Saturday, September 26, 2009

FRAYING IN AFFRAYING AFGHANISTAN

Bob Herbert correctly notice in the NYT: "The difference between the public’s take on Afghanistan and that of the nation’s top leadership is both stunning and ominous. A clash is coming."

As I have argued on my sites, to win a war, one needs first to know what one is fighting for. Or then have an immense military superiority. We do not have the later: scaling up what the French did in Algeria to the populations, we would need 500,000 [# of French soldiers] times 36 [population Afghanistan] divided by 6 [population Algerians at the time], namely three million men.


The French won militarily in Algeria, and, although "Algeria is France" (as used to be said), they left. They were just plain tired of waging a conflict, and argue about superstition.


So are we going to send three million men to dominate 36 million Afghans? So we can lose a few years later?


Unlikely.


Obama does not know what he is doing in Afghanistan, as shown by his completely self contradictory statements about Islam there (which is, according to him, and the fact of the Afghan constitution, what we are defending there, he means, what he views as the good Islam, except he does not like the law about raping women, and forcing them to enjoy it officially...)


The drain of this grotesque war on treasure, morals, morality, and logical coherence, let alone lives and limbs cannot be sustained...

As I have argued, the war is waged not because of Al Qaeda, or the Taliban: these are just pretexts. But the truth can only be left unsaid...


Patrice Ayme

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

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