HorsesAss.Org » on Afghnaistan

My personal concern is not with the opium but with the lack of alliances.

It seems to me the best way of thinking about Afghanistan is to divide it into three problems.

1. Threat to the US. We need enough force to assure that this will not happen again. That result, however, is likley jnot dependent on who governs fghanistan.

2. Threat to her neighbors. Here is a fantasy ... if the US had NOT prevented Russia from taking over Afghanistan, wouldn't we be better off now? Why can't we get a coalition of neighbors to work their will in Afghanistan?

3. Opium. Why do we care? The majotr impact of Afghani Opium is on Europe and the Muslim countries. If the Taliban did make the poppy the natural resource so many fear, how would that hurt the US? Wouldn't the result be rreactions by Pakistan, Russia, Europe, Iran to the threat to their societies?

I am afraid that the big reason we are in Afghnaistan is Reagunesque US Cowboyism. What happens if we decide that issue 1 and 2 are NOT US concerns? There is a model for this sort of thing. Mao's foreign policy was a sort of "do not ask. do not tell. " Even today China pursues an amoral self interest by working in its own national interest in cess pools like Burma or the Congo. If we took a similar attitude, could the American public sput aside their need to do good?

This leads to one more fantasy ... one where a colaition solves the Afghanistan issue. Even if BHO could alter America's need to ride the white horse,
diplomacy takes time. What so we NOT know about US diplomacy? When BHO came to office he had to deal with a precipitous fall in American influence in the world. This has meant a continuous push t redefine our image and our relationships around the world with a goal of creating a new, multicentric balance.

Imagine this outcome. Obama, Putin, Hu, Amadinejad, Sarkozy and Singh announce a summit. The summit, chaired by Hu, announces a plan to replace the US/Nato forces with a multinational force. How would such a force work?