30,000 new targets to be placed in Afghanistan

[East Coast Hustle]

And then I'd ignore all their advice and dump the problem on the laps of Iran, Russia, India and China, and tell them to enjoy the spillover effects, as a fuck you for all the "help" they have provided in the country.

So basically, we've fucked up beyond belief and the only thing left to do is admit it?

it's the only "Afghan Strategy" that's ever worked in 2000 years of foreign powers failing to successfully occupy and/or pacify Afghanistan.

[Reginald Ret]

Stop talking like that.
You are making me like Afghanistan.

[East Coast Hustle]

I don't think I'd wanna go there on vacation (I hear the beaches suck and the women don't shave much), but my respect for them as a people in general has usually been reinforced by any Afghans I've ever met in person.

[Kai]

And then I'd ignore all their advice and dump the problem on the laps of Iran, Russia, India and China, and tell them to enjoy the spillover effects, as a fuck you for all the "help" they have provided in the country.

So basically, we've fucked up beyond belief and the only thing left to do is admit it?

it's the only "Afghan Strategy" that's ever worked in 2000 years of foreign powers failing to successfully occupy and/or pacify Afghanistan.

Yay, Vietnam repeat. Who didn't see that coming? 

[East Coast Hustle]

there is one HUGE difference, which is that we COULD have won in Vietnam if we had had the cultural and political will to do so.

"Winning", by current definition, in Afghanistan is just an impossibility.

[Iason Ouabache]

And then I'd ignore all their advice and dump the problem on the laps of Iran, Russia, India and China, and tell them to enjoy the spillover effects, as a fuck you for all the "help" they have provided in the country.

So basically, we've fucked up beyond belief and the only thing left to do is admit it?

it's the only "Afghan Strategy" that's ever worked in 2000 years of foreign powers failing to successfully occupy and/or pacify Afghanistan.

Yay, Vietnam repeat. Who didn't see that coming?  

Wanna hear something scary? In April we will have had been^* in Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam. Also, Turd Blossom just praised Obama's plan which means we are definitely fucked.



^{* - Hooray for the future perfect tense!!}

[Cain]

And then I'd ignore all their advice and dump the problem on the laps of Iran, Russia, India and China, and tell them to enjoy the spillover effects, as a fuck you for all the "help" they have provided in the country.

So basically, we've fucked up beyond belief and the only thing left to do is admit it?

Pretty much.

Now, if an effort had been made back in 2001 to undertake a concerted counterinsurgency strategy, and troops hadn't been diverted in 2002 and 2006 to Iraq and if several other factors had come together fortuitously, then perhaps it would be almost over by now (it takes about a decade to successfully carry out counterinsurgency).

However, it hasn't, so things got worse, and such a strategy would have a starting point of, well, now.

The problem is our military and political elites think that war is like some sort of computer game, that victory is always possible and even if you've made mistakes before, realizing them now is a short-cut to finishing it all off.  It isn't.  Sometimes you screw up so horribly, your chances of winning vanish into nothing.

Also, Vietnam is a bad analogy, but I'm convinced the US political-security elites are only capable of understanding the world through analogy (because they aren't very bright), which is probably why Vietnam has been mentioned 50,000 times by every single foreign affairs pundit since yesterday.  Vietnam was a nationalist uprising disguised as a Communist revolution, set against the backdrop of a regional and global ideological struggle.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a hodgepodge of competing loyalties in a region with a hodpgepodge of governments and movements, and the only unifying force in the region may well be the ISAF (that is, unifying groups against it through continued occupation - read Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla for more). 

Also also, setting a withdrawal date might be the most sensible thing Obama has done.  I've seen lots of pissing and moaning suggesting that this "just tells the Taliban they only need to wait out the US forces".  Well, duh.  This is a guerrilla war, is it not?  I would think any guerrilla commander might have just figured out the basic guerrilla strategy is outlasting the occupying force.

[Requia ☣]

I've never really figured out how this was supposed to be like Vietnam myself.  Nothing about it seems similar except the bit with guerrilla warfare.

