Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

A top Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, was interviewed by the most popular television station in Afghanistan, Shamshad TV, and he said: 

"We will not allow the US to discuss any of our own internal affairs; we are only talking to them about the withdrawal of their forces."

It makes it clear that all that hoopla about progress at the peace talks was pure spin. The only hope for peace is if we get the hell out of their country without making any demands at all- except not to be shot at while we're leaving. 

In other words, we need to get out the way the Soviets got out- because they gave up; they lost. We need to stop thinking that we can spin it into something that is going to look and sound like victory. That's not going to happen. 

The fighting continues relentlessly in Afghanistan with people dying every day. The Taliban does not try to engage against the U.S. militarily, and the only way the U.S. engages against the Taliban is with drone attacks. And that's because the U.S. has zero tolerance for U.S. casualties.  And, the reason they have zero tolerance for U.S. casualties is because every U.S. casualty becomes news. Every time a U.S. soldier dies in Afghanistan, it makes headlines here, and they don't want that. But, you can't win that way. Either the war will go on forever, or we have to get out. That's it. There are no other options.

So, we are fighting our war with proxies, and it leaves no chance for victory. And consider how poor the morale must be when it's Afghans fighting other Afghans. It is hardly surprising that many go over to the other side. It's the path of least resistance. 

And, in the meantime, did you know that in the midst of the fighting, the Taliban has its own National Agriculture and Livestock Commission?  And they are calling for a massive Spring campaign to plant trees throughout the country, particularly fruit trees. And they are calling for the Afghans to pull together and provide trees to the poor so that they can have a fruit tree too. 

The plain truth is that the Taliban has vast support among Afghans because they are culturally and religiously connected, and I mean deeply rooted. You can't defeat that.  All you can do is put enough soldiers there to get a stranglehold on the country, but then you have to keep strangling forever. It never ends. 

We lost this war when we started it. Even if we returned to having 100,000 troops there, there are 37 million Afghans, and most of them have guns. We can't possibly win. 

God damn us for ever going in there, and God damn us for staying.