26 July 2010

That...

might take a while to read

90000 pages? I thought it was over 250,000 when I first heard about it.

Doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of new information from the initial reports. What it is unvarnished acknowledgments by people on the ground or in charge of the situation that the project of making Afghanistan into a respectable country capable of suppressing the Taliban without massive external support (or more importantly, Al Qaeda) is pretty unreasonable (and always has been).

Things like Pakistan's support for the Afghani Taliban, which goes back many years, don't help of course. But that's not a new development, and it should be one that we should have been able to account for in forming a strategy. If a regional ally is supporting the enemy forces that we're trying to attack, it doesn't make sense to keep prosecuting a war against that enemy in the way we're doing (by occupation and counter-insurgency rather than perhaps militant or aggressive counter-terrorism and intelligence work). At least if the insurgency itself is partly backed by allied forces.

I suppose one could say we should attack or threaten Pakistan. But we're sort of stretched out as it is and those hawks still want to bomb Iran. Which bombing other countries would put a crimp on that agenda.

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