Counter Insurgency Blog on Afghanistan

My Name is David Jon Sponheim and I am running for President in 2012 under America's Third Party. Clearly the dialogue has reached an impasse. Let's take a sober look at the evolution of this insanity. "1 Tin Soldier" is right, this War is like a repeat of Vietnam and the "Quagmire" that ensued there. The failed policy of Henry Kissinger's "Low intensity conflict" has perpetuated the War machine to destroy economies. The situation on the ground with M-4s jamming is a primary dilemma that can only be corrected with new weapons. It is impractical to get 500,000 weapons swapped out in the next few weeks, so, we need to act quickly with a new strategy that will protect our troops from ambush. The distance and terrain in the southern 'fish hook'
area of Afghanistan makes it impossible to clear and contain. The interdiction policy of the Bush administration has also failed. Preventing the flow of people and insurgents over the border is impossible without targeted air strikes. The hope of the Afghan people
to resist the Taliban is all but a wish concocted in some think tank. The reality is, these people will go wherever the Taliban tells them to go. They will continue growing poppy and marijuana as their cash crop and it will be used against us in an economic way. Hamid Karzai and his Cabinet will turn over the weakest Warlord to the DEA as an appeasement. Corruption is the norm in Afghanistan. Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people is a lofty goal also shared by the Taliban. So, our best efforts at governance, interdiction, and containment fall short of what our enemy has achieved historically. There is no potential in fighting this War on our enemies terms. Therefore, a completely new strategy must now be revealed.

Since the Taliban is pushing deeper into Northern Pakistan as we press our forces deeper into Northern Afghanistan, we are in a lose lose position. Our futile efforts of containment in this region is affecting the security of the Pakistan Army in the SWAT region. The federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan are completely infiltrated with
armed Taliban. They are 50 miles from Islamabad and 50 Nuclear weapons! We need to give our enemy an area in order to flee our weapons. The best solution is to allow them to live in Northern Afghanistan.

Therefore, at this point, American must create a "Line in the Sand" Policy, much like we had with Libya in the early 1980s. The Northern Region of Afghanistan should be assigned to the Taliban. Whether they agree or not to these terms, we can enforce this with a battery of Patriot missile defense systems. We need to protect our supply lines and shore up our weapons capabilities. By creating impervious strongholds around major population centers, we can contain peace through strength. These policy changes are laid out in our strategy, we call "Safe Zones". Feel free to visit our site at ww.americasthirdparty.com.