A mere 12 years after we overthrew the Taliban. Oh, and they're back. God, what a waste of lives and lucre.

the Taliban are a far more serious adversary than the Nazis ever were.

Either that or our military (actually only the senior officer corps) really, really sucks and has since Vietnam.

Our military won WWII working under civilian leadership. Since that time, the military leadership has become an entrenched old-boys network. Used to be enlisted men did KP duty and cleaned latrines. Now those jobs have been privatized and are done all too often by contractors. That negatively affects the morale of the troop, the sense of being in it together and the quality of the work done.

are victims of the poverty draft and fodder for the imperial hubris of douche-nozzles like Betray-us and McChrystal-Meth. (N.B.: Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib fame said she enlisted because the only employer within a 60-mile radius of where she grew up was WalMart.)

You have to understand, in the elections of March 1933, Hitler won just over Percentage 43.91% of the votes, the Socialists won 18.25% and the Communists 12.32% (total of 30.57%), this election was the last "Free" election, but:

In early February, the Nazis "unleashed a campaign of violence and terror that dwarfed anything seen so far." Storm troopers began attacking trade union and Communist Party (KPD) offices and the homes of left-wingers. In the second half of February, the violence was extended to the Social Democrats, with gangs of brown-shirts breaking up Social Democrat meetings and beating up their speakers and audiences. Issues of Social Democratic newspapers were banned. Twenty newspapers of the Centre Party, a party of Catholic Germans, were banned in mid-February for criticizing the new government. Government officials known to be Centre Party supporters were dismissed from their offices, and stormtroopers violently attacked party meetings in Westphalia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_November_1932
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933

Thus you had 30% of the population who OPPOSED Hitler (not including the more moderate Centre Party with its 11.25% vote). Thus in any post Nazi period, you had 41% of the population willing to work with the occupying powers without any further inducements (and most of the Former Nazis and their allies feared the Russians more then the Americans and thus willing to work with the Western Allies against Russia).

Compared this to Afghanistan, there the population is hostile to each other (like the Socialist and Communists were against the Nazis) BUT they also oppose any other occupying power. Thus we have an ongoing guerrilla war and refuse to do what is needed to win it.

You must understand the US KNOWS how to defeat and win a Guerrilla war, we have done so numerous times. The US has only failed when they REFUSE to do want was needed. The first thing you do is isolate the area the Guerrillas are operating in. Force the Guerrillas to survive on what they can produce locally. This ties up they ability to perform any type of military operations. In Afghanistan the US had failed to do this, mostly do to the fact the US forces in Afghanistan must get their supplies via Pakistan and in the mountains of Afghanistan bribe the locals to permit those supplies in. The Locals then turn over some of the bribes to the Taliaban. Groups within Pakistan is also supplying the Taliban, and the US has failed to cut off this source of supplies.

Second, get part of the population to support you absolutely. The best way to do with is to take over the best lands in Afghanistan and turn it over to your own troops for they and they families use (i.e. given them the land). This is Roman style "Colonization" i.e. putting your citizens into a foreign county to supply to local support (i.e. they will support the occupying county, for without the occupying county's support they can NOT hold onto their land).

If you can NOT get your own people to move to the Country, you have a problem, how do you get a part of the population to support your side? You have to GIVE them something they VALUE. The problem in Afghanistan, we have refused to bribe everyone in the Country. Instead we have tried to do what we have always tried, to bribe the leadership. The problem has been the Taliban leadership's price is a return to power, something we oppose (and was the "Goal" of the US when the US Invaded Afghanistan). Thus the US is in a box, the US has to admit its goal (to permanently remove the Taliban from power) when it invade Afghanistan was unobtainable militarily (and thus was dumb politically). The US has refused to do so, the US has even refused to do what was suggested to President Johnson in the late 1960s, Declare victory and pull out and leave the opposition take over after a few more years of financial support.

In simple terms, as long as the Taliban has the support it has among the population of Afghanistan, it will survive and fight the US. The US has to accept this fight has NOT been a fight over whose military can defeat the other in open warfare, but the support of the Afghan people. The US has to go into Afghanistan, build new Schools, New Roads, bring in new Industries and at its own expense (i.e. you can NOT put those costs on the Afghan people). The US has refused to do so and is losing the war.

For example, the education of women, something the US has made motions to support but has refused to spend what is needed. The US should build massive reinforced Schools in rural area, Provide transportation between when young people live and the schools. Protect the schools, even at the expense of defending America lives (i.e. if given a choice between maintaining security on the School Buses and the School AND preventing a massive attack on a US base, the US base is less important, i.e. even if the US base is being over-runned and everyone in the base is being killed, it is more important to maintain the Schools Security then provide support for the base, if the choice is between preventing someone from firing on a school OR preventing a massive overrun of a US base, preventing the shooting at the school is more important then preventing the base from being taken and destroyed).

