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How hard is it to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Very hard.

Dibbler

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How hard is it to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Very hard.

The arrival of 2014 promises to open the flood gates of prognostication about Afghanistan’s future as the long-planned withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces nears completion. Much stock has been placed in discerning Afghan attitudes toward their government and the Taliban as clues for anticipating future events. And with good reason. Counterinsurgency theorists (well, most of them) have argued that winning “hearts and minds” is a key, if not the key, to victory — or at least what passes for victory in these settings.

Now, new research shows that just how hard winning hearts and minds can be. Afghans who experience violence at the hands of NATO forces become less supportive of these forces and more supportive of the Taliban. But Afghans who experience violence at the hands of the Taliban don’t react nearly as strongly against the Taliban.

entire article here:

How hard is it to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Very hard.
 
How hard is it to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Very hard.

entire article here:

How hard is it to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Very hard.

My state has (today) been selected as a testing area for drones. We can paste a few drones in an average Las Vegas neighborhood and test how this might impact (pun intended) the hearts and minds of the survivors.

I have picked a few targets and will be sending my suggestions to the DOD. I'll let you know how it works out.
 
When one of the first things Americans do when taking over in Afghanistan is to rebuild the former supply line for heroin trafficking in the world at Tajikistan–Afghanistan bridge at Panji Poyon, thus connecting once again the planet with a stable supply of this drug, its hard for the people you want to win over to believe you are on the moral high ground. This, and many other examples, dictate the trevails of turning this region into an area where the enemy once stood against such despotism, as diabolical as they might be.
 
You do not win the hearts and minds of those whose culture is built around marrying close family members.

period.
 
It's almost like people get upset or something when you're repeatedly dropping bombs in their country and killing innocent people.
 
You can not fix an inferior culture that does not respect the most basic human rights.

Might as well be trying to win the hearts and minds of a school of piranhas.
 
It's almost like people get upset or something when you're repeatedly dropping bombs in their country and killing innocent people.

As if they haven't been slaughtering innocent people in those regions on a daily basis for millenia.
 
The majority are savages, at best. You can't win the hearts of the heartless and the minds of the simpleton.
 
I agree with what a lot of people have already said, you cannot win the hearts and minds of an inherently broken people. These are people who live in squalor, who do not understand or respect the most basic human rights, whose minds have been poisoned by religion and who are so committed to a tribal lifestyle that any concept of a centralized government necessary to lift them out of their disastrous lives is entirely foreign. These are people who cannot be reasoned with. Any attempt to force them to change is futile, they have to choose it for themselves and they lack the most basic of tools to make those decisions in the first place.
 
As if they haven't been slaughtering innocent people in those regions on a daily basis for millenia.

And, what, innocent people aren't killed every day here?

You think someone killing innocent people makes it ok for us to kill innocent people? You think there are any circumstances in which an innocent person is ok with an American bomb killing their innocent child?
 
You don't go to war, to win hearts and minds. You go to war to beat the living **** out of the enemy and his supporters, to the point where they no longer have the will to resist. That strategy worked during WW2, on the Japanese and the Germans. After we go through them, they might have hated us, but they were too beat down to act on that hatred.

People don't like getting bombed? Then, they should stop allowing terrorists to live among them. If they won't do that, then I say bomb them even more, because they probably hated us anyway.
 
And, what, innocent people aren't killed every day here?

You think someone killing innocent people makes it ok for us to kill innocent people? You think there are any circumstances in which an innocent person is ok with an American bomb killing their innocent child?

You think those people didn't already hate us, before we bombed them?
 
You think those people didn't already hate us, before we bombed them?

I think the bombing increases the number of people who hate us. If Canada blew up your kid because they were aiming at bad guys, do you think that might alter your perception of Canada?
 
I think the bombing increases the number of people who hate us. If Canada blew up your kid because they were aiming at bad guys, do you think that might alter your perception of Canada?

We wouldn't enable or harbor terrorists. If we had people in our midst that were crossing the border and blowing stuff up in Canada we would capture them and export their butts over to Canada so Canada wouldn't have to go after them themselves. We don't harbor criminals.
 
I think the bombing increases the number of people who hate us. If Canada blew up your kid because they were aiming at bad guys, do you think that might alter your perception of Canada?

