Note the 'frigid Afghan winter' reference...and who it's impacting.
Abdul Rahman Akhund has been battling US and Afghan government troops for three long, hard years. He misses raising his kids among the quiet pomegranate orchards he used to tend at home. With another frigid winter setting in, and a new US offensive being launched this week, this weary Taliban fighter says he's ready to come in from the cold.
"If the government will let us peacefully return to our villages and our children, we will come," he says. "We are tired living on the run in these snowy mountains." His fellow tribesman, Sarwar Akhund, goes one step further: Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and terror kingpin Osama bin Laden, he charges, tricked followers like him into believing they were fighting a holy war against infidels, "when really they just wanted to consolidate their own seats of power." If allowed back into society, he pledges to "do whatever I can" to help kill or capture the fugitive leaders....there's a reason I value persistence so highly.
See, the brutal Afghan winter is chewing up hostile forces in Afghanistan, just like them liberals and leftists types predicted back in 2001....
In all seriousness, this is great news. Given all the problem children across the border in Pakistan, however, it's still going to be slow going as Afghanistan builds a national force, creates a national economy (hence the road projects), keeps pursuing infiltrators from Pakistan continue in running battles, and finds that more and more locals begin to insist on their right to be left alone by a conflict that becomes more and more outside/inside vs. inside/inside.
If there's going to be progress in Afghanistan, it's going to be slow and persistance will be key. But as we've seen, it has come.
Joe: 100% spot-on.
We've been slow, but we've been persistent. And successful. I think the relative slowness (compared to critics' so-called "expectations", anyway) has actually been a key to our success so far. We haven't rushed in willy-nilly trying to fix everything everywhere right away.
If we keep this up, there might even be elections in Afghanistan some day.
(What? There WERE? When? Are you sure? I didn't hear about that on the news...)
Infrared sensors make lighting up a fire to stay warm a very risky decision.
I would have to say that given Afghanistan's historic welcome to outsiders our progress has bee surprisingly rapid. The key as Murdoc points out is not to try to fix everything. We have focused on what is important and left most of the work to the Afghans. Interesting how the more "advanced" country requires more troops to occupy it.
This presents an interesting contrast to one of Michael Scheuer's main theses in Imperial Hubris. He asserts that democracy and stability in Afghanistan are fools' errands, and that Karzai will end up like Najibullah (rope+lamppost) or, at best, in a remake of US Embassy Saigon, 1975. The Taliban, you see, weren't all that bad.
Scheuer was lionized by parts of the MSM for brilliantly bashing Bush on 9/11 and Iraq, and for (anonymously) standing bravely against the bullies who tried to suppress him. The better the US does with Afghanistan, the more that part of his work gets a trip down the memory hole. Some of Scheuer's writing seems provocative and well-founded to me, but it would be nice if the Bush-haters in the media could remember that even fellow Bush-haters are, occasionally, wrong.
AMac, I think the book is kind of weird, but the funny thing is that Scheuer turned out to be sort of right, but only in a political sense. He underestimated the extent to which Karzai would be able to coopt the "good Taliban" and the extent to which the U.S. would be able to kill the hardliners. What happened in the elections is what Scheuer said would happen via violence: the Pashtuns returned to power. Only a few hundred Panjshiris voted for Karzai, and he has to be careful not to piss them off. Likewise, he has to tread gingerly with his poppy eradication program, i.e., spray not.