As the witness accounts continue to pour in from diverse sources all attesting to the sham of the Afghan election, in leaps the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) to declare the holding of elections "a victory for the Afghan people". "These were the first Afghan-led elections, and the process seems at this stage to have been largely positive," the EUEOM statement said. Philippe Morillon, a former French general heading the EU mission, then insisted that they were "fair". "Generally what we have observed was considered by our observers with our methodology good and fair," he added.

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It's pretty sad after all this time to watch EU Referendum throw in the towel. I guess watching the slow-motion debacle in Basra sort of broke you down. I'm accustomed to checking up on this blog every day or so as a refreshing tonic to all the snide simpering defeatist give-the-enemy-every-benefit-of-the-doubt BS one gets from the BBC and its Brit-mass-media ilk, but I guess that'll be changing now. Too bad to see that you too now de facto agree with the continental European premise that NATO is to defend Europe and the Yanks can go screw themselves, and that the NATO charter has a statute of limitations, and that letting every terrorist outfit on the planet (and every resourceful enemy state) know that oh, you can do anything you please; just hang on a decade until the infidels get bored and leave with their tails between their legs, and that all of this will make you MUCH MUCH SAFER.

You're not going to believe me, if course -- you're too thoroughly locked into your own world view -- but the United States is not going to leave Afghanistan any time soon. We are not you, and we are sure as hell not the EU. If we have to tough it out for another ten years, fine. If we have another mass-terror attack that emanates from that part of the world and have to use WW2-style saturation bombing to turn Pashtunistan into a charnel house, also fine. No one over here, not even Nancy Pelosi, is talking about leaving. You cannot attack Americans on American soil and get away with it. That pushes all our paranoid ex-refugee buttons. We will leave when the threat is gone. Not until. Meantime, it's your blood and your treasure, and I guess you can do what you please with it. But if you *do* bug out of Afghanistan before we do, you needn't ask the US for anything for the next hundred years. We'll just put you in the box marked 'Europe' and leave you there. That'll make you safer too.

Jesus.

The Brits will be leaving, come what may, with or without our American friends. The process will start this sutumn and will continue all the way. My guess is Obama will not be far behind - the military may not like it, but it will do as it is told. On a five-year timescale, that is enough time to disguise the retreat as a victory, and enough troops and airpower will be kept in Afghanistan, hermetically sealed in their bases, to give a guarantee of being able to take out a few terrorist bases is the Taleban misbehave.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that your State Department is any different from our Foreign Office or that the Pentagon, any more than our Ministry of Defeat, likes playing around with ragheads. Bribe the generals with some new and expensive toys and they will fall into line quick enough.

And BTW ... say after me ... it will not be a defeat ... it will be a glorious victory for democracy. Defeat is victory - the new paradigm.

'jstranah's post:
....is longish & typically transatlantic gung-ho...which doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing...but, a point or two.
I know that the débâcle of Vietnam still smarts & that current thinking is based on a 'never-again' attitude when dealing with similar bunches of illiterate peasants who resent incursions into their lands, for whatever reason.
As far as I'm aware, illiterate peasants weren't responsible for 9/11 & other atrocities around the world...they were, in fact, armed & supported by the US in their struggle to get rid of the Soviets who they rightly saw as invaders...and now the US & it's rather useless allies are doing the selfsame thing.
At this point I would assure you there's no Schadenfreude involved here.
What do you expect the revolting peasants to do?
Read your History...these are not the people to keel over...as the British are now about to do (not for the first time, but we never learn)...and as you will be persuaded to do in the foreseeable future.
In the tragedy that is still Iraq, the British in Basra were forced back into their continually mortared cantonments until they declared victory & left with tails between legs. (ragheads were responsible)
In the rest of Iraq, the US has adopted a 'mission accomplished' attitude & 'withdrawn' its forces from the mayhem-ridden cities to the security of its not-yet-mortared camps.
'jstranah' says that the US will rather turn the sands of Afghanistan into glass than get out before the job is done, well...whatever turns you on, baby, & I'm sure History will thank you.
Let's get a few things clear:
An Islamic democracy in an oxymoron.
It's not wise to attend an NAACP rally with a white sheet over your head, even with the best intentions.

"If we have another mass-terror attack that emanates from that part of the world and have to use WW2-style saturation bombing to turn Pashtunistan into a charnel house, also fine."


