On Jan 27, 2009, at 7:13 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> How about: 8 years ago the quasi-government in Afghanistan was
> providing support to people who carried out attacks on NYC and
> Washington DC,
They provided hospitality, not support, for people financed by Saudi Arabia among others (whether or not still including the CIA), who were glad to take "credit" for the attacks that the "quasi-government" in Kabul, unlike the "quasi-government" in DC, had no power to permit or prevent.
> and if they get back into power again they might do something
> similar again, so we should try to keep them from coming back into
> power?
Of course, they *are* in power in most of the country outside the Kabul city limits, especially at night. Obama's "surge" cannot defeat them; the Western military in Afghanistan has absolutely no illusions on that score and neither does Obama. His strategy has *strategic* goals--bringing enough of the Talibans into a stable government contributing to "stabilization" of a Pakistan surrounded by the Pathans and Indians and dependent on the US. The additional troops are what the West brings to the table for negotiations leading to that deal. Read the Stratfor commentaries on this., Another precondition is the deal with Iran now in the first stages of preparation. The crucial weakness of this strategy, which neither Stratfor nor anyone else is prepared to contemplate, is that the only viable aspect of the Afghan economy is the morphine industry and as long as that industry is kept in its present state of "illegality" it will corrupt any government, including one with Taliban members. Until Obama overcomes his deep political cowardice and declares an end to the enormously profitable (to police and other criminals) "War on Drugs" through a policy based on medicalization and regulation his Afghan endeavors will remain a quagmire.
>
> --- On Tue, 1/27/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> there's no reason to think that obama just isn't the kind of guy who
> would, as a matter of course, simply hew to those ideas: that we
> must look weak, that we must exact revenge, that we must keep $
> pumping the mil-industrial complex.
He's too intelligent for that. He's in a strategic pickle, the war is being lost, he has to do something. He realized that very early on but could only justify it in the Oblabla campaign by turning the "War on Terror" nonsense against its authors.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos