“US Frustrated by Taliban Resilience”, will a few more battalions using the same strategy win?

[jody]

US Frustrated by Taliban Resilience

The Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and ferocity that are sowing alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world's most powerful armies at bay.

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After visiting Afghanistan two weeks ago, Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, described the situation here as "precarious and urgent." His Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, has said, "Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive."

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"The goal of terrorism is to terrify and to intimidate," said a Western official in Kabul. "It is not to take and hold territory. It is not to dominate institutions. It is not to win the allegiance of the populace. It is to terrify. And the tactics of the Taliban are more terroristic even than at the end of the last fighting season."

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Jihad does not recognize borders, the Taliban say, and indeed much unites the Taliban on both sides of the border. They share a common Pashtun heritage, a longstanding disregard for the Afghan- Pakistani border drawn by the British, and the goal of establishing a theocracy that would impose Islamic law .

Taliban on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border share a common Pashtun heritage, 39.4% to 42% of Afghanistan's population, that ignores boundaries set by colonial powers.

How do our presidential candidates propose to overcome that minor detail without several thousand more military deaths, deaths not shared by the wealthy who control our governments or politicians who pontificate and procrastinate but never die in battle?