Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
I was looking forward to your comments (especially about the Phillipines).
One absolute guaranteed way to get a rise out of me is to claim that Reagan's withdrawal of support was responsible for the fall of Marcos. A bit Pavlovian, yes, but I guess most of us have a hot button, or two or ten.

Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
If all that doesn't trigger a response, then another hand will be dealt. I doubt that any hand would ever include full-US withdrawal, but if Holbrooke and ISI are together and can limit/control the Taliban to meet minimum US objectives, it would not be the first time that we have substantially turned on our heel.

I just wonder whether all these folks are bluff (our side included), and the game will go on unchanged for a very long time. Something about having balls, or cutting the Gordian Knot that requires at least one party to actually do something significantly different. Haven't seen that yet.
I really wonder what that other hand is going to be. We had a window, with the obviously fraudulent election, but we seem to have passed it up, and windows don't stay open forever. If we set up a system, we accept the results of an election, and then we turn around and pull it all down because we don't like what came out of what we did... have to cringe at that, looks a bit of a debacle on the PR side.

Maybe someone's got a creative idea... I hope so, and I hope (without much confidence) that we can pull it off. I'm not betting on significant reform from Karzai with any amount of pressure; I just don't think he has the capacity.