I'm sure my approval means as much to him as yours, which is to say nothing at all.Originally Posted by JMA
"Don't trust the Taliban" is an easy enough thing to say, and not quite rocket science... has anyone proposed that we should trust the Taliban? I'd add "don't trust the Karzai Government", "don't trust the Pakistanis", and possibly a few others.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion of the other cited article by the same author, the one in which he offers a prescription. This one:
http://www.defenceiq.com/air-land-an...-nation-build/
I've never made any secret of what I think should have been done. I think the effort should from the start have focused entirely on finding and destroying the Taliban and AQ, with no effort at all to govern or to build a nation, beyond providing opportunity for Afghans to figure out for themselves what they wanted as a government. Once the finding and destruction was deemed adequately done I think we should have left, while we still had the upper hand, with a simple message: don't make us come back. I don't think we ever needed to install democracy or build a nation in Afghanistan. We needed to assure that whoever ended up governing after we left knew that attacking us or sheltering those who did would bring inevitable and awful consequences.
We didn't do that, of course, and the policy that was adopted has backed us into a corner from which I can propose no attractive exit. If "winning" means transforming the Karzai regime into a functioning government, we've set the bar for a win in a very unrealistic place. It's a bad place to be and we shouldn't have put ourselves there.
I don't think anyone is proposing negotiations or a settlement because they trust the Taliban. I see it as a device to contrive some sort of superficial settlement that could give an excuse for a (not very) face-saving exit. It's not a great way out, but what's better? As long as the Taliban have sanctuary in Afghanistan they can be suppressed but not fully defeated. As long as US forces in Afghanistan are large enough to require supply through Pakistani territory, leverage on Pakistan is limited, and even if forces were reduced to a level not requiring that support it's not clear that Pakistan would be willing or able to shut down sanctuary.
It's just a bad place all around and the best way to manage it would have been to not get into that situation in the first place. Too late for that, obviously. Sooner or later we will withdraw, with or without a face-saving strategy. The place will probably fall to pieces. Maybe next time round we'll be smarter.
In short, I don't think we should be looking for better ways to install governments and build nations, I think we should be looking for strategies that don't involve installing governments and building nations.
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