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ace likes the clarity of cowboy movies. he thinks it's good when people say the sort of things that can only possibly hold true in simplistic novels. that clarity of fiction makes him feel like Purpose is Clear.
it's ludicrous in that thousand points of light kinda way.
meanwhile back in reality, to the extent that it's knowable, it appears that afghanistan offers no-one any good alternatives at all. like no-one. and it's beyond bad that people like slims and others in the various militaries which invaded afghanistan along with the u s of a are left hanging out to dry in an incoherent situation. nation-building without a direction, coalition formation without a center...the only thing that seems obvious as a strategy is fight the taliban...but it also seems that by doing that the us and what's left of its allies legitimate the taliban because they allow it to position itself as resisting occupation...apparently the niceities of not-meaning-to-be-an-occupation-force-but-being-one-anyway-until-we-can-sort-something-out are lost on alot of folk. much in the way the logic of opium eradication was. you know, a good idea from one viewpoint but not so much from another. works sometimes and for a while but then not so much. problems of resources, problems of consistency and delivery, problems of language, all that. not everything fails but not everything works and it seems, from a distance, like things are just sliding sideways. and it seems, from a distance, that sliding sideways would work to the advantage of the people whose homes are being messed with. motivation. this is not a new story.
but yeah. i can see the appeal of cowboys-and-indians particularly for the right given that it's their policies that landed the united states and others in the ongoing slow-motion clusterfuck in afghanistan in which sometimes for a while its not that and other times it is depends where you are and when you're there. like anything else, anywhere else. except with more guns. and language problems.
i dont see any good alternatives.
i agree with slims that it's probably not a great idea to just cut and run. but not doing it doesn't seem so great either.
basically there's no strategy. well there is one: dont appear to lose. that seems the primary objective of the moment, the main goal of the current campaigns: do not appear to lose.
alot of very bad things can happen to alot of people on all sides in that kind of strategic situation.
i hope i'm wrong.
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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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