The US has learnt none of the lessons of Vietnam. The US and NATO presence conveys a sense of being occupied, the destruction of property and homes and the deaths of innocents, translates into recruits prepared to fight for a war lord, the Taliban or whoever else will arm and feed them. The Russians found in Afghanistan that they were fighting a number of different warlords, all with a different agenda. And so it is now for the US and its allies. Increasingly much of the opposition is focused on getting rid of the Western foreigners as much as it is around ideology and religion. The policy driving the war and the manner in which it is being prosecuted makes the war in Afghanistan unwinnable. Terrorism is founded in belief, ideology and emotion. Does anyone in the western alliance seriously believe that they can blast, kill and maim their way to a victory in which no known terrorist is left standing in Afghanistan?…Australia has no business in the conflict. It is a regional issue. Australia allowed itself to be sucked in on the basis of our alliance with the US, which increasingly promises little. The war in Afghanistan will not bring about an end of al-Qaida nor the Taliban, to do so by military means would take more troops than the US put into Vietnam and the absence of many other regional factors which play out against the US.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8338