As Karzai points out, this is a hearts and minds war. There is no way the US or NATO can occupy the entire country AND it's not unified enough to take the capital and have the war won.

It a hearts and mind situation the local population has to be respected, targets selected carefully, and collateral damage be limited. As Karzai points out very often, that hasn't been done and there is a heavy price to pay.

The US has historically been very careless with civilian interests. In the Civil War there was Sherman's March to the Sea, a 60 mile wide swath of total destruction.

In WWII the US firebombed numerous cities, targeting the civilian population. In Korea civilians in the way were sacrificed. And in Vietnam, the orders were that any dead Vietnamese was Viet Cong. Even the 2 year/olds. Millions died, the majority not fighting personnel.

In Iraq the US carries on with that tradition, and in Afghanistan. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are not situations like WWII or Korea. The solutions will be political, not military, and the US and NATO need to be perceived as good guys.

They aren't doing that, and the majority of the population allow the insurgency to live with them and operate from their facilitys.

That says even more about hearts and minds.

Slaughters such as the one in this thread provide the enemy with more energy, will and with a larger base. Unless you want to kill all of them we need to be more careful.

Arf