http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2182/Time-to-Declare-Victory-over-Madness-and-Come-Home-from-the-COIN-Crusades.aspx
From the Sydney Morning Herald a report titled “”Fears over Afghan army, Taliban collusion.” As you read it, ask yourself at what point in this tragically familiar, numbingly repetitive cycle of Afghan army/Taliban collusion do Western commanders, both civilian and military, bear responsibility for KNOWING FULL WELL that such collusion is commonplace?
In the act of betrayal described below, the target of the raid mounted by Australian troops and their Afghan “partners” was a Taliban leader of 100 men from a handful of villages. Ask yourself also: How is that those 100 measly fighters in the Afghan bush magnetically draw the concentrated might of the Western democracies? Better: tell me how is it that those 100 fighters threaten the Western democracies in the first place? The strategic vision driving this and other such assaults is a joke. The COIN strategy of remaking Afghanistan in our PC image has failed. It is time to declare victory over madness, over delusion, and leave. That’s a “winning strategy” according to an ex-Green Beret friend with multiple stints in Afghanistan, who wrote: “By ‘winning’ I mean leaving Afghanistan as soon as possible, burning in place or blowing up all our materiel we can’t carry with us quickly.”
Ten years on, we can now say with certainty that, try as we might, we did not win the people’s “hearts and minds”; we did not win the people’s “trust” — the fundamental goals of the Bush-Petraeus-Obama-Mullen-McChrystal policy. This failure was preordained by the decision to ignore the truth about Islamic culture, by our arrogant assumption that we could win over its collectivist, supremacist, misogynist, totalitarian heart with bribery and blood, with self-sacrificial ROEs and training procedures that have killed innumerable troops. The fact is, COIN didn’t work in Afghanstan — just as COIN didn’t work in Iraq (or anywhere analogous). But we fight on till our deadline, and send our Sgt. Diddams into danger, day after day.
To what end?