Two-day conf on AFG - Page 3 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

strelnik · #1 09-20-2010, 06:22 PM

I went to a USG-sponsored four-day conference, of which two days were devoted to Afghanistan. Many military there, and several controversial speakers, all reputable. Anthony Cordesman, and Ralph Peters, to name a couple. You can look them up and they will have a real rep, not one just made up on the Net.

Here's what I retained w/o consulting my notes on AFG:

1. The President made a HUGE mistake by putting a date for withdrawal down, then trying to qualify it as a maybe. The Taliban has already told various tribes: " No problemo, just wait until Dec 2011 rolls around and the crusaders go home, we'll settle up then." People are actually leaving the country because of it.

2. Al Qaeda is no longer really involved in AFG. Michael Scheuer, the former bin Laden unit leader commented, that AQ only uses AFG for transit purposes. Guess where everyone is?

3. PAKISTAN. The unincorporated agencies/regions are worse than the Wild West. The country is falling apart, not only because of the flooding, the power struggles between military and the civilian gov't , the old tribal (now business) rivalries and vendettas; but guess what? The United States ran out of extra bodies in ISAF (NATO peacekeeping), so they invited the INDIAN ARMY to help. The Indian Army, now looking at a position to encircle its mortal enemy Pakistan, said, " Sure, thanks, glad to!" This caused the PAK Army to hate us. When they hate us, they let Taliban run all over the place and move freely, because they are concentrating on the conventional enemy, which we are helping, in their eyes. BTW Pakistan has nukes

4. There's also an arms race between Pakistan and India. Guess who's in line to sell to a New Economy giant like India? EVERYBODY, even the Belgians.

4. Anthony Cordesman commented that we need to quit hiring consultants to take surveys of how we are doing in AFG, when all we ask are the guys we hired and paid off, on the local economy. Guess what they think of us? They love us, because we let them distribute the cash to everyone too (one for you, fifty for me, two for you, three hundred for me...). The real locals who should be surveyed like us but hate the way we "favor" the administrators we set up in business. In a word: CORRUPTION.

Lots more, but I'll run out of room.

The bottom line: Common sense was the first victim of what could have been a short uneventful war in 2001-2002.