Daniel Brown, Business Insider: The Air Force released new videos of A-10 Warthogs striking Taliban drug labs — and it shows why the US strategy is a game of 'whack-a-mole'.
* The US released two new videos of airstrikes on Taliban drug labs in Afghanistan.
* The US is quietly escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has released a number of similar videos of strikes on Taliban drug facilities and training compounds.
* But civilian casualties have also increased along with the strikes, and Afghan farmers say the drug labs only take three to four days to rebuild.
The Air Force recently released two new videos of A-10 Warthogs taking out Taliban narcotics production facilities in Afghanistan, as the Trump administration continues to quietly ramp up the US' nearly 17-year war in the country.
The videos are rather shocking. One shows several missile strikes that turned the black and white video nearly all-white for a few seconds before flames can be seen rolling up.
"The Taliban have nowhere to hide," Gen. John Nicholson, commander of Resolute Support in Afghanistan, said in February, after the Air Force dropped a record number of smart bombs from a B-52 on Taliban training facilities.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The U.S. strategy against ISIS in Syria and Iraq was basic. Kill the leadership. Destroy revenue streams. Engage the enemy in their strongholds. But ISIS is not the Taliban, and Afghanistan is not Iraq/Syria. The Taliban leadership are hiding in their safe havens in Pakistan. The Taliban's command and control centers are disperse and hard to target. The strongholds are not defined. And their revenue streams are based on farming and processing a crop that is easy to grow and can be processed in a small building. And while I do believe that targeting the Taliban's revenue streams will have an impact .... the question that remains unanswered is how many labs are the Afghans and the coalition willing to destroy.
Update: The U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan believes there is hope (I do not) .... Afghanistan Is Not A Forever War, Its Ambassador Tells T&P (Task & Purpose).
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