I dunno. It's not 1939, and this conflict is not against a nation, but rather against a mind set.

Just in passing, if it were 1939, I would kick the French in the ass and tell them to attack, attack, attack Germany's weak western front which was only lightly guarded during the Wermacht's conquest of Poland. In fact, the French armies advanced a couple of miles, then meekly turned around and hunkered back down in that monument to futility, the Maginot Line.

If the French had acted aggressively during the “Sitzkrieg,” it's possible that the Wermacht might have been bloodied, Poland might have had a chance to regroup, and the entire course of WWII changed.

Back to the present, mMany knowledgeable analysts advised against a bombing campaign in Afghanistan because it was unlikely to work, there would be “collateral damage” (civilian casualites), and it might have a counter-productive effect, i.e. rather than reducing the number of terrorists, we could actually increase their ranks, and sow the seeds for more terrorist action against the USA far into the future.

So far as we can tell at present, these predictions were pretty accurate.

Unfortunately, we probably do not have the luxury of years to rearrange the rocks of the Hindu Kush before the entire Muslim world comes unglued.

What really hangs in the balance here is not so much Afghanistan as it is the stability of the entire region of SE Asia, with the wobbly regime in Pakistan and its restive masses, many of whom are Pashtun, its nuclear arsenal, and its long-standing emnity with its nuclear neighbor, India.

Even in time of war, poor tactics or short-sighted strategies deserve criticism.

sp