http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2046/In-Jihad-We-Trust.aspx
The AP reports:
A trend of Afghan treachery that has taken the lives of six American troops over the past week is poisoning a key ingredient in the international coalition’s formula for winding down the decade-long war: trust.
Not just “a” key ingredient. “Trust,” according to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, is the “coin of the realm” in Afghanistan. “Lose the people’s trust,” he wrote in early 2009, “and we lose the war.” That was non-sense then and it is non-sense now. It is little wonder, then, that the COIN war the US has led all these year in pursuit of Afghan trust has failed so miserably.
Why? From the archive, February 19, 2009:
The buzzword on Afghanistan is “trust.”
Having routed the Taliban, liberated millions, midwived a (Sharia-supreme) constitution, assisted in elections, propped up a government and routed the Taliban some more, all the United States needs now to win victory in Afghanistan is to win the “trust” of the Afghan people.