To give the man his props, I'm not sure he ever said that he expected a tickertape parade sort of "victory".
And regarding the whole "afghan victory" trope in general, he had and has a hell of a lot of company in the "Western fools who ignore the thousand-year-old history of Afghan factional war". Everybody and his Gingrich seem to conveniently forget that Afghans seldom do wars of extermination. Who could, when your enemy's father's mother's brother is also your wife's brother's sister's uncle?
Super Dave is, I think, just preparing the sheeple for the reality that there is like to be some faction or factions of what we're calling "The Taliban" still around in 2014 - or 2054, for that matter. If "victory" depends on our elmination the Talibs like Nazis we will probably never see that kind of victory.
It's like Saddam; was Iraq Iraq because Saddam was Saddam, or was Saddam Saddam because Iraq is Iraq? I think we're seeing that it was a hell of a lot of the latter.
So in "Russia" Putin winds up getting his czar/Lenin/Stalin on, in Iraq Maliki does him some Saddamy, while in Afghanistan, the faction of Pashtunwali and Hanafi traditionalists will become...Pashtunwali and Hanafi traditionalists. Eliminate them? Eliminate the rocks and poppies from Afghanistan while you're at it...
To give the man his props, I'm not sure he ever said that he expected a tickertape parade sort of "victory".
ReplyDeleteAnd regarding the whole "afghan victory" trope in general, he had and has a hell of a lot of company in the "Western fools who ignore the thousand-year-old history of Afghan factional war". Everybody and his Gingrich seem to conveniently forget that Afghans seldom do wars of extermination. Who could, when your enemy's father's mother's brother is also your wife's brother's sister's uncle?
Super Dave is, I think, just preparing the sheeple for the reality that there is like to be some faction or factions of what we're calling "The Taliban" still around in 2014 - or 2054, for that matter. If "victory" depends on our elmination the Talibs like Nazis we will probably never see that kind of victory.
It's like Saddam; was Iraq Iraq because Saddam was Saddam, or was Saddam Saddam because Iraq is Iraq? I think we're seeing that it was a hell of a lot of the latter.
So in "Russia" Putin winds up getting his czar/Lenin/Stalin on, in Iraq Maliki does him some Saddamy, while in Afghanistan, the faction of Pashtunwali and Hanafi traditionalists will become...Pashtunwali and Hanafi traditionalists. Eliminate them? Eliminate the rocks and poppies from Afghanistan while you're at it...