Why not send in the Afghan National Police? Maybe it’s past their bedtime?

21 May 2010 – The United Nations today for the first time named the military forces and rebel groups that are the most persistent violators of children in armed conflicts, identifying groups in Asia, Africa and Latin America which continue to recruit child soldiers and use them to wage war.
…
By contrast, some groups have been named for the first time as recruiting or using children in armed conflict. These include the Afghan National Police, the rebel Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Somalia’s Hizbul Islam militia.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34778&Cr=coomaraswamy&Cr1=

The good news is that the USA today confirmed it is conducting special ops inside of a number of countries in the Middle East, so that should work out well. Just kidding, it sucks, Obama is actually a bigger warmonger than Bush and we need to unite as citizens left and right and demand our troops come home.

The downside that may be getting ignored is that our occupation and certain foreign affairs policies are making us (Canada most specifically but the other coalition countries too) hated around the world. Idiots going on about Harper and flags on backpacks not realizing their support of this Liberal initiated invasion and occupation is seriously jeopardizing the security of Canadians and our reputation abroad.

You from the gov'mint? (See "Greetings government readers")

This is grim. One of the most disturbing aspects is the line about how by day it's the government, and "by night the Taliban". Part of Daniel Menard's plan for the Kandahar surge is to "own the night" — prevent the terrorizing of the population that goes on once the sun sets. But that is coming up hard against the need to prevent civilian casualties, which has led McChrystal to clamp down heavily on night ops.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't. It's very, very grim.

Invading Afghanistan was wrong from the start, in every category of wrong. As long as the military occupation continues, things will only get worse. The best timeline for withdrawal would have been not to go in at all. Second best is ASAP.

I'd have to say the biggest impediment preventing the operations success is the Taliban. You know: the organized resistance to our presence. The people fighting us.

The thing is we've been in Afghanistan for nine years. Why do we keep pretending this new strategy or that new initiative is going to radically change things, and then we'll be out in a year?

We should have pulled out after the Americans decided to invade Iraq.

It is obvious our attempts to remake this country were overly ambitious. Bringing democracy, liberating women, and stopping the opium business are all wonderful goals, but not possible without an occupation by hundreds of thousands of western troops and aid workers lasting for decades.

In hindsight, in 2002 we should have sat down with the Taliban and the warlords and said, “We don’t like being here, any more than you like us being here. So here’s the deal: You stop exporting terror and training terrorists, and our troops go home. If you want them, and if you can guarantee their safety we’ll send in the usual NGO.s with various aid and education programs. If you allow Al Qaeda to use your country as a base again, the aid stops and the carpet bombing starts. Do we have an understanding, gentlemen?”

In short, we needed a modest goal: security. Instead we embarked on a futile, open-ended exercise of imposing liberal democracy. As nice as it is, it’s not something that can be imposed at gun point.

Come on, read a history book s_c_f. Jody is making a very good point; when thousands of people were being killed when the towers fell, we should've done nothing. When Hitler bombed the crap out of Warsaw, invaded France, and started the Blitz in Great Britain, what did the U.K. and Canada do to stop it? Nothing. We didn't pay attention, never sent in troops, focused on our shallow partisan politics at home, and the whole situation fixed itself without us having to do a damn thing.

Idiot.

Exactly. All those purported goals were pretexts, anyway. Remember when government strategists were saying — quoted in major media — that (focus-group tested) humanitarian goals would make it easier to 'sell' the war to Canadians?

Oh, he certainly has a point in the sense that we (the West, not just Canada) would need to stay around for a LOOONG time yet to really "succeed" in Afghanistan in any meaningful way, but even as significant as our Canadian presence is, I don't think it's NEARLY significant enough that our leaving when we originally said we'd leave really makes much of a difference either way. Not to the big picture.

If we want to have a debate about staying in Afghanistan for several more decades, then that's another story all together. However, unless the debate is about Canada staying in Afghanistan at it's current commitment level for AT LEAST as long as we've already been there, and likely much, much longer, discussions of our date of withdrawal are, imho, pretty immaterial to the outcome of the mission.

I think your assessment of how long this would take if we were being realistic is probably pretty accurate, the problem is, I don't think many Western politicians (and particularly CANADIAN politicians) sold the war to the public as a commitment to Afghanistan for a length of time equivalent to half a century longer than we took fighting WWII.

Sarcasm my friend; the greatest weapon against ignoramuses.