So it looks like the American Administration is debating the necessity of increasing troop levels in Afghanistan to up to 60,000 soldiers from around 32,000.

What do you all think?  A general consensus among "surge" supporters is that we should flood the area with soldiers and just finish this thing once and for all.  While on the flip side, what I will now call the "anti-surge" camp point out that Viet-Nam and Korea both implemented troop surges and have since been associated with political blunders.

Personally, I cant decide.  It does seem logical that increasing troop numbers would speed things up, but then again...its very difficult to fight an ideal no matter how many boots you have on the ground.

Well it may have been viewed as a failure for awhile but look at Vietnam now. Its not so bad. Sometimes things are ugly at the start but in the end all is alright.

Viet-Nam and Korea were handled by Congress and they messed it up. If the president surges and keeps the troops there, instead of letting Congress pull the troops and then put them back in to benefit their political careers, it would probably save the lives of US soldiers and civilians. I fully support the 60,000 troops if he's serious and is willing to give the matter proper attention. Let's get rid of the old terroristic  system and babysit them until they get a good one, it'll be very beneficial to US trade in later years and we'll have one less group to worry about bombing us in our sleep.

yeah Franky, Vietnam's ok now so the troop surge was definately a good idea. On another topic, Nelson Mandela's doing well so at least he's been rehabilitated

The problem is, what does "finish this thing" mean? We have not even defined our objective with the exception of some moronic demagoguery statements by Bush several years ago, like "Protect our Freedom" blah blah blah.

If the objective is to wipe out terrorism, no victory will accomplish that. You can not wipe out an ideal. If the objective is to remove Al-Quaeda or Taliban leaders, fuck, we're in the wrong country. They are all hiding in Pakistan.

You see, the government has never been frank with us about our purpose in the Middle East. The purpose has always been economic colonization. That means to make it safe for American corporations to sell their products in these countries. Products like Coca Cola are not welcome in countries adhering to strict fundamentalist, anti-Western ideals. Hey, I might have got on board with that if they were honest about it in the first place!

We just finished building five permanent military bases in Iraq. These were under construction contemporaneously with all the plans for troop withdrawal, and while we were being assured that this was not an "occupation" of another country. Iraq is a strategic location in the Middle East and ripe for economic colonization. As far as Afghanistan, that was always a pacifier to assure the people who were actually paying attention that we were making an effort to go after the people responsible for the WTC attacks. We never really gave it much serious thought until recently.

The bottom line is, it really does not matter what we think. The government is going to do what it wants to do, regardless of public opinion. That much should be clear to us after all these years. Do I think it is a smart decision? Let's do a cost benefit analysis. Just what do we plan to gain with this surge? Hmmmm....I'm at a loss. There really is not much to gain in this mountainous rockpile of a country, other than the oil companies getting the pipeline they have been crying for since the late '90's. As far as what we have to lose? Oh, billions of dollars and American lives for a futile effort. Just ask the Russians how easy it is to remove these people from their mountains and caves.

<blockquote> There really is not much to gain in this mountainous rockpile of a country, other than the oil companies getting the pipeline they have been crying for since the late '90's. As far as what we have to lose? Oh, billions of dollars and American lives for a futile effort. Just ask the Russians how easy it is to remove these people from their mountains and caves. </blockquote>

What is to gain on that retarded rockpile? OPIUM! \o/

Man loves to fight as long as there are resources to be fought for. Take a look at Africa, that entire continent is practically a war torn cesspool of crap. Does America bother to go there and help? NO. Why? Because they don't have shit for resources.

Yay for block quote fail! gets all embarrased. MY POINT IS STILL MADE THOUGH

In addition to asking the Russians, as Butt_Ox mentioned, you should also check with the British Empire and Alexander the Great.

Yea I'll get right on that! -_-