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it's been kinda interesting to watch the various parameters that were put into motion through the speech getting moved around.
now 18 months is a kinda guideline for withdrawal. not to worry, we weren't quite serious about that part.
karzai comes out saying that afghanistan will require us/nato intervention for something like 13 years.
the obama administration suggests that maybe, just maybe, pakistan would do well to intensify its various internally divided not terribly co-ordinated or successful non-actions against the taliban in the border regions.
i still wonder what could possibly be accomplished by this surge without sustained pakistani co-operation, which i do not see as happening.
and maybe that's why i keep thinking of that glorious preview of this sort of escalation as a precursor to de-escalation but not really scenario--cambodia and laos.
on the other hand, assuming there's no real change in how pakistan comports itself, where's the choice in strategic terms?
such a muddle and no way around it.
i don't buy the argument above that war against the taliban followed from actions that were allegedly directed against al queada.
they seem to me entirely unrelated, and the slide from one to the other an indicator of the incoherence at the core of the afghanistan adventure from the start. this is not to say that the taliban were swell guys while in power, but it's as is always the case in the world...if a less-than-swell regime is an american friendly regime, they are always less less-than-swell than a maybe less less-than-swell regime which is not american-friendly.
so maybe this is all really about the pipeline that has been talked about for a long time that would connect the baku region and its oil to the indian ocean...
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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