There were a lot of nice folks who answered the Shuttle landing question (I would have sworn it was done with computer with a human back-up). Someone will know the answer to this one.

It seems to me these Afghans can put up a heckuva fight when they want to. The chased the Russians out of their country, and the Russians ain't no Boy Scout troop. This is assuming the goodguys have training equivalent to the badguys, which I would think is a safe assumption, since it's very hard to tell them apart.

Now, we may want to motivate 'em, they could have done a lot more agains the Taliban and al-Qaeda than they did, but that isn't what the article says. It says "train", in "basic soldiery".

Regarding "basic soldiery", I can see they may not know how to march. I don't know about anyone out there, but I didn't march into a fight, did march to meals, or to a line, but in a battle "marching" would have made us sitting ducks, well, standing, or walking, or double-timing ducks, but still ducks.

They may not do a lot of push-ups, either. Or pull-ups, or running around a track. Their marksmanship seems just fine, they can clearly strip, clean and repair their weapons, as they've been keeping some very old, very used Russian stuff going for a long time. They are probably better at that than your basic GI, in that replacements for equipment may be more dear.

They know how to "read" and use their terrain, they communicate with radios, they can pull back as well as attack. They probe, test, attack and retreat on the ground well enough that most casualties seem to have come from the air.

I can understand sending a bunch of miners over there to demonstrate the latest equipment, but that's not border protection sort of stuff.

They don't have an air force or navy to use or maintain.

From the outside it looks as if they could "protect" their borders better should they choose to, but that they don't see the threat. What is it that the US will "teach" them in "basic soldiery" that they don't know or that they need?

Arf