Obamistan

[Texsox]

And that was over 20 years ago...I thought things were supposed to be different now?

 

Better players, better tools, but the basic play doesn't change. Clinton even pulled it off for a while, until it left a stain on a blue dress.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Or just modify it so that she's giving the finger instead of holding a torch.

 

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor Ill piss on em

That's what the Statue of Bigotry says

Your poor huddled masses, lets club 'em to death

And get it over with and just dump em on the boulevard

 

-- Lou Reed

[Rex Kickass]

Not to bring this topic back to Afghanistan but I love Fred Kaplan at Slate. Always has an interesting perspective on Foreign Policy

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2232194/

 

The principle of counterinsurgency is to focus much more on protecting the population than on chasing and killing terrorist-insurgents. The theory is that if NATO and Afghan forces can provide security (and thus facilitate the supply of basic services), the Afghan people will shift their loyalty to their government and thus dry up the Taliban's base of support.

 

The problem is that protecting all of Afghanistan, or even all the areas that the Taliban now threaten or dominate, would require many more troops than even McChrystal is requesting—by some estimates as many as 500,000 troops. Under these circumstances, if Obama agreed to send 40,000 more troops next month, it's a safe bet that the generals would request another 40,000 next year.

 

An alternative approach, then, is to protect not all of Afghanistan but just a few of its largest cities—say, Kabul, Kandahar, and Ghazni—and to throw at them all the resources they can absorb: military, civilian, financial, the works.

 

The purpose of this would be twofold.

 

The first would be to prevent the Taliban from taking over the central government, which is the main reason for having Western troops there at all.

 

The second would be to create "demonstration zones" for the eyes of Afghans all over the country. If these zones really can be secured and supplied, if they are seen as enclaves of relative peace and prosperity, then Afghans everywhere will want the same thing and reject the Taliban (whose strength today stems less from their fundamentalist ideology than from their ability to provide order and services).

 

Meanwhile, under this alternative approach, U.S. and NATO forces would keep training Afghan soldiers and police, while special-ops troops and air power would continue to take out "high-value targets" such as top Taliban fighters (even pure counterinsurgency advocates don't think counterterrorist tactics should be cut off completely).

[NorthSideSox72]

Not to bring this topic back to Afghanistan but I love Fred Kaplan at Slate. Always has an interesting perspective on Foreign Policy

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2232194/

This is something that the government generally, and lately the military included, is bad at - focus. I like the idea, but, I don't see it happening.