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Originally Posted by TheMercenary
IMHO no form of central government in Afganistan will ever unite the numerous factions of warlords, nor would it have enough centralized power to prevent various warlords and their ethnic groups from having relationship across the artificial boundries drawn on a map. The best we can hope for is some form of support to allow us to attack the elements which are detrimental to our collective interests where ever they may hide. I suspect even a large scale ramp up of troops would only have a temporizing effect and without long term commitment to bring what is basically a feudal country into the 21st Century we will eventually have to withdraw. As in Iraq the American people can't stomach long term commitments of troops.
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Agreed. A Wilsonian democracy/Marshall aid program is simply not applicable here without a generation-long investment, if at all; and then, probably not worth the price; and even then, the folks back home don't want to go and bleed overseas for 50 years.
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The best we can hope for is some form of support to allow us to attack the elements which are detrimental to our collective interests where ever they may hide.
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I can't see this working.
So we allow some tribal/political dude to take over, withdraw all "boots-on-the-ground" type troops (who may actually be doing useful nation-building work, building and guarding schools, clinics, utilities, etc) and just have a strike force that roams about striking perceived enemies.
Problems:
(1) we can't even find the enemies now, it would be harder under this plan.
(2) we will still need bases to operate from, and supply lines to support those bases. Where are these going to be? how are they not going to be vulnerable?
(3) doing the bombing without the rebuilding would just make us more resented and hated than already. Watch the enemy's recruitment soar.
(4) whichever central government allows foreigners to use their country as a shooting range will be despised by their own people and fairly quickly overthrown, leading to an end to any co-operation with the west.
(5) if the strikes against the enemy do have an impact, they can just move over the border into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Thus we would be contributing to the destabilisation of nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Don't ask me what we
should do though, I can't think of anything that looks like it will work. Perhaps, if we had focused all effort on Afghanistan from 2002 to about 2005 or 06, we might have got it to a stage where we could do a dignified exit, but that opportunity is gone, if it ever existed.
The only contingency plan I would advocate is making sure there is a nice big helipad on the embassy roof.