You will not catch terrorists by bombing civilians. You will not catch terrorists by breaking into a hospital. You will not catch terrorist by setting up checkpoint in a road and shoot at cars. There are only two ways to stop terrorist.

1) You win over the population, so they'll tell you where the terrorist are

2) You kill them all.

You will not achieve step 1 by randomly killing the population, and there are not enough bombs for step2. The current Afghan government is both illegitimate and irredeemably incompetent.The US simply cannot 'win' with the current strategy.

What a total and accurate statement in such a few words. You could have added Iraq. As a similar critic of these massacures; I don't believe this will ever end in Iraq; either$ The two choices gave in your fray statement is probably true throughout the Middle East. They have a totally different philosophy, then the Generals chasing these massacures, looking for some type of surrender, which will never come too them$ Japan gave up because of the gruesome bombs used at H. and N. We actually lost then and will continue to lose, using these maniacal tactics. They only work temporarily from the sudden fear. Soon the fear leaves and is replaced by their allegience to their homelands.

babel

+1.

The only thing I would add is, under (1), I would say :

"You win over the population, so they'll tell you where the terrorists are and so they don't have the motivation to join the terrorists themselves."

I'm entirely convinced that most civvies in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't really give a crap about us one way or the other 9 years ago.