Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
is the evidence at hand with respect to this:



Among Astan's Biggest Problems as perceived by Afghanis (chart posted earlier), "Interference of foreign countries" (I marked that item in the chart with an *) resulted in responses:

2006 - 1%
2007 - less than 1%
2008 - 3%

So, on the narrow issue as stated, the SMG has tossed the COL a fastball - I'd have to call it a strike, unless the COL has some evidence to the contrary.

The Afghanis' perception of higher prices (double-digit problem in 2008) might be due to inflation caused by US and other international spending in Astan, which would include a component of military spending. However, the same problem (if that is the cause, which is quite possible) would be magnified by a much larger civilian and FID effort (as some have proposed).

Added after last BW post: "PLENTY of evidence". Have to say this - fellow attorney: Make your case. Prove it.

Nice to see both of you back on this thread in fine form.

Regards

Mike
Ok, this is single source, and I don't offer this as conclusive by any means, but it is collaborative of the point I am making. In reading this summary of interviews with several Taliban members, there are subtle, yet important windows into how they think in how they phrase their comments.

Example:

Pg 41: Kahn: "The Americans and their Afghan allies..."

(If this were a revolution, I would expect him to say this in the opposite order)

Pg 41: Akhundzada: " There are famous Taliban poems about how mujahedin come to free villages from occupiers at the point of a bayonet."

(We should remember that Taliban motivation and purpose when we first invaded the country is very different than it is now as they come back to remove the invaders. Certainly they hope to take power and return to their fundamentalist Islamic approach, but while they may achieve the first, the latter will be much less likely in today's environment - particularly if the US remains engaged with whatever government emerges in Afghanistan, and does not isolate itself from a victor that it does not approve of)

Pg 41/42 Haqqani: " Between 2006 and 2009 I have personally raised hundreds of new recruits to join the resistance...The unpopularity of the Karzai regime helps us immensely. In 2005 some Afghans thought Karzai would bring positive change. But now most Afghans believe the Taliban is the future. The Resistance is getting stronger day by day."

Ok, like I said single source. Newsweek has an agenda, as do all of the men they spoke with. Take it with a grain or two of salt, but don't just discount what these men say. Hell, our intel guys quote everything that AQ puts out as if it were carved on stone tablets, and far more of the content of those carefully crafted bits of propaganda are BS than these candid comments from rank and file Taliban.

These guys are not AQ, and are fairly open about their disdain for the Arabs. We should be leveraging this. The Taliban could expel, capture, or kill AQ in a matter of days if they wanted to, certainly they could shut them down in Pashto lands quickly and indefinitely. I simply offer that we may have lost our perspective as to why we are in Afghanistan in the first place, and that by changing our approach to the Taliban we could most likely get much more quickly to an end of AQ in the region, and a relatively stable Afghanistan and Pakistan with legitimate, self-determined governments in place that are at worst neutral toward the US.

This a danger of a threat-centric approach that tends to expand the scope of an operation rather than limit it. Also the danger of "War on AQ" approach that leads to the tendency to try to make AQ connections to bring "threats" into the band of authorities for action.

When we start treating the Taliban more like a political party and less like a militant arm of AQ we will begin moving in the right direction.