THE AFGHAN EXIT STRATEGY Uncle Sam: I want you to do it

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HA19Df02.html





Members of a delegation accompanying US Vice President Dick Cheney to Kabul for the inaugural ceremony of the newly constituted parliament last month would have been the first Americans to report back to Washington that something odd was going on in Afghanistan, that things were not quite like what they had read in their briefs and position papers.

The Afghan sentries guarding the presidential palace of Hamid Karzai simply shrugged their shoulders and roughly shepherded the protesting Americans to a corner, and proceeded to subject them, women and men alike, to a thorough body search before letting them into the premises where Karzai was waiting. These were Afghan guards who were trained and equipped by the US.

-snip-

From the US perspective, this may look a moot point since maximum political mileage has been already squeezed out of the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. To an appreciable extent, President George W Bush owes his second term in office to the Afghan war. Karzai's hastily arranged victory in the presidential election, on the eve of the US election, was trumpeted in front of a naive electorate in the US as a foreign policy triumph that made America more secure from "terrorism".

-snip-

But fortunately for the US, unlike in Iraq, an exit strategy is at hand. The baton is simply being passed on to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The US is counting on the "New Europeans" who are eager to prove their "Europeanness", and NATO's Anglo-Saxon contingents to come forward for a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
-snip-
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this longish article ends with:

The power calculus in Kabul that Washington thought it had astutely worked out was far too contrived and out of tune with Afghan ground realities to survive unless backed by an assertive US military presence for years to come. That is how the Afghan bazaar views the spectrum. The security guards in the presidential palace in Kabul let that be known when Cheney came calling.

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the bushmilhousegang doesn't care; they got what they wanted from Afghanistan. the pipelines are going into place and are being guarded. the gang can air attack in Afghanistan and Pakistan at will. what care they what anyone thinks.

heck, let the new europeans have some fun.

[enigma000]

1. pipelines? are they going to start them soon? n/t

[donsu]

2. last I read they were being worked on and that was last yr.

it's not exactly a talked about endeaver. you'd probably have to get that info from the oil/gas barons in charge

maybe google