Afghanistan

While at the Conservative party conference the issue of the Afghan war is little more then a sideshow in America it is at the top of the political agenda with the Whitehouse considering a request from the army to send some 30,000 more troops to the country. This is a difficult topic to write about because publishing details of a war strategy on the Internet is generally frowned upon.

That said I think it is a matter of common knowledge that NATO's current mission in Afghanistan is unwinnable. However if the mission is dramatically streamlined and considerably more then 30,000 US troops are deployed to lift the burden on some of the less qualified NATO allies then the current Afghan mission has a much greater chance of success then any previous Afghan mission.

Of course this raises the question of whether America is sure that it wants to win in Afghanistan. After all it was not the Taliban who carried out the Sept 11th attacks. They were carried out by Al Queda whose allegiance with the Taliban was largely manufactured by the Bush Whitehouse when it gave the Taliban an ultimatum to hand over Osama bin Laden knowing full well that they would be unable to complete a task the Americans themselves haven't managed in eight years. Meanwhile Al Queda continue to operate in Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and possibly parts of south America. To my mind that means that if America is going to spend the next decade, billions of dollars and possibly thousands of lives battling the Taliban in Afghanistan they're wasting effort fighting the wrong enemy for control of a country that doesn't even have any oil.