[afghanistan] counter-productive strategy scrutinized again

There are some fundamental military principles being ignored in Afghanistan. When one invades another’s territory, one does it as a liberator, with the best interests of the soon to be conquered people at heart and the hated enemy the obstacle. Classic military psychology. When we trained as subalterns years ago, we studied countless campaigns and learnt that one began with propaganda, then hit with maximum prejudice on several fronts, with full logistic support, that one employed psy-ops negatively on the enemy and positively towards the locals, as the beloved liberators. Then the non-military moved into any newly liberated area and instituted an efficient, altruistic infrastructure, training locals, building roads, hospitals, factories and schools, providing paid work – all these had to be better than before. This is not happening in either Iraq or Afghanistan and this resulted in Capt. Docherty's question [BBC Sep 10], ‘Why not?’ This question is addressed here.