Reply #20: I know that you know this..

[Fumesucker]

America will never put the non-military resources into Afghanistan long term that it will take. Afghanistan is not a military problem anywhere near as much as it is a social, economic and cultural series of problems.

At some point we will end up walking away, America and Americans simply are totally unable to think long term enough to do this, our culture's ability to focus on the long term has been largely destroyed by corporatism focus on the immediate bottom line and popular entertainment which brings all problems to a close within at most a few hours.

Afghanistan will take a minimum of a couple of decades of intensive effort, most of which will not be military. We don't have the focus and stick-to-it-tivity to quote Jiminy Cricket to do the job as needs to be done. You can't forcibly bring a culture from the seventh century to the twenty first from the outside in a few years.

Better to cut our losses now than five or eight years from now after we have spent vastly more sums of blood and treasure for naught.