Center for a New American Security

cross posting from

cross posting from registan.net, where this pessimistic venting was in response to some argument about things to come in Afghanistan and whether the ANA or the taliban have more support..
There is argument at the level of propaganda and we are all familiar with it, but I am going to put on my cynical cassandra hat:

1. The majority of the afghan people want peace and progress, but the majority cannot be said to automatically know how to get there (this is true of all people in some trivial sense). What Anand is saying about the ANA may have been true, but when the US signals withdrawal, things are bound to change. Most people do not support the taliban or the karzai regime. They support whatever option is marginally better than the rest in giving them peace and security. With full western support and creative and consistent effort, that MAY have been the ANA, it wont be once Obama completes his pullout dance. Support will then necessarily shift.

2. It will not shift all to the taliban. Where local warlords are capable of resisting the taliban, a lot of it will shift to them.

3. Obama and the West have probably not decided to pull out. WE can see that pullout, they cannot. This is a tragic but perhaps expected situation. Tragic because it means a lot of killing will be carried out on all sides while the Western powers figure out that they are leaving.

4. Of course, all that killing will be nothing compared to the orgy of violence that will come AFTER the withdrawal.

5. Jihadi propagandists (including the oversmart spin masters at GHQ, like Shireen Mazari and Ahmed Qureshi) will find that victory is sometimes much worse than defeat. Their objective interests (as a class) actually lie with the West and India (not with "the gap", as Barnett would say), they just dont know it. Eventually, they will be shunted aside or will change their tune OR "everything burns"...btw, I am not buying all of Barnett Bahadur's cheery theories either...

6. As always, I hope to be proved wrong. But watching the show unfold in the national security team in Washington, I now think this will all end sooner than we thought.

7. Finally, I dont think the average American taxpayer will be worse off (or at least, they will not be much affected by this whole business). It may be that the lives of average people will be materially better just as the lives of average britons have been better since their empire moved on (at least for a couple of generations..nothing lasts forever), especially if the important parts of the world are still cooperating and in order. The places the US leaves behind may also be better off, but not ALL of them. I dont think there is some general rule that EVERY region is ready to rule themselves and cooperate with some kind of international order as well. Some will fall into anarchy until a new policeman takes control (chinese?)..Unfortunately, I think Afghanistan is in that category and could drag a chunk of Pakistan down with it. Worse case scenario, all of south asia is in trouble...And I am making no judgment about how much foreign "interference" has helped to bring things to this pass. Just describing things as they seem to be unfolding.

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