US, Afghan troops push into Taliban stronghold

American and Afghan forces pushed into the region west of Kandahar, where the Taliban Movement was born and continues to dominate the region.

US military veteran Jake Diliberto from Rethink Afghanistan argued that the overall situation in the region will result in very little beyond a large casualty rate.

“Not much is gunna happen, besides a bunch of dead people. The political outcomes are gunna really be inconsequential and overall the overall objectives set by the Obama administration are gunna be, are not gunna have a significant impact and there’s not gunna be any serious developments, positive developments for the coalition,” said Diliberto.

Diliberto argued that there is simply no way a withdraw schedule will meet US President Barack Obama’s July 2011 deadline.

“There’s no way that we’re gunna be able to get out of there by 2011 or even start a drawdown”, he said.

Diliberto explained that southern Afghanistan is decades behind any notion of developmental success. The region is populated by the Taliban, the Pashtun people, making it incredibly challenging to win the region.

“It’s just a big big mess that’s not gunna have any real sort of positive situation for decades,” said Diliberto.

He argued that the US is staying in Afghanistan long enough to prop-up the Karzai government, not to win the war on terror. He said that the longer the US stays the more money the US taxpayers will have to pay – it’s a quagmire.

For the US to leave without embarrassment and to show success, there would need to be a sever redacting in violence and the local population would have to support the government, said Diliberto. The military would need to have the ability to protect the people and the insurgency would have to decline like in Iraq, he argued.