Pat Oliphant for May 02, 2012

If it works it works. The thing is tribalism is powerful but in the end it always falls to larger forms of governments. It isn’t a matter of if but when. Don’t know when, maybe not in my life time. Before the old Sovit of Dis-Union screwed it up Afghanistan was doing fine, thing is hardly anyone is alive who remembers it anymore. Over there a guy who is 29 is old.

And the Americans will stick around for twenty or more years instructing the Afghan military on fighting tactics. As Jimmy Kimmel would say, “that’s hilarious.”

Tribal “memory” lasts a lot longer than invaders. The “Irish” still have the potato famine. Afghans have a lot to work with, including Mongol hordes. Muslims have crusaders and vice versa. Jews and Arabs have everything going back to Abraham’s sons.

We should just get out of there and forget trying to police the world! we are not doing all that good ourselves.

“……Well we are still in Germany and Korea doing just this very thing you mentioned…..”.Not to mention the other 128 countries at least – a network so vast even the Pentagon has a hard time keeping track.

“Why are we still in Korea and Germany with zero signs of ever leaving?”.Both are remnants of the “Cold War”. You do remember that don’t you? Forces in Germany have been much reduced since “the wall fell”. Those that are left are there because it’s a safe and (for the most part) friendly place to have forward bases. If you’re going to have forward bases, it’s cheaper to have them where you don’t need to shoot at the locals, so financially it’s win – win..The boarder between North and South Korea is still one of the most dangerous in the world. The US drew that line and we feel responsible for defending it; you don’t?

By the way, I was completely against the Afghanistan invasion from the beginning. I’m sort of amazed that there were so few who saw how stupid invasion was. (Oh and that “northern alliance” thing… don’t get me started.) Surgical strikes against specific terrorist training bases and then ship the rest of the country boatloads of western consumer goods to destabilize the Taliban Government. It may have sounded fanciful at the time, but couldn’t have gone any worse than what we have now.

We would do well if we spent a bit more time and energyin our own hemisphere.

It’s not that difficult to drill through glass.

Think of this. If the Afgans don’t want a democratic country, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Bring them home!

So much oil that we export.Seems like the connies is the ones that always ain’t happy.

That’s pretty funny, good one!

But somehow we can’t afford to pay for the general public health and education.

Ironic, isn’t it?

“Why did Democrats…”? Because they were caught up in the hype? They thought Bush could get Bin Laden and not screw up? Why don’t you ask them? It was a terrible mistake.

I didn’t say that it would work, just that it would have been better to do that than what we did. But now I will say it could have worked. If we shipped the stuff in to different locations the effort to destroy it would have been a lot of work. Someone would have been motivated by normal human nature (greed) to try to get some of the stuff before it was destroyed. There was a government in the Kabul that ruled some regions of the country. They would have trouble keeping order. The “loosely connected gathering of tribal enclaves” is a vary stable system, as we have seen. Greed from below might have worked better than a deal with the “Northern Alliance” to made the basic structure of the society unstable and thereby promote change.

Oh, and all this talk about the stone age is silly. Afghanistan has long been as far as the European Middle ages. Witch trials (where they drowned suspects to prove they were Innocent) come to mind.

Under the glass

…And which FACTION of which tribe?

How is it that a President who is in office for a term of 4 years, and if re-elected when he makes a promise to another country, in absence of a Treaty approved by the Senate, can promise that nation the U.S. will maintain a military and diplomatic presence in that country for another 10,20, or 30 or more years like President Obama did to Afghanistan ? Especially, after we demanded the Soviets leave Afghanistan for precisely the same reasons ! Also, why do we have “permanent bases” in countries like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, and offering to build more in other countries. Doesn’t our Constitution forbid such? Our First President General George Washington gave a Farewell Address to the first American Army and warned against getting mixed up permanently in “entangling alliances” and treaty alliances and arrangements that would get us involved in future military conflicts to “save our treaty partners”. What would have happened in 1939, if we along with Great Britain and France, had a Treaty with Poland ?