[Cain]

And even that isn't really all that similar, since they were guerrilla forces backed by the NVA, a regular military organization.

[Kai]

The war is like Vietnam because the US just keeps stupidly throwing troops in when in the end it's just going to mean a loss anyway. It's a repeat of "but we can't just /LEAVE/!!1", a repeat of bringing democracy to the heathens and a repeat of local guerrilla warfare ruling over foreign invasion.

[East Coast Hustle]

ehh, that's not REALLY what Vietnam was about (it was an ideological proxy war with the USSR and we didn't give one shit about bringing democracy), and we COULD have won the Vietnam war with overpowering force if we had the nutsack to actually do what it takes to win a guerilla war. Even thought the Vietnam war really wasn't a guerilla war, for the most part.

What makes Afghanistan so special is that even doing what it takes to win a guerilla war won't work there.

[Jenne]

Afghanistan is rotten inside and out.  There's no real ally source to hold on to that's worth anything that will net any organizational foothold.  At all.   It's a bleak picture, from all angles.  And the West becomes just as dirty when they get over there--it's too tempting NOT too, which is what Karzai adores to point out when folks get up in his grill about his peccadilloes.

What Cain said about letting all the separate factions in the ME and Asia that have helped create and maintain this monster take it over and clean it up as they would (or let it necritize further) is apt.  The theory in this house is that an Attaturk-style hostile takeover and prolonged fisting up the ass of everyone who's currently in power is the only other alternative.

So, who wants to sign up to be the Afghan Attaturk, raise your hand.  {crickets} (Yeah, because King of a Shitpile is STILL King of a Shitpile, no matter what power that may bring)

[East Coast Hustle]

I bet Uzbekistan would jump at the chance to exert dominance over a country where Uzbeks are one of the largest ethnic group.

And I'll tell you what, if Uzbekistan was running the show in Afghanistan for a bit, the Afghans would suddenly get ALOT more motivated to catch up to teh rest of the civilized world and start dealing with their own internal problems in a productive manner.

If there's one group of people that make the Pashtuns look like a pack of simpering wimps, it's the Uzbeks.

[Cain]

The way things are currently going, a military coup is in the probable future.  Far larger army than the economy can support, etc etc  I believe most Afghan army officers are ethnically Tajik.  However, the former Commander of the Afghan Army, General Rashid Dostum, is ethnically Uzbek.  He's pretty anti-Taliban in his personal views, almost cosmopolitan in fact (he has a nasty tendency to butcher POWs, however if that's your greatest crime as an Afghan warlord, you're not doing bad) but he does have a habit of being fairly mercenary, and has both worked with and against the Taliban before.  In fact, he's pretty much the Alcibiades of Central Asia.

I don't think his ties with the Uzbek government are good though.  Last time he was in trouble, last year, he fled to Turkey.  Still, the guy is unpredictable and has a knack for making friends (and enemies) everywhere.  He'd be a nightmare for everyone as a leader, and perhaps that is the best that can be hoped for.

Iran also has a stake in Afghanistan, I believe the Hazara are Shi'a, and one of the most powerful blocs in the country.  Karzai has gone out of his way to court them and give them special privileges.

Russia and India both bankrolled the mostly Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, too.  Both have their own reasons to hate Pakistan (unsurprisingly, these reasons involve the ISI and Islamic terrorist groups) and to deny it the strategic depth it wishes.

China, however, will do fuck all.  Why?  China is following the US route to global power, by which it sits on its hands and trades with everyone, until it's economic power turns into military power.  Next time a global war happens, China will sit by the sidelines until a winner becomes obvious (or a very threatening power looks like it could win) and then will win the war and use the gratitude of the world to forge a new system with it at the centre of global affairs.  So like I said, the US route to power.  In the meantime, it will try to not create any undue hostility from other countries, even if they are weeny losers like Afghanistan or Burma.

[East Coast Hustle]

here's hoping the Chinese do a better job than we did.