Remember in a Guerrilla war, Politics is more important then military action, the US has to provide security to the country's population, provide a better way of life etc. More then defeating the opposition in battle. This is where the US is failing and will continue to fail for the US does NOT want to spend the money needed to HOLD on to Afghanistan.

you read Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners? Goldhagen pretty much demolishes the idea that the average German did not sign on fully to the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany even after it was clear the war was lost.

I meant only that the German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were among the top 2-3 global military forces in 1939. Compare the Nazi's military machine, which almost defeated the USSR, with the rag-tag body of Taliban irregular militia and you may better understand the sarcastic nature of my comparison and my Loser label for U.S. senior officer corps. (I readily grant you that the Taliban enjoys broad-based popular support, although I cannot say that the Taliban's support is any stronger than was the support for the Nazi regime.)

I also wonder whether the U.S. has won any guerrilla war since its campaign against the Moro in the Philippines back in the late 1890s and early 20th century. (OK, maybe the U.S. gets credit for defeating the Hukbalahap insurrection in the late 1950s, again in the Philippines, although I would prefer that credit there go to Ramon Magsaysay and not to that stooge Lansdale.)

Finally, the tactics you claim can win a guerrilla war were tried and failed spectacularly in Vietnam, ca. 1954-65. (See the Strategic Hamlet program launched under the Diem puppets for a specific example of a horrendous failure to limit guerrillas' areas of operation.)

Having posted my rebuttal, I hope to hear more from you, as I think these subjects need to be endlessly debated.

The problem with the Hamlet program, was the lack of land reform. Land reform was needed in Vietnam, but the landowners opposed it.

You have to understand the problem in Vietnam. What happens to any Society is the powers that be, slowly concentrate all power (and wealth) into their own hands. In agricultural societies, this means the elite slowly obtain title to all of the land, and the people working the land becomes serfs (Slaves in all but names). Sooner or later the poor get upset about this and revolt. Some of these revolts are suppressed, others prevail, but in most societies some sort of land reform is instituted. either due to foreign invasions (what happened to most of the ancient empires) or internal unrest (and often BOTH, for example Rome at the end was suffering several peasant revolts, and had peasants joining the armies of the barbarian "invaders" thus Rome had internal unrest AND external threats).

Economists call these elite "Rentiers" people whose right is the collection of whatever wealth the land produces, even while someone else is doing all of the work AND taking all of the rests of planting and harvesting the crop. These should NOT be confused with Renters or Tenants as in Landlord and Tenant law. In modern Landlord and Tenant Law, the Landlord provides a service, the landlord builds and maintain the rental unit. A Rentier, on the other hand, does nothing, housing is up to the peasant working the fields.

More on what a Rentier is:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/who-are-the-rentiers/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=0
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/who-are-the-rentiers/

In Vietnam, land reform was needed and being done by the Communists, even in South Vietnam. In fact the main job of the South Vietnamese Army was NOT defeating the Communists, but letting back into the areas formally held by the Communists so the landlord could collect their rents.

As long as the Rentier Class of South Vietnam refused to embrace Land Reform, the Hamlet program was doomed. The Hamlet program along with land reform would have provided the South Vietnamese Government the supported it needed from the peasants (and take the peasant's support from the Communists). The refusal to do effect land reforms (Even the Nationalists on Taiwan did land reform) doomed South Vietnam.

Side note: If you go to the Commie sites, you will run across Communists who said Mao was NEVER a real Communist for he preferred a traditional Chinese Peasant revolt, lead by himself, over a "true" Communist revolt based on urban workers. In many ways, the present ruling elite of China are the descendent's of those who lead the peasant revolt. Land reform was part of the Changes that Mao oversaw, but while Mao hated the old land owning class of China, he could not see he was setting up a replacement group who will slowly revert to what the old land owning elite had been doing. China is ripe for another peasant revolt, through this time it might be urban based for the urban population of China has expanded that much. Thus the revolt this time will be different from when Mao lead the last revolt, it may even be urban based (through it is the Rural inland that is hurting the most right now, and has been for over 20 years). One way to look at this is that what Mao founded (The Communist Party of China), has slowly become the same thing he hated and revolted against (the Rentiers of China). Thus China today is today planting the seeds of a Communist type revolt, its peasants and working class have seen their standard of living slashed (Even as the elite have boomed). No revolt in the next few years, Marx stated, based on his study of history, such revolts only occur when the Middle Class, itself, comes under attack (and what Marx meant by Middle Class, those we call upper Middle Class, people making more then $100,000 a year). Right now, that group is NOT under attack in China, but sooner or later the attacks on the Working Class wages stop, due to the fact any further attack leads to mass starvation and thus a lack of workers and the elite, to increase its profits, must go after the Upper Middle Class (Petty Bourgeoisie in Marx's terms) and then and only then does a Marxist revolution takes place. That appears to be what was happening in Russia in 1916-1917, but not China 1927-1947. Thus Mao's revolution is NOT considered Marxists, but a classic Chinese Peasant Revolt, the eases the pain before you get to a level needed for a Marxists revolt.