Sunday, August 01, 2010

Plans

WASHINGTON — When President Obama announced his new war plan for Afghanistan last year, the centerpiece of the strategy — and a big part of the rationale for sending 30,000 additional troops — was to safeguard the Afghan people, provide them with a competent government and win their allegiance.

American soldiers on patrol north of Kandahar, Afghanistan, last week. The counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success.
Eight months later, that counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success, as demonstrated by the flagging military and civilian operations in Marja and Kandahar and the spread of Taliban influence in other areas of the country.

Instead, what has turned out to work well is an approach American officials have talked much less about: counterterrorism, military-speak for the targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

As Atrios notes, the plan is to kill everyone who wants us to leave, and then we can leave.

Time magazine has a cover this week of an Afgan girl that was mutilated because she did something to offend the sensibilities of the Taliban. The argument goes that we have to stay in Afghanistan because these jackasses are mean. That they're mean even when our military is in Afghanistan doesn't seem to register. You know.. they'll be mean regardless, so what does anybody who is American gain but the chance to get killed in the glorious battle against islam?

Well, the defense contractors gain a lot. That's probably the point of the whole thing. Still, we could have just loaded up all those girls that were being oppressed and bring them to the US and set them up for life for a tiny fraction of the cost of the war. That would have REALLY pissed off the Taliban, eh? No girls to be an asshole to.. right?

Seems to me that after 9/11, people thought that since the US is the biggest, baddest, mother fucker to survive the cold war, we had to go fuck some shit up. That's all fine and dandy. Go fuck some shit up. Hell, take a few months and really blow the fuck out of a lot of shit.

Going on 10 years later now.. and people still think that you can change a culture by embracing them with freedom bombs. Would have been cheaper just to give them all some money and ask them to like us.

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