By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2009.
Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan with more troops deployed now than the Soviets ever had, at a time when public support for it is sinking like a rock.
America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan — a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what’s now being called “Obama’s War.”
Peace and Justice Post 
Escalation is futile in a war in which complexity defies might
September 25, 2009GABRIEL KOLKO, National Times, Sep 23, 2009
The US scarcely knew what a complex disaster it was confronting when it went to war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. It will eventually – perhaps years from now – suffer the same fate as Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviet Union: defeat.
What is called ”Afghanistan” is really a collection of tribes and ethnic groups – Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and more. There are seven major ethnic groups, each with its own language. There are 30 minor languages. Pashtuns are 42 per cent of the population and the Taliban come from them. Its borders are contested and highly porous, and al-Qaeda is most powerful in the Pashtun regions of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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