There has never been more than 20,000 Taliban fighters, there is now less than 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. We've been there for 8 years. We have 100,000 troops there, plus another 100,000 "contractors". We have control of the air and the only major weapons systems in the area. And the Taliban are resurgent. Desertion in the Afghan Defense force is over 50% and retention after expiration of enlistment is 10%. Afghan commanders have sold their troops' ammo. The Taliban are using the Afghan army boot camp to train their fighters. That way, when they defect, they take their uniforms and weapons, too. They can't defend themselves, and we can't turn a 14th century tribal culture into a 21st Century democracy in a few years by bombing them.
The hard-core have bugged out to Pakistan, and we certainly can't invade there. Our military is stretched to the breaking point. One major reason we left Vietnam was that our military was collapsing.
The Soviets had over 100,000 troops in the country (at any one time), and lost 14,500 dead and 54,000 wounded. They lost 330 choppers and 150 tanks. A million Afghans died. Two million were displaced. The Afghans were firing at the Soviet tanks while they were crossing the border back into Soviet territory. They will do the same to us.
Then there's the money. 1 soldier = $1 Million per year. 100,000 soldiers = $100 Billion... Plus over $600 Billion for the military budget. We pissed away 2 $Trillion on the Iraq War, and we've got about $650 Billion into Afghanistan. We simply cannot afford it. No more wasted money. No more wasted lives.
Then there's the "moral" dilemma. From a former Petraeus advisor:
"the US had killed 14 mid-level or lower level al-Qaeda leaders since 2006 but the strikes had killed 700 civilians. "That's a hit rate of two per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral."' We can't bomb or "drone" our way to morality.
Sorry for the copy & paste here, but the Commandant of the Marine Corps during the first part of my time in the Corps says it better than I can...
`I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these (Third World) nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the `haves' refuse to share with the `have-nots' by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed down their throats by Americans.' –
Gen. David Shoup, United States Marine Commandant Medal of Honor recipient.
