>I really think that it is worth considering as a hypothersis that the US
>(the government) simply is blundering around -- that they really don't
>know the fuck what they are doing. There is at least as much empirical
>evidence from human history for this explanation of a given state policy
>as there is for the various explanations that assume the policy makers
>see their own interests exaclty the way the analysts on the sideline
>(right or left) see that interest. All left analyses of U.S. policy that
>I have seen (including most of my own observations) assume (1) that
>there exists a single objective interest of the U.S. state in this
>situation (2) that the policy makers in D.C. understand that interest
>and (3) that "my" understanding of that interest is identical with the
>policy makers' understanding. Not one of these premises is really very
>certain.
Well, you may consider my contributions to be insufficiently analytical to qualify as analysis, or insufficiently leftish to qualify as left, but I certainly hold the 'they know not what they do' position, even though I do think they tailored their response to 911 to suit a pre-existing set of policy considerations (perhaps they didn't know that integrated policies of that scale are inevitably contingent and chaoplexic things, and that the history of big countries messing so directly with small ones is rather spotty, and that there are a few hundred million people about whose mode of self-identification and analysis is neither as post-westphalian nor as egoistically utilitarian as theirs).
I think the fact that they're selling the evacuation of Kabul as such a great triumph, or allowing it so to be sold, is a real give-away. Anything untoward that happens in Aghanistan now is gonna be a PR nightmare coz of that ... and an undefeated enemy reverting to the military strategy it knows best, handing over Kabul to a politically explosive outfit who don't seem to be doing what their Great White Chiefs tell 'em ... well, anyway, put me down for both the 'simply blundering around' and 'untoward stuff is gonna happen' options.
>From the Cambodian bombing campaign, through a plethora of
puppets-run-amuck, the sustained irritation of allies and potential allies
after the end of the Cold War, the Oval Office's desperate search to find
out where Rwanda was after years of mounting ethnic war there, and now this
Afghanistan business - well, when in doubt, suspect incompetence, eh?
Oh, and now that I know turbulence from another airplane four miles away can cause the tail assembly and both engines spontaneously to fall off an airplane midflight, I may never fly again - and certainly not from Boston via New York on a Veterans' Day ...
Cheers, Rob.