Re: koran disposal
We agree...
There seems to be some disagreement about who the home team is. You seem to be suggesting it isn't the Afghan government, and the Taliban who are actually based in Pakistan are only one of the ethnic populations in Afghanistan.
I don't believe this was ever out intention, stated or otherwise.
Again, who is this new leadership you speak of... Karzai is scrambling to regroup for a future without our army to support his government. He can barely control Kabul, let alone the countryside without our muscle. Opening negotiations with the Taliban and releasing some of their top military fighters from gitmo will further weaken the already weak Kabul government.
Everybody makes mistakes, but it is only our mistakes that the press enjoy playing up, and the opposition uses as a rallying cry. The elephant in the room is that we have already announced that we are pulling out. It is framed by the weakness of that retreat, that things will only get worse. It is sad for the majority of the Afghan people who only want peace, but have known only fighting for multiple generations. After we leave they may get their peace but it will not come with freedom of choice or self rule.
It is just more evidence of our politically correctness warped judgement when we care more about handling of the corpse than making them corpses in the first place.
It is shaping up to be a monumental waste, but this is not unusual for this crew. Where is the outrage over the half assed surge? There is a saying that we are always fighting the last war, not the current one, and the surge that worked so well in Iraq, is not the correct strategy for Afghanistan, especially when you don't give your generals the troops and resources they tell you they will need to accomplish that mission.
I am always angry when we choose to fail at any undertaking and this looks like we are planning to fail at this too. While out of political favor, the original strategy that we used to take over Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance and minimal US troops, looks brilliant in hindsight. I'm sure they are already looking for ways to blame this debacle on that former guy... but he didn't ramp up the commitment there over the last few years.
Our failure in afghanistan will weaken our influence in the region, that seems to be in a state of flux right now, in need of some good examples and positive support. Not more, "good luck you're on your own" empty platitudes.
Of course opinions vary, and if we ramp up domestic spending high enough we can't afford to help around the world.
Wouldn't it be nice if everything magically turned peaceful, in our absence.
Do you feel lucky? I don't.
JR
[edit= In an interesting new wrinkle on those Koran... apparently there were secret messages written in them to communicate surreptitiously with other insurgents. That is also considered desecration of the Koran and a sin... Maybe the military should have used sharia law to deal with that infraction instead of destroying the evidence. Interesting when the headline gets it mostly wrong. [/edit]
