I know a lot of people want to say to Hell with the Afghans because of instances where Afghans in uniform shoot an American comrade. Many are Taliban who have infiltrated security forces or just pro-Taliban. I've written that our losses surely pale in comparison to what the other side endures.
Strategypage comes to my rescue on this score:
Taliban dying for al Qaeda does not go down well with many Taliban. Al Qaeda is seen as a bunch of arrogant foreigners who look down on all Afghans. This attitude is not appreciated by Afghans, and has led to the deaths of hundreds of al Qaeda members (at the hands of their Taliban allies) over the last five years. But for appearance sake, the two terrorist groups still go through the motions of being the best of friends.
Remember, too, that only a very small portion of our allied Afghans turn on us. The vast, overwhelming, and nearly unanimous percent of our Afghan allies point their weapons at the Taliban and we cannot win without them. Would you really push aside Afghan forces in order to have Americans operate alone and only die from Taliban and al Qaeda in the field?
Americanizing the fight to avoid these few incidents of Afghans killing our troops would snatch defeat from the jaws of our accumulating victory.
