Admittedly, what the US has done to help Iraq and what NATO is trying to do in Afghanistan is a far cry from stopping a certain Central European nation from acquiring Lebensraum and committing genocide….

Things would help if all NATO allies contributed to helping the Afghans….thank goodness the Warsaw Pact didn’t flood through the Fulda Gap….

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5277034.ece

I’m sure if your Chancellor asked the US to leave, the US would do so. It’s not rocket science. Thankfully to all involved, national leaders are a bit more intelligent and realistic than you are.

I’m quite sure the US military does care what you think.

All we can do is deny them funds. We could all, in every country, stop giving them money. They’d turn the guns on us, but hasn’t that pretty much happened already?

The reasons additional resources brought to Afghanistan are: A. The Iraqis are much more capable providing for their own security. The US mission is winding down. B. The US is executing the counterinsurgency strategy that succeeded in Iraq. This course of action requires much greater manpower and will incur greater casualties.

Illegally disclosing those documents is the height of stupidity, not to mention these documents have little or no context. Anyone here understand this: “At 1850Z, TF 2-2 using PREDATOR (UAV) PID insurgents emplacing IEDs at 41R PR 9243 0202, 2.7km NW of FOB Hutal, Kandahar. TF 2-2 using PREDATOR engaged with 1x Hellfire missile resulting in 1x INS KIA and 1x INS WIA. ISAF tracking #12-374.”? Is this an immoral thing? What is the context of this engagement? The disclosures that Pakistan and Iran are discretely helping the Taliban are well known. Let’s not forget the 20 y/o private who was stupid enough to pass classified info is over, his life is over.

ISAF civilian leadership make the calculation that a stable Afghanistan is worth the blood and treasure. Your worldview skews your ‘objective’ “cost benefit analysis.” You say there are less costly ways to achieve the stated objectives….well WHAT ARE THEY? Much smarter people armed with more information came up with different results than you do.

a clear analysis of the sacrifice trap as it relates to our involvement in Afghanistan. I hope it inspires creative engagement by war resisters that lowers all side’s defensiveness and opens space for greater opportunity for changing positions and ending this war and the ideology that war can resolve our international security agendas.

* 70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.
* 20% – To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
* 10% – To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
* ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
* NOT – To ‘help a friend’

That top one seems to be very much what you’re talking about.

I also can’t help but think of the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance, which describes how people deal with contradictory ideas or ideas contradicted by facts. As most of us know from our own experience, people tend to be unwilling to jettison their ideas or decisions if at all possible. Sometimes, as in the classic study When Prophecy Fails, facts that seem to contradict certain ideas sometimes only make people end up asserting the ideas more loudly, more unshakably, and more dangerously.

It seems to me you’re very right that Wikileaks — together with so many other forms of nonviolent action — have as much potential for strengthening the resolve of the pro-war faction even more as for quelling it. That’s why it’s important that we work to build alternative interventions and proposals that those faced with doubts can turn to. It’s one thing to say, as you do, that you’re “certain” there’s a better way (and I have hardly done more than that myself), but I suspect that getting out of the sacrifice trap will mean proposing clear, concrete, and plausible alternatives.