While the buffoonery in Washington continues unabated, the business of running the world must go on, and John Kerry has been having a busy time of it.
Kerry is in Afghanistan this week working out the details of America's retreat with our bumboy Karzai. At issue is the question of how many American troops will remain in the country after all American troops are withdrawn next year.
Pentagon bigs want to make sure there's enough firepower left back to prop up Karzai for a decent interval. The optics of a Taliban takeover the day after America abandons ship would shake the faith of those several dozen Americans who still believe the twelve year Afghan mission served some useful purpose.
According to Kerry, he and Karzai are on the verge of a deal that will "put the Taliban on their heels."
The US and the NATO gang couldn't defeat the Taliban in twelve years of combat, but our leaving is going to put them on their heels.
That's what I mean by talking stupid.
Showing posts with label NATO in Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NATO in Afghanistan. Show all posts
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Clinton and Panetta team up to tell world not to screw with America
Panetta was in Towelistan today warning the locals that the USA won't be putting up with this back-stabbing shit forever.
Hey Towelers, you're with us or you're against us!
You can't have it both ways.
The only reason America has to launch drone attacks in your country is because you won't do it yourselves.
It's not that we want to violate your sovereignty, it's just that we don't have a choice.
When half the population over there is trying to kill us when we're trying to help you, what choice do we have?
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton is waving the finger of righteousness at those Assad minions over in Syria. The violence that the regime is inflicting is "unconscionable".
Which I suppose puts that Syrian violence in a completely different category than good old fashioned USA/NATO violence.
USA/NATO violence is, if nothing else, at least "conscionable".
Which is why we're the good guys and the Towel-heads are the bad guys.
Hey Towelers, you're with us or you're against us!
You can't have it both ways.
The only reason America has to launch drone attacks in your country is because you won't do it yourselves.
It's not that we want to violate your sovereignty, it's just that we don't have a choice.
When half the population over there is trying to kill us when we're trying to help you, what choice do we have?
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton is waving the finger of righteousness at those Assad minions over in Syria. The violence that the regime is inflicting is "unconscionable".
Which I suppose puts that Syrian violence in a completely different category than good old fashioned USA/NATO violence.
USA/NATO violence is, if nothing else, at least "conscionable".
Which is why we're the good guys and the Towel-heads are the bad guys.
Monday, May 21, 2012
The long goodbye; why can't we admit Afghanistan is a dead end?
Obama's remarks at the conclusion of the NATO blabfest in Chicago don't offer much hope that anything has been learned in this decade plus debacle.
There's still that streak of wishful thinking that wants to believe at any cost that something has been accomplished.
Something... anything.
Well, we got bin Laden, didn't we?
That could and would have happened whether or not we'd spent a trillion dollars and thousands of lives turning the Afghans against us over these past ten years.
But at least the Taliban are on the ropes.
Not so much on the ropes as in the wings, waiting for their time to come again, as eventually it must.
While Obama and General John Allen and of course the hapless Karzai are still making reassuring noises, the rest of the coalition has said "we're outa there and we're not coming back".
They will however send money to assuage their troubled consciences.
Which is another way of avoiding the inevitable, of prolonging the goodbye, of denying that this is a dead end.
The 350,000 strong armed forces we're building up will cost over four billion dollars a year to maintain.
I have before me a graph showing Afghanistan's GDP for the past fifty years. At the time of the US invasion Afghanistan had a Gross Domestic Product of $2.6 billion. Since then it has spiraled steadily upward due to the infusion of both military and reconstruction spending.
Absent that foreign money infusion, it is reasonable to expect that the GDP will again settle in that range. Afghanistan will then be in the position of having a military that costs more than 100% of its GDP to maintain.
That can't be done, not by the Afghans.
Not by anybody. Every cent of that military spending will have to come from other countries. Every year. In perpetuity.
It won't, of course. Soon enough there'll be new priorities. Afghanistan will fall into the memory hole.
Goodbye Karzai... welcome back Mulla Omar.
There's still that streak of wishful thinking that wants to believe at any cost that something has been accomplished.
Something... anything.
Well, we got bin Laden, didn't we?
That could and would have happened whether or not we'd spent a trillion dollars and thousands of lives turning the Afghans against us over these past ten years.
But at least the Taliban are on the ropes.
Not so much on the ropes as in the wings, waiting for their time to come again, as eventually it must.
While Obama and General John Allen and of course the hapless Karzai are still making reassuring noises, the rest of the coalition has said "we're outa there and we're not coming back".
They will however send money to assuage their troubled consciences.
Which is another way of avoiding the inevitable, of prolonging the goodbye, of denying that this is a dead end.
The 350,000 strong armed forces we're building up will cost over four billion dollars a year to maintain.
I have before me a graph showing Afghanistan's GDP for the past fifty years. At the time of the US invasion Afghanistan had a Gross Domestic Product of $2.6 billion. Since then it has spiraled steadily upward due to the infusion of both military and reconstruction spending.
Absent that foreign money infusion, it is reasonable to expect that the GDP will again settle in that range. Afghanistan will then be in the position of having a military that costs more than 100% of its GDP to maintain.
That can't be done, not by the Afghans.
Not by anybody. Every cent of that military spending will have to come from other countries. Every year. In perpetuity.
It won't, of course. Soon enough there'll be new priorities. Afghanistan will fall into the memory hole.
Goodbye Karzai... welcome back Mulla Omar.
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