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Experts who have worked with General Stanley McChrystal on the Afghanistan strategy review say the American commander believes that thousands more troops are needed to save the mission.

If the mission is "not admit that the USA lost a second war this decade" then he is probably correct.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Aug 3rd, 2009 at 04:49:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Maybe we need a separate diary to actually try to work out what the mission is ? After all, I'm each and every one of us could come up with some smart-ass one liner that deflates one or other idiotic assumption from our elites, but like you, I'm increasingly unable to discern a cohernet mission amongst the mili-babble.

Simon Scharma once said that the British empire fell when the distance between the rhetoric used to defend it back home and the policy needed to implement it on the ground became so wide that the colonial adminstrators lost their faith.

At what point will our administrators on the ground recognise that we cannot create the peace demanded by politicians with the local allies we have chosen and the tactics the military dicate ? And what might they choose to do if they did ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Mon Aug 3rd, 2009 at 05:07:50 PM EST
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it's interesting how opium revealed the amorality of the british empire, and now wreaks its strange honesty on the current hegemon.

how many million armed pashtuns are we going to convert to the joys of democracy with the latest, greatest weapons?

the afghan peasant gets to choose, local or foreign tyrant, it's going to cost a lot of lives to try and convince the poor sod the latter is preferable.

especially as the media already has its hands full convincing the taxpayers back home that for reasons of national security, the taliban merits spending billions on trying to vaporise.

when women back home can't even get equal pay yet...

you can't bomb millions of renegade cave-dweller nomad goatherds into coca-colonisation, but plenty of folks make millions even failing, so you can't say war's any loss to them, can you?

our 'brave lads and lasses' are being thrown to wolves...

the people are seeing through the spin, more and more, a Very Good Thing.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Aug 4th, 2009 at 01:07:25 AM EST
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