It won't,it will come from somewhere else. To think that al Qaeda is a static organisation is to misjudge them. AQ is opportunistic, fluid,franchise like "organisation". 9/11 was perpetrated by Arabs with bases in Afghanistan,7/7 by Islamists born in Britain, Bali by Indonesians,and so it goes. Another attack could come from the Tri-border area in South America.

jstrannah,

I think you misunderstand. Richard is detailing what is likely to happen. He is not saying it is right or even that he agrees with it. It patently isn't right. If we are there to support the Afghan Government, train up the Afghan Army and Police and defeat the Taliban we should at least be trying to do a proper job of of it rather than saying that is why we are there and then not following it up with suitable equipment and appropriate actions. The politicians of the late 20th/early 21st Century show they have not learned from history and we are repeating something, I'm just not sure what - Aden, Vietnam or some other gulf between politicial wish, military might and public will.

"No one over here, not even Nancy Pelosi, is talking about leaving. You cannot attack Americans on American soil and get away with it."

A very commendable stance to take. The issue that springs to mind is why was NATO roped into what was essentially a US criminal matter? Your country has rightly chased terrorists to the ends of the Earth before and I am sure it will continue to do so. For whatever reason Bush or his Administration were convinced the US could not or should not go it alone. I'm sure they could have, with the usual and easily dismissed chorus of objections from representatives at the UN. Perhaps framing it as 'You're either with us or against us' was just too good a soundbite for other politicians to counter. The chance for European leaders in particular to be seen stepping up to the plate was too good an opportunity to miss.(And of course the European Rapid Reaction force was where it still is today - fantastyland.) We quickly lost sight of the fact that al-Qaida was the threat to the West not the Taliban.

Like our David Miliband your Hillary Clinton is talking about a reconciliation between the Afghan Government and the 'moderate' Taliban - "We must support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks, not out of conviction but out of desperation" Is that the exit strategy? Use the ideological conflict between the former Northern Alliance people and the Taliban to moderate the Afghan Government to a standstill, keeping it within the Afghan border and behaving itself.

Thank you for that ... I bridle slightly at the descirption "defeatest" applied to myself". Intellectually, I remain absolutely convinced that the war is winnable. However, I have come to the conclusion that the coalition, including the US, has neither the will nor the capability to win. Further, reading the runes - which is what I have done in this piece - my best analysis is offered. You are absolutely right Gareth ... this is what I think is going to happen. I would rather we got a grip and fought this well and honestly, but it ain't going to happen. The betrayal is already in progress, the outcome pre-ordained.

Normally this would be around the time that I posted you the tinfoil hat, however as you are quite often right I will give you the benefit of the doubt and see how things play out.

I disagree. The army is largely non-Pashtun. 70% of the officers corps is Tajik. In an ideal world the Afghan army would be able to suppress the Pashtun (/Taliban) - do the job the ISAF forces are doing. Unfortunately they do not have the skills, equipment, infrastructure, experience or financial muscle to do 5% of that job.

We're now, gradually, coming to a realisation, finally, that the obstacle to peace in Afghanistan is a particular ethnic group rather than an ideology, and that the problem lies with Afghanistan itself.



This is hard due to the tribal nature of the Taliban as Pashtun. They are not moderate by who they are, and little will change that except genocide or 100 years of development and demographic change.

The so-called "moderate Taliban" are the Pashtun tribes currently excluded from the Ghilzai Taliban hierarchy who would have something to gain if they switched sides. You are not talking about the real Taliban at all but a population group that has been co-opted into its power structure on the basis of ethnicity and convenience.

What I think you are trying to say is that through bribery and the eventual arming of non-Ghilzai affiliated Pashtun (real Taliban) like the Durrani the Pashtuns can be made to fight each other and in that way marginalise the Taliban's influence to the less important mountainous regions where its constituent tribes are strongest.

I remain to be convinced ethnic ties between Pashtuns are so weak that money can buy this cooperation in perpetuity. It is more likely to back-fire, the non-Pashtun cotton-thread alliance with the Tajiks and Uzbeks won't hold, the aggressive mountainous tribe will return to power to establish Pashtun dominance on the basis of shared ethnicity.

Beefing up "moderate" Pashtuns, may foster Pashtuni nationalism where there was none, and result in an extremist Islamic state on the lines of Saudi Arabia but with an expansionist nationalist agenda that has designs on Pakistan (and a willing ally in India).

There would be better ways of neutralising the threat such as creating a Pashtunistan before the damaging nationalist wave, which is being caused by our attacking this specific ethnic group, hits... although it may be too late.

Yup. I was horribly, awfully right. You *are* good little Europeans now. You can't recognize a naked threat when it's staring you in the face; you utterly misjudge its strength and motivation; you dismiss acts of war sprung from whole strata of societies stoned on their own fascistic hate as matters for the police; and you demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that you don't have a clue -- after all this time, after all this well-informed conversation -- as to what makes me or my tribe tick.

I'm not coming here any more. You people have gone abruptly fucking insane.

And you need to go back on your medication.