You Can’t Fix The World
The optimist sees the glass as half full. Strangely, some see Afghanistan as almost ready for stability. While I would like to see it that way too, I am afraid that I see, instead, an undeveloped country locked in poverty and holding on to an absolutely useless religion. These shackles are too pervasive and will sooner, rather than later, force the unfortunate people who call themselves Afghans back even further in time.
NATO forces ousted the Taliban Government in 2002 and installed a “democratic and free” Government lead by Hamid Karzai. This Government has been an abject failure although it has probably done as well as should have been expected. Now President Obama is weighing whether to increase US presence and increase the effort to bring a stable government to bare. What ever President Obama is considering, let’s hope he recognizes that “you can’t fix the world”.
The US must consider first its national interests. With respect to Afghanistan, what are those national interests? That’s not clear, although preventing the return of the Taliban would seem one of them. But think about the efficacy of that goal. What prevents the Taliban from setting up training camps in Somolia or Pakistan?
As we have seen in Iran, a religious lead government take over, given time, looks just like a tyrannical secular takeover. Sooner or later the religious leaders find that receiving a little money makes life easier, and receiving a lot more money makes life even better.
The senseless insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan,where suicide bombings rule the day, have no recent historical parallels . They look more like a civil war where a divided nation seeks to find a ruler, but chooses not to find compromise. As a result there are no cookie cutter solutions.
This argues strongly for a swift reduction of US troops with most likely a complete withdrawal within three years. American can save lives and money, and have the advantage of observing from a distance what emerges. There is no reason to expect a new Iraq or Afghanistan to be a better neighbor for Russia or China.
This entry was posted on October 29, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: afghan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Taliban
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