When a person wears their Military General uniform, the symbolism does something to them. They start behaving like God, like any other powerful position. Rip their uniform off and expose their humanness and maybe society will look at them differently and not take so many orders from them. General McChrystal is one of them. He wants to conquer Afghanistan and he is using all kinds of dirty tricks to get his way. His report was leaked to put Obama in a difficult position and push him to give in to his demands of 40,000 more troops. It turns out that McChrystal actually asked for 80,000 troops. How is he going to do the conquering? This is not clear.
How to overcome eight years of botched war is beyond comprehension. After tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed, will Afghanis trust a foreign army? I doubt it. I have said this before and I will say it again, unless the local population is on your side you can never win a war, especially given the history of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires (rough terrain, tenacious fighters). Someone needs to put General McChrystal and General David Petraeus, who are putting so many American and NATO allied forces' lives at risk, in their place.
The only achievement so far is that, besides further destabilizing Afghanistan, Pakistan has been destabilized and because of its involvement in the US war, Pakistanis are constant victims of the Taliban's deadly attacks. More innocent lives are being lost. Also, Pakistan is a nuclear power and the attack on Military Headquarters in Rawalpindi is very scary. Something needs to be done to stabilize Pakistan for the sake of Pakistan and world peace. As far as the war in Afghanistan is concerned, diplomacy may be the only solution left for face-saving.
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