Af-Pak predictions
These predictions are cynical and pessimistic and off the top of my head and I HOPE that some of them turn out to be wrong; Maybe they will (in some infinitesimally small way) even contribute to making themselves wrong....
1. Everyone and his dog knows that the Karzai regime is dysfuntional and is becoming a millstone around the neck of the US effort, but nobody will be able to do anything about it. The US is in the strange position of having occupied Afghanistan without having occupied it and is not acting, and cannot act, as the occupying power. Obama and Biden are not going to be able to get Karzai "fixed" (he could stay on as president, but that whole setup still needs to be fixed) and without someone at the top knowing what they are trying to fix and why they are fixing it and how to do it without becoming publicly or habitually nasty, this is not going to get fixed. Bottom line: the US has taken up a job it is institutionaly incapable of doing (manipulating a foreign country into a desired place without wrecking it, and getting your way while genuinely helping THOSE people...that is just too much of a "finesse" requirement).
2. That woman who is viceroy in Pakistan looks smart and hard and maybe up to the job, but if the US is pulling out of Afghanistan, there is no way in hell they can get a good result in Pakistan. The Pakistani army will continue to lose men in a confused fight with the "bad taliban" while continuing to ignore the "good taliban". If they could think that far ahead, they would know that "defeating" the US in Afghanistan will ruin their own future (well, it wont ruin all of them, some will retire to ranches in the US before the #### well and truly hits the fan)..OK, some of them actually know that by now, but they are scared, confused and trained to think like anti-Indian automatons (remember, they went to NDC and I have never met a Pakistani officer whose thinking had not been completely warped by his time at NDC). They will jump up and declare victory and appoint Hakeemullah Mehsud the governor of Waziristan the moment the US leaves. The irony is, Hakeemullah will then have some of them shot just for fun and "on principle". They will then fight Indian and Iranian proxies in Afghanistan down to the last Afghan and all the mayhem will probably end when India and Pakistan finally blow each other up. This being kalyug and the downward spiral and all that...
3. The US army has never really had a good start in any war (except Inchon? but then the advance on Seoul was hardly the stuff of legend). But they eventually figure it out (OK, except Vietnam). Its not the armed forces that are going to lose this war (or whatever its officially called). Its an institutional and cultural failure at the level of the political leadership and (even more so, in my humble opinion) the strategic "thinkers" and the punditocracy. Or maybe its just rampant corruption (as in people looking out for their own or their friend's pocketbook). I know some people here think its just a culture past its peak, but I dont buy that. There is no general theory of the rise and fall of "cultures". The only rule is "whatever works" and all the patterns are there all the time. Sometimes things turn around and sometimes they dont. What kind of idea are you? (gratuitous "satanic verses" quote: http://evildrclam.blogspot.com/2006/...c-verses.html) also check out the Housman poem I found there when I went looking for the satanic verses quote.(http://evildrclam.blogspot.com/)
comments?
Originally Posted by omarali50
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