UPDATE III “Task force 121 transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan” according to AM Kansas city Radio.Â
This from my Saturday hodgepodge, with new updates that are leading to very interesting developments in Afghanistan. The original article described the upsurge of offense to prep for NATO force takeover, but since then it appears there’s more to it than that.Â
While the MSM will paint these attacks as losses for the US and the Afgan government of Karzai, they are largely victories. Masses of taliban fighters are being called back by Mullah Omar and others, and they are dieing in masses. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
“In the last two months, the Taliban have been conducting larger attacks this year than they did during the same time last year,” Pace said. “The problem for the Taliban is that as they have gotten larger groups together, they have become much bigger targets. And they have lost about 300 Taliban in the last two months during those operations. So the Taliban are a tactical problem for the coalition in Afghanistan. [But] the coalition in Afghanistan is a strategic problem for the Taliban.”
In the end to win in Afghanistan you have to do three things: Kick everyone’s ass, demonstrate that you will persist, and then buy all the local warlords to your side. The warchest needs to re-open in southern Afghanistan, and we need to use it to corner Omar and potentially Bin Laden. This is how the Russians failed, they did not persist and they did not buy allies.
The last time the region was truly conquered, Alexander the Great fought long and hard against a nimble opponent who always ran away to fight another day. In the end Alexander bought off all of the Grey Wolf’s allies and thus conquered him, as detailed in Steven Pressfield’s great book, “The Virtue of War“. Alexander ended the campaign by defeating Spitamenes Oxyartes and marrying his daughter, Roxana, who bore his son Alexander IV.