Well duh! I mean even in Vietnam, where the U.S. exfoliated half the country to deny the guerrillas their cover....we lost!!!
What is the U.S. going to do in Afghanistan? Flatten the mountains?
A few weeks ago, I saw my first Bollywood film: "As God is my Witness." It was basically a love story , set in Afghanistan, and complicated by the many, many ties of kinship/obligation/fealty that gives life its course and meaning in that neck of the woods. It was not a great movie. But it was completely focused on these intersecting and sometimes contradictory alliegances; it was fascinating to watch how much detailed was lavished on working this stuff out; it was actually what the movie was about.
And the U.S. is going to be able to understand, negotiate with, and subdue people who have these kinds of relations? Who are fighting on their own turf? Who are able to live on 500 calories a day? By doing what: indiscriminately killing and starving civilians.
I don't think so.
Joanna