Afghan Mission Creep?

From Breitbart

For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different.

They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban's big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight.

The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion's share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war.

And can the Taliban really be bought off by the good guys? The realist in me has always been chary with the idea. Here's an enlightening, albeit realistic assessment of the likelihood of that, coming from Ron Moreau, writing for Newsweek.

Karzai and his regime have practically no credibility anyway. No one trusts his promises, and they regard his government as an evil thing, a heretical, apostate regime. More than that, however, Taliban tend to take offense at the very idea of a buyout. As one fighter told Sami indignantly, "You can't buy my ideology, my religion. It's an insult."

But hey, maybe after Obama talks to them...