In an interview with USA TODAY, Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Mills said that the US troops have driven the Taliban from most towns and villages in the Afghan province of Helmand. In his words, “They’ve taken on the Taliban, the insurgency, right in the heartland and they’ve defeated them.”
This are good news if corroborated. It is somewhat strange that Helmand being the area where the British troops have been stationed for quite a while it is the US forces which have accomplished there the defeat of the Taliban. So, it will be interesting to follow the story in the coming days. More positive news also from the American side. In an interview with ABC News, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, said he believed the “tide is turning” in the country. And if to all that we read a recent poll among Afghans, some 70 per cent of them think their country is “going in the right direction.” Of those polled 68 per cent support the presence of US troops in the country and 72 per cent believe President Hamid Karzai is doing a good or excellent job.
Once could think some kind of ‘miracle’ has happened for all these good news arriving at the same time until one reads about the ‘excellent job’ of Karzai and then most if not all the belief has to disappear, specially when 59 per cent of the same people polled think the vote counting of Karzai’s re-election was fraudulent.
Our hope for believing what the generals are telling us gets also weaker when we find out that yesterday three American soldiers were killed during a firefight; one French soldier was killed as well and another one badly injured died this morning. And in Helmand, where the US forces had apparently defeated the Taliban, a British soldier was killed in an explosion yesterday.
Let us then not repeat President Bush mistake with a premature “mission accomplished.”
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