Not giving the General what he ask for is a recipe for defeat!

Add that to ‘rules of engagement’ which gives medals for not fighting…

Advantage: Taliban

Islamists know America will abandon Afghanistan eventually

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

7:09 p.m., Thursday, October 14, 2010

An Army general has summed up the military challenge in Afghanistan: "We can't kill our way out of this thing."

Maj. Gen. John Campbell commands Regional Command East (R.C. East) along the border with Pakistan, an insurgent heartland and one of the hottest areas in Afghanistan. As the general said at a Wednesday press conference, the environment in R.C. East is, using the contemporary vernacular, "very, very kinetic. If you go up into Kunar [province], up into the Pech River Valley, they're fighting every single day up there ... very, very kinetic to this day."

If killing the enemy won't bring an end to the war, peace will have to come through negotiations. Contacts with the Taliban have been reported for years, the latest coming from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This week, he told al Jazeera that he had "personal meetings with some Taliban leaders, and my colleagues from my government have had some meetings in and outside Afghanistan with the Taliban." He noted that those had been unofficial contacts, "countryman to countryman," as he described them, but that the time had come to "talk with the Taliban at a fixed address and with a more open agenda to tell us how to bring peace to Afghanistan and Pakistan."