.A valuable Afghan resource
"Christian has updated his Afghan Analyst bibliography, I see. An absolute must-have for serious researchers and scholars.
One possible future addition might be Rory Stewart's NYRB must-read:
As long as the US asserted that Afghanistan was an existential threat, the front line in the war on terror, and that, therefore, failure was not an option, the US had no leverage over Karzai. The worse Afghanistan behaved—the more drugs it grew and terrorists it fostered—the more money it received. If it sorted out its act, it risked being relegated to a minor charitable recipient like Tajikistan. A senior Afghan official warned me this year "to stop referring to us as a humanitarian crisis: we must be the number one terrorist threat in the world, because if we are not we won't get any money." By asserting convincingly that Afghanistan is not the be-all and end-all and that the US could always ultimately withdraw, Obama escapes this codependent trap and regains some leverage over the Afghan government.
This strikes me as exactly correct as a diagnosis."
Flit
Well that is kind of another instance of O arrogance and stupidity, as it was he that place the emphases on Afghanistan in the first place. Sort of cutting off your own nose to spite Bush.
One possible future addition might be Rory Stewart's NYRB must-read:
As long as the US asserted that Afghanistan was an existential threat, the front line in the war on terror, and that, therefore, failure was not an option, the US had no leverage over Karzai. The worse Afghanistan behaved—the more drugs it grew and terrorists it fostered—the more money it received. If it sorted out its act, it risked being relegated to a minor charitable recipient like Tajikistan. A senior Afghan official warned me this year "to stop referring to us as a humanitarian crisis: we must be the number one terrorist threat in the world, because if we are not we won't get any money." By asserting convincingly that Afghanistan is not the be-all and end-all and that the US could always ultimately withdraw, Obama escapes this codependent trap and regains some leverage over the Afghan government.
This strikes me as exactly correct as a diagnosis."
Flit
Well that is kind of another instance of O arrogance and stupidity, as it was he that place the emphases on Afghanistan in the first place. Sort of cutting off your own nose to spite Bush.
posted by madtom at 8:15 PM
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