Belly, this is the way I see it:

Obama is indeed seeking an exit strategy, but has decided to give
the Petreus option a go, over the next 18 months or so.

I feel that it is worth a try, even if the odds are against us.

We do in fact have an allegiance with the US, for if Australia was
ever attacked by anyone, it would be the US that we would rely on,
not our 3 battleships and a couple of planes or whatever we have.

I also feel for the people of Afghanistan. A takeover by the Taliban
will not be a pretty picture.

But I think that the role of the Australian forces should be more
as educators and trainers of locals, rather then fighting on the
frontlines themselves.

The West could easily afford to bankroll an Afghan army and in a country where wages are low and poverty is everywhere, joining
the army is a credible way for locals to make a living.

Meantime the US can continue with its drone project, which is
achieving great results.

But all this is for the next 18 months or two years, not forever.

well put yabby and it in every word could have been my post.
I doubt, truly do, we can teach fundamentalists not to hate but worth a try.

"They were seemingly upset that 3 Palestians had been jailed by
Switzerland."
My category again on two accounts- nothing to do with Afghanistan, and motivation outside religious need to conquer infidels alone- and handled by domestic counter-terrorism.
And no, before you jump on another faulty binary presumption because anybody who thinks our middle east policy isn't working must obviously be a pacifist- the Swiss were right to arrest those people, and would reap far worse for their society by allowing them to operate in their midst and give in to domestic demands.

Chechnya and numerous islands among the Philippines had been substantially Islamic for a very long time- and no, again, we do not make any concessions for Islamists at home- again, a point I keep trying to convey and you don't seem to acknowledge.

It's almost like you simply cannot actually realize there are more than two discourses of action than "fight Islam in faraway lands" and "surrender absolutely everything to them and submit".

Quite frankly we set a better example by retaliating against a country that holds terrorists, refunding infrastructure and immediately withdrawing ASAP, than trying to hold the place and hope to convert the locals to our way of thinking and base any notions of achievement or failure in our ability to indefinitely repel whichever enemy we are fighting till the end of time or relinquish it eventually after potential losses.
In my opinion, we should have pulled out after the botched elections, now I think the imminent deadline is more than fair.

The point I am trying to get through to you Hazza, is that violent
Islamism is not just going to go away, because we change our ME
policy. But you seem totally disinterested in what these people
actually believe and why.

It is just something that the West is going to have to live with,
with continued tight security and continued intelligence work,
which has thwarted many attacks, including in Australia.

There were good reasons to enter Afghanistan and get rid of the
Taliban. Al Qaeda had openly attacked the West and were seemingly
quite content to let Al Qaeda use Afghanistan as a training ground
and base for further attacks. Turning the other cheeck is a Xtian
concept and it is a failure. They needed to know that wherever on
earth they were, they would pay a price.

Meantime the Afghan/Pakistan border has always been a difficult
area, where even the Pakistani army feared to tread. The drones
are dealing with that, Zawahiri was narrowly missed by a bomb
or two and its not over yet.

A solution needs to be found, so that Afghanistan does not once
again become another staging ground for attacks on the West,
as they plan their global jihad

There is no 'global Jihad' Yabby, this is the problem.
You keep equating any act of hostility between a Western and an Islamic entity as immediately a large organized movement whose headquarters is in Afghanistan- it isn't.
So far, Al Queda have, from Afghanistan, pulled off one attack against Western civilians. The rest of the attacks point to completely autonomous terrorists completely unrelated. And that, I repeat ad nausea, was motivated by US foreign policy- with absolutely, positively nothing of similar scale committed against a neutral country.
And again, there has been no evidence of a single attack where a caliphate was the sole motive- or for that matter, would have been enough motive at all in absence of another motive I described.

And guess what, fundamentalist Islamic terrorism isn't going to go away if we fight the Taliban, or even defeat the Taliban- it will however, get a lot more rabid and widespread as paranoia over evil Westerners trying to crusade are proven right in the minds of the nutheads, complete with a system of conquest and trying to convert them to our culture, and of course the fact that the Taliban can simply, you know, move and hide. Unless we'd like to lose our good relations with Pakistan by bombing their territory to weed out some more fundies.

All we achieve by staying in Afghanistan (other than rising opium production) is making a problem that remains rather domestic in one part of the world spread out, and a barbarous mindset that normally seems to not care less about faraway lands so long as these people get to throw rocks at adulterers, are confronted with an enemy crusade.

This is what you are also missing (despite me spelling it out last post)- the fact that we are STAYING.

Unless you seriously believe that if we defeat the Taliban, every shariaite around the world will say "Oh no, the Taliban are now defeated, I have lost the will to not be moderate anymore!"

*There is no 'global Jihad' Yabby, this is the problem.*

Yes there is Hazza, in the minds of some Salafist extremists there
is. You refuse to inform yourself about what they believe, at
your peril and ignorance.

*You keep equating any act of hostility between a Western and an Islamic entity as immediately a large organized movement whose headquarters is in Afghanistan- it isn't.*

Not so Hazza. Jason Burke made if very clear that bin Laden is
simply the pin up boy figurehead, for a whole group of divergent
jihadists. The difference is that he has serious money behind him,
unlike the rest. When you are talking that kind of money, it only
takes a few hundred nutheads, they can do serious damage.

There are good reasons why bin Laden wants the US, out of the ME.
He has no chance of taking over the Saudi oilfields, which is his
dream, whilst the US is in the Gulf. Bin Laden believes that Muslims
have been cheated by the West by far too cheap oil. He
believes that if he can get rid of the Sauds, the West is toast.
He has a point.

As I have pointed out before, without ME oil the West is indeed
toast, but you refuse to accept it.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned and executed the 911 attack,
also had a whole lot of other attacks planned. Bin Laden's money
was behind him. Right now he is in Gitmo, arrested in Pakistan.

*Unless we'd like to lose our good relations with Pakistan by bombing their territory to weed out some more fundies.*

Come on, the majority of Pakistanis don't want their country taken
over by the fundamentalists either. But its already happening.
People with video stores or music stores, forced to close down
at gunpoint, or they die.

Fact is that every day that the US operates on the border with their
drones, they are knocking out the ideological leaders. Meantime
Petreus is trying to find an on ground solution, so that the Afghan
people can defend themselves against another takeover by the Taliban.