Afghanistan’s Solution Primarily Political, Not Military, General Says

U.S. Marines serving with 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO, International Security Assistance Force cross an expansion bridge while on patrol in the Helmand province of Afghanistan on July 1, 2008. DoD photo by Cpl. Randall A. Clinton, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released)

From U.S. Department Of Defense:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2008 – The war against radical Islamists operating in Afghanistan will be won, despite the challenges, the senior U.S. military officer posted there said today.

“I am more convinced than ever that the insurgency will not win in Afghanistan,” Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force for the past four months, told Pentagon reporters. McKiernan replaced Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill.

McKiernan is in Washington to meet with President Bush, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other senior civilian and military leaders. The White House is conducting a governmentwide review of Afghanistan operations and strategy, as insurgents there have ramped up operations against U.S., coalition and Afghan forces.

Bush has announced a withdrawal of about 8,000 U.S. troops from Iraq that’s to occur early next year. The success of the surge of forces campaign in Iraq has produced a decrease of violence there by 80 percent compared to last year.

McKiernan, meanwhile, has requested that additional troops be sent to Afghanistan to help quell rising violence in some eastern and southern provinces committed by Taliban, al-Qaida and other terrorists.

The Taliban, who routinely beheaded people who didn’t agree with their radical Islamic philosophy, ran Afghanistan for five years until they were kicked out of power by U.S. and coalition forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. The Taliban cooperated with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist group and allowed it to establish training camps in Afghanistan.

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My Comment: The final solution is always political .... but military action is what sets the political battlefield .... and for the moment no one is interested in negotiations or compromises.