situations such as Afghanistan, where the weakness of a state threatens American security.

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David Petraeus led the writing of the new counterinsurgency field manual, with its emphasis on protecting local populations and helping build up indigenous institutions, it was then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who, in a November directive, wrote that "stability operations are a core U. We should negotiate with the Taliban.

There is nothing wrong with negotiating with elements of the Afghan resistance, especially at the local level. If they are willing to renounce violence and accept the authority of the central government as well as the temporary presence of international forces, we can allow them to rejoin society, obtain jobs and perhaps, in some cases, hold government positions. Many insurgents who are motivated less by ideology than by money, opposition to the government or tribal rivalries may fit this bill. But a major compromise with the central Taliban leadership is not only unlikely -- it's a bad idea.

The Taliban is not interested in negotiation and is not the sort of organization with which the Afghan government or the United Sates should ever compromise. Its extremist ideology is misogynous and intolerant, and its history in Afghanistan is barbaric. Most important, the Taliban is extremely unpopular among Afghans.

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President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly stated his willingness to negotiate with Taliban leaders willing to renounce insurgency, while British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called for some form of political settlement with the Taliban and other insurgent groups, provided that our core interests are protected. But in general, NATO and Afghan forces will have to establish more battlefield momentum before widespread negotiations become plausible.

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Any talks must be pursued from a position of strength, so that deals will involve convincing the Taliban to lay down arms rather than pretending that it could share power while clinging to its current ideology. There is no exit strategy or exit schedule. Many Americans, though, have the opposite concern -- that this war is open-ended.

But if the new strategy being implemented by Gen. Stanley McChrystal is successful, we will see clear evidence of that by late or We should then be able to contemplate major reductions in the U.

The first is to clear and hold key strategic areas, as with the current operation in Marja.

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