[Urbane Guerrilla]

It would seem obvious that you could spin things like that so long as the fighting in Afghanistan is still going on. I call that intellectual dishonesty, dar512. I urge you to cease it and forever desist, that you may come into the practice of honesty, rather than sympathizing with more fascistic mullahs. Sure, the fighting's not over, and none of us knows when it might be, and shooting at foreigners is still almost more of an Afghan tribal sport than playing bushkazi. I don't expect peace, quietude, or rose gardens there anytime soon, precisely because of the Afghan penchant for shooting at anybody of a different language, a penchant practiced mutually by everybody.

We are struggling primarily against a non-national enemy who is driven by his bigotry, is he not? The way we can beat these people is by getting information, since we cannot put pressure upon their nation -- and clearly we are indeed getting information enough to take down their leadership on a semiregular basis, which tells me we're doing something right -- I've been involved in secretive national doings myself, whose triumphs are unheralded every bit as much as their failures get trumpeted. I reckon we are having our successes, quietly. I don't think we should be interrupting them.

Your second boxful is frankly frothy rhetorical stuff, unworthy of reply. Think better.