How can this problem be best resolved?

Remove all US and NATO forces. Sit down in a closed door and very

private meeting with the leadership of The Taliban, Al Quida and the

puppet heads of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Relay the following message.

If one hair on one head of One american is harmed, and can be proved

to have been directly tied to Taliban or Al Quida. The country of Pakistan

and Afghanistan, Will cease to be. Not one soul will stand

in either country. End of Message. Turn around walk the hell out,

Let them see the missile silos with the co-ordinates of the strikes.

Let them make the call.

Yes I think there are moderates. But that's not the problem. The problem is that we went into the war without clear, open objectives. We tried to fight the war on the cheap, we didn't realize just how much trouble and expense it would be, and when our halfway measures didn't work, we just declared 'victory' and quit.

It began with President Bush announcing he wanted to create a 'broad based democracy' in Afghanistan. Which was a lie from the beginning. He really wanted to install a government of our own choosing. He didn't listen to his military experts who told him how much trouble that would be, how long it would take, how much it would cost, instead he listened to naive ideologues in the PNAC who had no military experience at all. He didn't come honestly to the American people and tell us that it would take years, it would take a national commitment, it would take sacrifices from all of us, instead he said it would take a week or two, maybe three, and not to worry, just go about our normal business, and here's another tax cut.

We couldn't win in Afghanistan or Iraq for the same reason we couldn't win in Vietnam or Korea. We didn't understand what we were up against. We were trying to fight WWII but this was a different situation, we weren't fighting an army in uniform but a whole people, defending their home and their lifestyle. We refused to negotiate or even consider the wants or needs of the people we were fighting. We didn't go in with clear objectives, so in the end we defined 'victory' by redefining the objectives. No president wants to just abandon a war that we aren't winning, so the wars become 'quagmires' that we can't win and can't quit.

The US has been on a continuous war footing since WWII. We now spend more on military and weapons than the whole rest of the world combined. The PNAC believed this should give us an easy bid for world hegemony, but they were wrong. We are just beginning to see that military superiority doesn't buy us much in the modern world. We could have gotten more by -funding- the Taliban (which, by the way, we used to do. Also the Ba'athist regime in Iraq!)

Once, some free-lance general (I forget his name) in the golden triangle approached the US government with a plan to sell them the majority of his opium production.

He came armed with sound calculus that proved, the sale would actually be cheaper than fighting the war on drugs and rehabilitating addicts. He also promised to keep order in the region so that conventional, legitimate business could grow as a by-product of the cash sale, less drugs on the street and greater stability in the region.

The US said no. An opportunity lost? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The dutch sent troops to Afghanistan but, without bullets. They brought farm implements instead. For what? Vegetables? Poppies?

A trip to Amsterdam might enlighten.

They may beat us to the punch on a plausible idea.

We have to commit to win or walk away now. I can't envision thousands of our boys killed in a war with a half-way, politically acceptable war. If the Taliban need to go, take them out. If you don't care, leave them alone and try to isolate the whole country from contaminating outside their borders.

Either way the non-Taliban in Afghanistan suffer greatly.

There is no way to win a military war/conflict in Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan also.

They are the same country culturally. The imaginary line in the sand drawn by the British 100 years ago means nothing to them.

Here is the real problem as I see it, we the U.S.A are treating this war just exactly like the Vietnam war and all of the other wars after our civil war. None of these wars were ever declared by Congress, and none of the wars our soldiers fought so bravely in didn't involve any nation attacking our nation. None of the wars we have fought in involved the national security of our nation and therefore we as a nation had no business at all of getting involved with the civil wars, or in this case the religious wars of the 2 small nations involved. Our government needs to stop getting our nation involved in wars of other nations and only get us involved in a war when we are attacked directly by another nation.