Mission Impossible in Afghanistan

Gian P. Gentile, Christian Science Monitor | July 8, 2010

There is a disconnect between the limited policy objectives pursued by Washington and the methods employed by the US military that attempt to reshape societies throughout the world. ++ In Afghanistan, the premise of the mission itself must be questioned. ++ The United States faces "the impossibility of nation-building at the barrel of a gun in the graveyard of empires." ++ The prolonged war in Afghanistan has become President Obama's Vietnam or "what Algeria was to the French in 1961."