I agree with the central point of Ebnelsons post... that the US........ ( And please.. in future... take it as read that for most purposes and issues likely to arise on this board...... that I include my own government too who are just as responsible, although thier ( our?) actions are on a smaller scale.......what you US guys do... right or wrong... This, the last, and the next British Government will support it whole heartedly... and send out a large fraction of our troops to fight and die beside yours.)

As I said, I agree, I do not think you'll win this war.

Why?

You're useing the wrong weaponry.

The best strategic "general" I've seen on this board yet is Mary Anne.

In 1997\8 the Pentagon held one of it's war-games, this time the enemy weren't massed Russian tank armies but a decentralised Zealous terrorist outfit given the codename "Orange".

Every time the Pentagons best people thought they had beaten thier virtual foe.. they found they had quickly re-generated on another front.....in the end they were reduced to begging the war-game planners to give "Orange" an Armoured division so they could have something to attack.

The Game concluded with "Orange" almost unscathed and intact.

For more info go this page

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4263802,00.html

( One day I'll learn some Html)

Of course The Pentagon learned some lessons from this excercise, but the chief lesson is one they cannot put into practise...........it's the same one the British Army learned in Northern Ireland... and the Israelis are learning on the West Bank..........and the US first learned, but has tried hard to ignore ever since, in Vietnam.

That "Peace through Superior Firepower" is a loseing stratagy today.

Politicians must sort this mess out, our elected representatives.

The military are a crutch for thier failures.

And what the policians need to do is go to these people... (The OBL's of this world and ask..."What are your grievances?....then come back........report to US ( the public ) and ask US what we want to do.

But they are not going to do that... because it would mean coming back to us and saying.. "look.. this stuff we've been telling you about ....(say)... the Palestinians for the last fifty years? It was mostly BS, lies and halftruths..the true situation is this............."

It would take statesmen of truly heroic stature to do that....Not even Dubya's own mother could claim he is that and keep a straight face.

Instead let me ask Mary Anne a question.

Mary Anne? The US has blasted off an estimated 2.5 billion dollars of armaments in Afghanistan, it's dropped a greater tonnage of explosive on Afghanis then it did during the whole of ww2 on Germany.

It has given 350 million in humanitarian aid.......

And ten thousand dollars compensation to families of those it it hass killed and injured accidentally.

Mary Anne... you have almost 3 billion dollars worth of resources.......A nation brutalised by 20 years of civil war...........A regime that rejects your values outright........and a powerful organisation, gaining recruits daily, that is convinced that America and all it stands for is a force for evil in the world.

Would you have used your resources differently?

A tough one I know... and unfair of me to ask...... but I'm sure you have an opinion worth shareing.

BTW..............perhaps one day we might discuss questions such as the "irish Famine" ( Though obviously not on a " Current Affairs" Board) What my (protestant English) ancestors did to your (Catholic-Irish) ones was beyond question, shameful.

But they did have thier reasons, and those reasons I'd like to discuss... please understand... I use the term "reasons"... NOT justifications.