The undertitle should be: in a war we'll never win.
US Defense secretary Gates said in the New York Times in this article that NATO forces don't know how to fight the insurgents. The names of the countries who are operating in the south are mentioned. The Netherlands is one of them.
In the Los Angeles Times Gates is quoted
It seems to me that the US defense secretary doesn't know anything about the mission and possibility of the NATO forces being in South Afghanistan.
The Netherlands lost 2 soldiers on January 12 in so called friendly fire.
They were well trained men, but with 20 and 22 years of age they were only kids.
These soldiers were not trained for the Fulda Gap. The LA Times thinks that European NATO forces are trained nowadays to stop a Soviet invasion.
If that's true the countries united in NATO including the USA should blame themselves and should redefine the mission statement.
Maybe Mr. Gates never heard of a Quick Reaction Force, the Provincial Reconstruction Team and the real mission.
Wasn't it the US who don't know itself how to deal with insurgents in Iraq until David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Baghdad who co-wrote the military's new counterinsurgency field manual? And this manual might be implemented in south Afghanistan? Don't they know that you never win a war from insurgents with a hit & run tactic? It's a way of living they're better adapted to compared with us staying in Afghanistan for a 3 months period.
The Netherlands has to get out there immediately, else they face a defeat like Srebrenica in 1995. But instead we extend our mission with 2 years, until the end of 2009.
Hopefully we can say mission accomplished by then.
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