Changing 1,000 years of tribal history in 2 years - say what?

President Obama finally announced his decision on Afghanistan over three months after his appointed general provided his recommendation: Send in three quarters of the number of troops requested, stabilze the country by making buddies, then vacate the country within 18 months.

I have a number of problems with not just the President's response and how he handled it, but with the whole US approach in Afghanistan and to Islamists generally.

First, the Fort Hood incident is a clue that generals, including General McChrystal, don't have an accurate appreciation of Islam's deep devotion to its worldwide mission. The generals can't even disceern the Islamic enemies pandered to within their own ranks.

Second, the President proposes to stabilize Afghanistan within 18 months? Yeah, that'll happen. We had indiginous tribes in this nation and it took many decades of sustained military/Indian conflict for the military to prevail. And we lived here, too. And do our own native Americans look on our act of conversion of their "old ways" with glee and thanksgiving? Hardly. Thanksgiving is what we celebrate, not the folks who's culture was sunamied. And I'm not at all convinced that the native American ever harbored as much deep seated, religion-based, rabid hatred toward us as the middle east Islamists do.

Obama is either deceived or the deceiver. He will be wasting lives over the next year and a half for what? A stable, democratic Afghanistan? Maybe gaining stability during our presence there. He's failing to highlight one major factor: Islamic democracy equals "one vote; one time." Then Sharia law. That's what we will have fought for. Their right to vote in Islamic law. Two years for the west to sustainably change 1,000 plus years of tribal Islamic governance - you have got to be kidding. The hatred of the west and the Jihadi mentality will still remain. Just wait to see what happens in Iraq over the next year or two when we have only a few thousand troops remaining.

Our only purpose in Afghanistan, along with our allies who share our concerns, should be to monitor, through covert means, terror plots and characters that pose a threat. Period. At the same time, we need to get a clue about subversive Islamic supremacist activities in our own nation, within our own leadership, and within our own military and take appropropriate measures to identify and eliminate them.

Waste, waste, waste.

"But what about Pakistan?" some may protest. "If we abandon Afghanistan, the Islamists will take over Pakistan and its nukes. " If we are in Afgahnistan to keep Pakistan from going "Islam," what sense does that make? It already is. If we are in Afghanistan to keep the "radicals" from overpowering the Pakistani government, that can be done better with direct assistance to Pakistan. Rather than wasting hundreds of billions on the rat hole in Afghanistan each year, wouldn't it be better to focus a portion of those billions on the root concern in Pakistan - toward whatever measures that will bolster their resistance to radical elements? Fortunately, so far, it appears that most of the Pakistani leadership has not yet caught the "true Islam" bug that is spawning across the globe. But it is just a matter of time before they do.