Learn from the British

SF Examiner
Monday, June 27, 2011

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Learn from the British
U.S. leaders often are just not good on history. The 19th-century British started trying to pacify the Pashtun tribes of what are now northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, and they sent in tens of thousands of troops. They fought the Third Anglo-Afghan War. They fought engagements against the tribes way back during the teens and the twenties.By 1947, as the British rule was ending in that region, it was more in turmoil and less under control than it ever had been before. The full might of the British Empire at its peak was unable to bring order to those regions. The idea that a relatively temporary and relatively small American expeditionary force can go into some of these provinces and shape them up for the long term is just very unlikely.
Ted Rudow III, MA
Palo Alto