What we are seeing today is simply the end game, played out among the dregs of what was once Afghan civil society. There is only so much of a window of opportunity for good to happen, in general, and cemetaries (and history itself in fact) are littered with the shards of glass of broken windows. In the case of Afghanistan, it has been killed off and it may be a century before the window of opportunity comes back.
No good will come of US direct involvement in Afghanistan, in much the same way no good will come of their direct involvement in Iraq. It isn't that the American people couldn't effect positive change in Afghanistan, it is simply a fact that the governing elite in the US has no intention of doing so. Nato being shorthand for the US (and its decidely English poodle). And, as Jerome said upthread (and to paraphrase in my own way), the trick is how to get the hyperpower to realize that it has lost. And, perhaps, to hope that it takes too long to recognize this, and weakens itself beyond the tipping point and in so doing make the rest of us more secure.
The mistake you and others like you make in analyzing these interventions is that you take stated intentions as true intentions, in much the same way people often times anthropomorhize the intentions of a purring cat. Most of the time, the cat is not actually happy to see you; it wants you to feed it. Rambo did not embark on his adventure in Afghanistan because he wanted to help Afghans; he did so because he, too, had a rapacious appetite. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
is a gratuitous censure. Is it a reprobation against "me and others like me" for lacking in proper brain cells or for being naive at best? (But perhaps you are right!)
It clearly overlooks or refuses to even contemplate the possibility that the "analysis" (I'd rather call it a 'rough assessment') may have been made based on yardsticks: stated intentions were crosschecked against intentions achieved, the results were then marked success or failure.
Alright, call the process used very naive but this is no different from when a voter is called upon to vote for candidate running for re-election; the voter is expected to use his/her thinking neurons (or most of them) to pass judgement so one way of assessing whether the candidate's previous programme/political platform/stated intentions have been realised or not is by crosschecking the erstwhile stated intentions against the candidate's accomplishments or non-accomplishements.
The cat analogy is in my view is awkward. Even a wild alley cat will "purr up" to you if you show enough interest in it by giving it food and attention and care regularly; over time, it will warm up to you (although difficult to generalize). Obviously you will be required to put your heart and mind to winning its heart and mind.
(Not to worry, I may not agree with what you say but I will fight for your rigt to say it.)
Suffice to say your take on the situation is so far at odds with my experience that there seems to be little from your point of view here that I can follow and make sense of, though I suspect if I were to see through the lens Washington or London or even official Ottawa would prefer, I would perhaps get it. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
... that was what I tried to dispute and only that (plus the cat thinggy.)
I thought you actually believed that Nato had a mission in Afghanistan which involved bettering the lives of Afghans, and that this mission was something separable from US actual (as opposed to stated) aims.
I just find this hard to believe, that's all. And, if I could believe it, there would by now have been far more direct aid, tens of billions of it, and far less military combat intervention. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Note also that a large portion of Afghans (historical Afghans, not simply those who happen to live today within the borders on internationally-recoginzed Afghanistan note the Paktoonistan movement) live in PK and supply resources not just to opponents of US/Nato in Afghanistan but also to opponents of Islamabad.
Ultimately, there is a historical basis for the lack of connection on this issue we are having. I, very simply put, do not see the US, and via extention, as a good guy here, as relates to Afghanistan. Never was, still isn't. Better than the Taleban, objectively speaking, much better, if one accepts the premise that they are different. But this fact is quite hard to unbundle, given the US is a primary cause of the Taleban in much the same way Israel, arch-enemy of course of Hamas, was its original primary cause as well.
And you may not like the cat analogy, but I'm not entirely sure I'm making myself understood. Just because the US or Nato makes noise that it is doing something for some universal good does not mean that this is in fact what it is doing or even primarily intending to do. The US is, first and foremost, looking out for the US. Ascribing some higher goal to the US and to Nato, I think, is greatly mistaken.
But, to employ another analogy, you know, when humpty dumpty fell off the wall, all the kings horses and all of his men couldn't put him back together again. Especially since it was the king and his men who pushed humpty dumpty off the wall in the first place. And, upon being interviewed from his deathbed, in the end humpty dumpty expressed very little by way of heartfelt appreciation for the attempt the king's horses and men made to re-assemble him. Quite the contrary, he was very much upset. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
