Afghanistan: Where soldiers go to die

Don't get me wrong, the United States of America can win the war in Afghanistan in a matter of hours if they wanted, "nuke 'em." If you are willing to kill every single Afghan, then time to go home. If you are not ready to do that, then .... it is time to go home.

It is a very simple concept: Afghanistan is a country that cannot be conquered. The Russians tried before (and they are much closer geographically than we are) and failed. You cannot conquer the people's hearts, not when their hearts believe you are an infidel that will burn in hell no matter what you do. America has done many things for Alqaeda and the Taliban to use in recruiting new fighters, and if America tries to take those fighters out, those fighters' family member will become fighters. You can never beat an enemy that is willing (and prefers) to die.

Sending more troops into Afghanistan is as worthless as putting gas into a leaky tank, but we keep ignoring that fact and hope that one of those "strategies" will work. Before sending anymore 18 year old high school graduates to die, we have to decide on the ultimate goal in this war: Capturing Bin Laden? Killing all Alqaeda members? Killing all Taliban members? Killing all extremists? That last one coincides with wiping out most of the population. Lets not forget that this is a country where children played with Osama Bin Laden action figures.

Killing Bin Laden will do more harm than good (if he is still alive). Imagine the "revenge" pamphlets that will flood the streets of Afghanistan. Not to mention, Bin Laden is so old that he might die of natural causes any minute now, killing him will only allow the next murderer in line to take his place. Whoever that person maybe, however different they are from Bin Laden, the one thing that they have to stay constant with Osama on: Killing Americans.

Outside of the goal of getting Bin Laden, nothing else could be done. We cannot take down Alqaeda, the Taliban or the extremists because we are just starting to recognize that they are all the same. No matter how many tribes we try to bribe to help us, we cannot change the mindset of these people, we cannot make them think like we do. This is one leaky tank that cannot be fixed.