30 Apr 75 is what we inevitably end up with when we hang the success of our geopolitical strategy on the survival of a corrupt, under-resourced, faction-ridden regional client semi-state with very slim military traditions, little popular education or social discipline, and horrible terrain. A place that has long since been exhausted by war, grows lots of drugs, and has determined, ruthless enemies not only near-at-hand, but in many cases difficult to distinguish from, and intermixed with, the general populace. an enemy which, despite our best efforts, still enjoys significant "safe harbors" in a neighboring country. Sound like anyplace we're involved in NOW?
30 Apr 75 is what we inevitably end up with when we place command powers in the hands of a clique of corrupt, pusillanimous individuals utterly lacking in military experience who fear an American victory more than its defeat. Sound like any regime we are ruled over by NOW?
BTW, there is a radical difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, as part of a worldwide struggle with the Soviet Union we had to defeat both the internal enemy (the Cong in country, the left back home) AND the neighboring communist states, backed ultimately by the aforesaid Soviet Union, which last time I looked is still sitting in the ashheap of history.
OTOH In Afghanistan, all we really need to do to "win" from our POV is keep just enough troops in country to keep an eye on any attempts by Qaida or their cohorts to build training camps, so that we can wipe them out with random raids as necessary. QED: any day Qaida can't travel from Khandahar to New York City on a not-quite-one-way trip is a good day.
As for the rest, well, if the Pushtuns want to spend their time buggering one another while dragging dead sheep behind their camels for sporting purposes (or whatever it is they do in their spare time), as they have since Alexander the Great's day, I could not possibly care less. We don't have to build a nation, and we should not try. All we need to do is brew up the bad guys.
This was not written for chiefs. (general consternation) Hear me! Hear this! Among my people, we carry many such words as this from many lands, many worlds. Many are equally good and are as well respected, but wherever we have gone, no words have said this thing of importance in quite this way. Look at these three words written larger than the rest, with a special pride never written before or since. Tall words proudly saying We the People. That which you call E Plebnista was not written for the chiefs or the kings or the warriors or the rich and powerful, but for all the people! Down the centuries, you have slurred the meaning of the words, 'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution.' These words and the words that follow were not written only for the Yangs, but for the Kohms as well!
CLOUD WILLIAM: The Kohms?
KIRK: They must apply to everyone or they mean nothing! Do you understand?
--Classic Trek, The Omega Glory, 1967
Click the pic for the epic story behind this.
"The Blog Formerly Known as 'The Infinite Monkey (At The Keyboard)'"
I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin”. The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.... -- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
DEMOCRACY is the word with which you must lead them by the nose.... you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings.... under the name of Envy it has been known to humans for thousands of years... you can sanction it -- make it respectable and even laudable -- by the incantatory use of the word democratic. - Screwtape Proposes a Toast
I honor and love you. But I shall obey God rather than you. And while I have life and strength, I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy. For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to take care about the greatest improvement of the soul. This is my teaching.
And if this is the doctrine that corrupts the youth, then I am a mischievous person.
But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, then he is speaking an untruth. . . . - Socrates, by way of Plato and Steven Schwartz
§ It's said that an infinite number of monkeys typing away at keyboards will eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. § What they don't say is that the total amount of matter in the universe, if turned into monkeys and typewriters, powered by all energy present in the universe, to feed the monkeys in question, working for a hundred billion years, can't possibly create as much as the first act of Hamlet. § One Infinite Monkey--i.e., a human being--can write all of Shakespeare's works in the course of a single lifetime... if that Infinite Monkey happens to be Shakespeare. § You are an Infinite Monkey. So am I. Amphibians are we, half spirit and half worm: monkeys in the sense that we are Steve Gerber's “hairless apes, trapped in a world we never made”; infinite in the sense that we are also immortal and we shall still live when the sun is a black dwarf. § If you recognize, like this old silverback, that we are a duality and not a mere mechanical emptiness--you may find my writings amusing. If so, welcome. Stay a while. And feel free to comment. (But keep it clean.)
TOXIC "CONSERVATIVE" WEB SITES TO BE ACTIVELY SHUNNED BY GROWNUPS
World Net Daily/Michael Savage Because Michael Wiener AKA "Michael Savage" defamed the parents of autistic children, of whom I have three.(It doesn’t help that they’re birther nuts, either.)
Ann Coulter Because she's far crueller than necessary and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Debbie Schlussel Ditto the above, plus she hates, and has actively slimed a lot of people I call friends.
VDare Because they're white supremacists who hate immigrants. (White doe? I beg your pardon?)
30 Apr 75 is what we inevitably end up with when we hang the success of our geopolitical strategy on the survival of a corrupt, under-resourced, faction-ridden regional client semi-state with very slim military traditions, little popular education or social discipline, and horrible terrain. A place that has long since been exhausted by war, grows lots of drugs, and has determined, ruthless enemies not only near-at-hand, but in many cases difficult to distinguish from, and intermixed with, the general populace. an enemy which, despite our best efforts, still enjoys significant "safe harbors" in a neighboring country. Sound like anyplace we're involved in NOW?
ReplyDelete30 Apr 75 is what we inevitably end up with when we place command powers in the hands of a clique of corrupt, pusillanimous individuals utterly lacking in military experience who fear an American victory more than its defeat. Sound like any regime we are ruled over by NOW?
ReplyDeleteBTW, there is a radical difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, as part of a worldwide struggle with the Soviet Union we had to defeat both the internal enemy (the Cong in country, the left back home) AND the neighboring communist states, backed ultimately by the aforesaid Soviet Union, which last time I looked is still sitting in the ashheap of history.
OTOH In Afghanistan, all we really need to do to "win" from our POV is keep just enough troops in country to keep an eye on any attempts by Qaida or their cohorts to build training camps, so that we can wipe them out with random raids as necessary. QED: any day Qaida can't travel from Khandahar to New York City on a not-quite-one-way trip is a good day.
As for the rest, well, if the Pushtuns want to spend their time buggering one another while dragging dead sheep behind their camels for sporting purposes (or whatever it is they do in their spare time), as they have since Alexander the Great's day, I could not possibly care less. We don't have to build a nation, and we should not try. All we need to do is brew up the bad guys.
And there ARE bad guys in this scenario.