"Taliban Have Begun Their ‘Spring Offensive’ In Afghanistan" Topic

"The Taliban have launched their annual spring offensive, detailing the style of attacks they plans to use on Afghan and foreign forces. The fighting comes as troops attempt to recover from a recent military base attack.

Afghanistan's Taliban vowed to ramp up assaults on coalition and Afghan security forces in a statement Friday announcing the start of their annual spring offensive.

The group said that they were changing tactics for this year's operation, naming it "Operation Mansour" after the group's late leader who was killed last year in a US drone strike.

The operation "will differ from previous ones in nature, and will be conducted with a twin-tracked political and military approach," the Taliban said…"

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Amicalement
Armand

It all seems so pointless and futile (from a US perspective). We will soon be on the second generation of Afghans to be joining the Taliban and fighting western occupiers as well as the Afghan government soldiers. When will outsiders realize that there's no point to seeking a foreign-imposed solution to Afghan troubles? Afghans have no where else to go -- they stay and fight. Foreign forces merely provide recruiting incentives and a casus belli. Al Qaeda and the Bin Laden organization have been demolished and it's time to remove outside militaries and let the Afghans settle their own affairs, as bloodily as they wish it to be, because what is being accomplished by NATO otherwise beyond waste, corruption, and increased misery?

A smarter policy would be to play the Afghan game and co-opt the opposition, buy off your enemies -- it would be cheaper than fighting them, but no one in Washington seems capable of comprehending that.

Piper909:

Buying off the armed opposition is a net cash outflow and thus is bad business. But fighting a forever-war with munitions and weapons sales is a boon, a transfer of wealth within the US economy from public tax coffers to private hands. The cost in American and Afghan lives and wounded has been externalised to the public sector too. This is thus a very sound business model and we have recently heard that there is little place for "heart" in business. Welcome to War Inc. and the carnage machine. Blood is the lubricant which keeps it humming along.

Rod Robertson.