"Who lost Afstan?"

I point the finger of blame not so much at our government but at citizens. It is a sad fact of life that far too many of us don't have the balls for a tough fight.

Far too many of us are lazy and contented. We want instant gratification and when the fight gets tough we want to bail out. Look what happened to Bush. He quite rightly took the fight to the heartland of the enemy, and in the end got precious little credit for it thanks to a left lib media that tore him to shreds.

I have seen this before.....
In Viet Nam we won militarily but lost the battle for the hearts and minds...of the home front. A civilian population which is no longer willing to sustain ANY casualties.........
Part of the problem is a seditious media and treacherous academia....but at the base it becomes the people.

We can blame the MSM and the tiny but vocal lobby groups like pacificists and the no-war-at-any-cost groups. But the average citizen never seemed to be engaged about why we were there and the good that was done. The usual messengers would not carry the message, although it was out there. Does it seem that Canadians really are just incurious stupid sheep, who if they aren't fed information like pablum, they can't be bothered to find out?

I'm afraid that's probably the case. They care more about Tiger Woods than Af'stan.

I am not anti war but I think it is time we pulled out, or reduced our commitment to a much smaller contingent who are only tasked with slapping down al Quida/taliban forces if they get back into the business of using Afstan as a base for attacks against us.

We are never going to make them civilized. I don't think we are ever going to put in any form of civil society institutions that look anything like ours.

We will always beat them on the battlefield but we have to achieve our political goals to achieve victory. That is never going to happen. We have been there for ten years, WWII only took six!! I am not saying that we haven't got the stomach for a long war, but if we can't train an Afghan army and police force in the time that it took to put a million Canadians and ten million Americans under arms, its never going to happen.

The war against Islam is going to be the defining conflict of the next century. To win it we need to stop muslim immigration, and deport any muslim who is here who steps out of line. They can do what ever they want anywhere else, and as long as they are not doing it here, we win.

I did support the war effort in Afghanistan for quite a while but I'm beginning to believe that this war cannot be won by the West. We're dealing with a Muslim country with a corrupt government and I'm afraid that as soon as the NATO forces withdraw, which they must eventually, Afghanistan will be just back to the way it was.

We lost the war the second we let Islam back into the Afghan government. Taliban light isn't a victory for the Afghan people that everyone in Canada with two eyes can see. If what we're trying to defend is already a rotten government then there's no point.

If the war was one for establishing enduring freedom and justice in a brutally oppressive region then the support would still be there.

grok--on the money comment.
Sorry Kate--but the dumbing down of society points direcrly to the "Femanist TAKEOVER OF EDUCATION" and the leftovers of PET'S 'Just society'. I work with a femanist who can't understand why her son is always being picked on and can't seem to get ahead.
Tried to explain that white Testicles are the reason he will always be put down. Racism is working well in Ontario. It is now OK to estlablish a Gulag based on skin colour or reilgous belief (Muslim only-- and any other religion not based in the 7th Century are not welcome o sign on to our "Diveity world".

The real deciding factor in the Allied Victory of WW2 was not so much the Manhatten Project as the combination of the demographic makeup of Canada, The USA and the USSR.
The available industrial and raw material resources of those three were also a big factor. The Manhatten project was just a result of those resources.
Currently that demographic advantage has expired in all three nations. We simply do not have enough military age males for military or industrial service.
India and China do and are more sympathetic to us than to the mad muzzies. Plus both nations are booming economies. Care must be taken to ensure they are allies...and our allies.

If anyone wonders where this negotiation with the Taliban is likely to head, I suggest they read the last couple of chapters in Stanley Karnow's VIETNAM: A History. The Western World is in the initial stages of turning over the Afghannis to the tender mercies of the Taliban.

Here's the process: go through the motions of negotiation; pretend a satisfactory solution has been arrived at; retreat/exit; watch the enemy take over.

Jamie McMaster. I agree with you. We can't negotiate with the taliban, compromising with evil is evil. But even if we managed to have democratic elections in Afstan they might actually vote for a taliban like government that is hostile to the west. Therefore, why bother?

Let's face it guys and gals...Iraq and Afghanistan will not be a normal democratic society. To even dream of attempting to do that, we would have to do away with Islam. Muslim women in Canada are still subjected to Shria law, how he heck are we ever going to change the Middle East....Neven..Nunca.

Let's build one big large army/air force base in Iraq/Afghanistan and the let the country unfold as it may. If we see one group taking over that are a threat to the West...Bombs Away. Then we head back to our base and wait for the next threat. Taht would solve the problem of terrorist groups setting up training bases, etc.

Our casualities would be just about nil... the cost would be bearable. You cannot change a backword ignorant society so why are we fooling ourselves.

We could do the same in Somolia and other countries that are becoming more inclined to stage terrorist attacks against the West.

Once we have set our minds to doing what I said above, terrorists groups will realize that they will never be able to take over the government and run the country becasuse sitting right there in the middle of this country is a big army base waiting to bomb any group that takes over.

To me is quite simple...let's stop trying to change the things we cant change and stop being so righteous.

Bush lost this war as soon as he idiotically decided to turn it into a nation building experiment. By putting dozens of targets on 'no strikes lists' and plowing a ton of money into reconstruction. US soldiers have only been further constrained by engagement restrictions since then.
Would the yahoos who think we are actually at war with Islam please shut up? If 3 billion people were at war with us, we would not experience a few casualties every couple of weeks. You can't win a war with Islam. And keeping Islam out of the Afghan government is similarly idiotic; the whole country is Islamic. Deal. Lastly, a giant military base in that country would just set up for more costly and intractable war. Buy their opium, kill a bunch of Taliban/Al-quaeda, and then leave. We can always re-invade later if necessary.

LBJ lost the war at home by over-selling the progress of affairs in country and under-selling why 'we' were fighting there in the first place. Vietnam was the right war at the right time - it was the politicians who lost it.

The same can be said for what potentially could happen in Afstan and Iraq. Thankfully, our enemies are not propped up by a cold-war sponsor, but then 'we' are far less willing to pay the price in blood and tears and sweat today than we were in the past.

Politicians need to be far more forthright in supporting our troops and the cause than they are and have been.

The larger problem is that we have thrown in with the rest of NATO and that organizations members are mainly from the failing states of the EU.

I do not know what it will take - what calamity and how big - for us to get some backbone and decide to continue this struggle until we are victorious ten, twenty or fifty years from now, but the more we dither the more costly it will be and the more in doubt will be who is utimately victorious.