I wouldn't allow the bad guys that close to my kids. Canada wouldn't have to blow them up, because I would kill them myself.
 
We wouldn't enable or harbor terrorists. If we had people in our midst that were crossing the border and blowing stuff up in Canada we would capture them and export their butts over to Canada so Canada wouldn't have to go after them themselves. We don't harbor criminals.

Terrorists and criminals live in this country. Somebody is harboring them.

I wouldn't allow the bad guys that close to my kids. Canada wouldn't have to blow them up, because I would kill them myself.

:roll:
 
You don't go to war, to win hearts and minds. You go to war to beat the living **** out of the enemy and his supporters, to the point where they no longer have the will to resist. That strategy worked during WW2, on the Japanese and the Germans. After we go through them, they might have hated us, but they were too beat down to act on that hatred.

People don't like getting bombed? Then, they should stop allowing terrorists to live among them. If they won't do that, then I say bomb them even more, because they probably hated us anyway.

The 9/11 hijackers lived among us. Why did you let them? Why didn't you kill them?
 
The 9/11 hijackers lived among us. Why did you let them? Why didn't you kill them?

The difference that you don't get, is that they weren't living among us as known terrorists. They were just ordinary people.
 
Terrorists and criminals live in this country. Somebody is harboring them.



:roll:

Does a group as powerful as the Taliban operate inside the United States?
 
You don't go to war, to win hearts and minds. You go to war to beat the living **** out of the enemy and his supporters, to the point where they no longer have the will to resist. That strategy worked during WW2, on the Japanese and the Germans. After we go through them, they might have hated us, but they were too beat down to act on that hatred.

People don't like getting bombed? Then, they should stop allowing terrorists to live among them. If they won't do that, then I say bomb them even more, because they probably hated us anyway.

That's such a calloused attitude. You wish to bomb people in the vicinity of other people that are alleged to be our enemy because they too "PROBABLY" hate us. Only one in five people (some put the estimates higher) that are killed by drones are "alleged enemy combatants". How do you sleep at night. This is a moral outrage. Someone on the ground (CIA assets or whoever the hell they are) provides information that there's bad guys (terrorists) in a a house/building at these coordinates and some guy setting in a CIA building on the 10th floor in Miami flys a drone over and drops a missile down the chimney. Sorry, grandma and two babies plus a couple cats were in there, SORRY, collateral damage. They shouldn't have let the terrorist in. Some of these guys chop your head off or pull your heart out and eat it. But old men and young women and children are at fault because they won't stop letting them live among them, they should run them out. It's too bad there isn't a god. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity will have to receive their punishments, some other way.
 
I think the bombing increases the number of people who hate us. If Canada blew up your kid because they were aiming at bad guys, do you think that might alter your perception of Canada?

What I don't understand, is why such a perfectly rational statement such as this, is met with such vitriol.
 
As if they haven't been slaughtering innocent people in those regions on a daily basis for millenia.

So lets join in the fun eh?
 
The majority are savages, at best. You can't win the hearts of the heartless and the minds of the simpleton.

Exactly, why are we wasting our time, we have nukes and we could always use the glass.
 
The difference that you don't get, is that they weren't living among us as known terrorists. They were just ordinary people.

Do just ordinary people hijack jet planes and fly them into buildings and kill themselves. Do ordinary people take flying lessons and tell the flight instructor they aren't interested in learning how to land and take off?
 
That's such a calloused attitude. You wish to bomb people in the vicinity of other people that are alleged to be our enemy because they too "PROBABLY" hate us. Only one in five people (some put the estimates higher) that are killed by drones are "alleged enemy combatants". How do you sleep at night. This is a moral outrage. Someone on the ground (CIA assets or whoever the hell they are) provides information that there's bad guys (terrorists) in a a house/building at these coordinates and some guy setting in a CIA building on the 10th floor in Miami flys a drone over and drops a missile down the chimney. Sorry, grandma and two babies plus a couple cats were in there, SORRY, collateral damage. They shouldn't have let the terrorist in. Some of these guys chop your head off or pull your heart out and eat it. But old men and young women and children are at fault because they won't stop letting them live among them, they should run them out. It's too bad there isn't a god. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity will have to receive their punishments, some other way.

So instead we should do nothing except perhaps call them bad names. And the ones who are willing to blow up civilians automatically win every argument because we can't stop them without killing civilians.
 
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