Major discovery: a purpose of the war in Afghanistan

Medical nurses of U.S Marines carry the injuried Afghan boy to hospital after he fell from a wall at Forward Operating Base Edi in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan

By Glenn Greenwald

The U.S. is determined to stay until there are no Afghans left who wants it gone. Then it can leave. Click here to read the entire article...

The Washington Post today describesthe failure of regimented programs in Afghanistan to reintegrate Taliban teenagers ("Taliban" (alt.: "Terrorist") means "any Afghan who fights against the presence of foreign military forces in their country" and "reintegrate" means "persuading or compelling them to passively acquiesce to those forces"):

The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children. But when they return to their cells at Kabul's juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban. As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country's youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield. READ MORE