Obama's Afghan Strategy

I aint going to bother hunting up a bunch of links for this post, as everybody pretty much knows the story by now anyway. Obama gave a speech last night from, in the words of Chris Matthews, "The Enemy Camp" of West Point, at which he laid out his plan for the Afghan War. Okay, I have three problems with it.

One. It too soooo long, it makes you wonder, what would happen if we were ever attacked? Would it take this long to come up with a strategy for a reprisal? I sure as hell hope not, but it makes you wonder.

Two. Timeline for withdrawal. Yeah, we've all been through this debate too many times, so I won't rehash it here, other than just adding it to the list.

Three. And here's the biggie, for me. He's talking about including "moderate" Taliban in any effort to bring about peace. Okay, at first glance, that would seem to me something like saying "I'm going to get me a vicious killer dog to guard my property, but I think I'm going to opt for one that just has a slight case of rabies". Is there really any such thing as a moderate Taliban? I mean, I know where he's coming from. Some of these people are probably just hangers-on, just riding the wave and going with the flow. They figured, at one point or another, "hey, you're either with the Taliban or you're against them." Seeing as how they were probably understandably attached to their heads, they decided they would be with them.

But is that who we really want to pin our hopes on? I understand quite well that he is basing this on the Surge strategy in Iraq, which included a process called "The Awakening" in which, to put it bluntly, various tribal leaders and insurgents in Iraq were pretty much bribed to fight alongside us, as opposed to against us. Failing that, at least they should just tone it down a notch or two.

Well, in their case, it worked. But these were not people who had a strong attachment to religious fundamentalism. These were people who initially fought against us for any number of reasons. They were Sunnis who feared the prospect of a potential Shi'ite majority rule over the country in which, under Saddam Hussein, they were the privileged minority class. For all the harping the left does about apartheid, whether it be South Africa or as pertains to Israeli domination of the Palestinians, they seem to conveniently forget the fact that, under Saddam, Iraq was the penultimate apartheid nation. But that's a story for another post. The point is, in order to win these people to our side, we had to convince them their rights would be protected from reprisals for past misrule.

Then of course there were those who just fought against us for no other reason than national pride. They saw us as the aggressors and occupiers. We had to convince them that we had no intention of turning Iraq into our own national possession, that we fully intended to leave, when it became practical to do so.

For the most part, though, we simply bribed them.

The Taliban might well be a different story, and I see potential for all kinds of mischief here, when the "moderate" Taliban use this policy as a way of gaining entry into the infrastructure of political power where, once they are safely ensconced, they can work to increase their presence and influence, until finally, the next thing you know, the Taliban is back in control of the country, and non-Taliban members of the government are removed from power, and more than likely killed as the result of a sudden coup.

Well, that's my concern, hopefully the potential for such prospects has been deliberated. They've sure taken their time, surely the idea has come up once or twice here and there.

But of course, Obama is dancing on a tightrope, trying to please the left and the right, and his main problems here seem to be with the left. Bear in mind, prior to Obama's election, the left used to scream that Afghanistan was the real legitimate war on terror, and that Iraq was a diversion. Now that Obama is president and the Democrats are in power, they've conveniently forgotten all that, and want us now out of Afghanistan as much as Iraq, which you barely hear a peep about any more.

I just wonder why they are so obvious in their reversals on Afghanistan. Has the US done that good a job eradicating the opium crop? The last I heard, it was still going strong and efforts to eradicate it have so far met with modest success at best. So it can't be that.

Maybe they're just afraid they might eradicate it?