We interrupt this blog...

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, February 16, 2009 - 1:54 PM Share

I'm spending the next two-plus days at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA), hoping to discover what my fellow academics think about the current world situation. I'll bet Dan Drezner and some other FP bloggers will be there too. I'm participating on one panel evaluating the
impact of the Iraq war on U.S. national security, and a second panel on the implications of unipolarity. Good papers on both panels, so I'm hoping for a lively discussion. Bottom line is that I may not be posting much for the next few days, but if I do hear anything that FP readers ought to know, I'll be sure to pass it along.

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KENNETH SORENSEN

3:15 PM ET

February 16, 2009

Suggestion for a new blogpost: "Afghanistan is a lost cause"

Facts brought to you from the free world
Americans congratulated themselves in Oct/Nov 2001 for having bombed the socalled 'Taleban' (which is a conglomerate of all sorts of different people, among them staunch nationalists who believes that Afghanistan should be for Afghans only, religious fundamentalists and people who have seen family and clan-members killed by indiscriminatory American bombardments from high altitudes, and promised revenge) and forced them to abandon their forward positions (including Kabul) and retreat to their stronghold in the South (including Helmand). Socalled 'Taleban' and the Northern Alliance had been in a stalemate for years - indeed a few years earlier it was the latter who had controlled Kabul, so it was just a question of pushing on the back of the Northern Alliance, in order to make the socalled 'Taleban' give up their forward positions.

Camps removed allready in 2001

The really great strategic, and incomprehensible, blunder happened in 2005 when the Americans decided to attack socalled 'Taleban' in their stronghold. This happened at a time when they had a lot else to see to in Iraq, which was why NATO was brought in in 2006, in order to share the responsibility for US strategic blunders and allow the US to focus on Iraq.
It is so stupid - to actually try to conquer and control all of Afghanistan. It is not a British thought - cause they have tried something similar two times in the past. It is not a Russian thought, because they too have tried. It is not German - a country which have recent and grave experiences with determined guerilla-fighters (in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia during WW2 - the latter place they never controlled). It is not French, who have first-hand experience of heated Arab nationalism in Algeria, a country they had to abandon in 1962 - and which have connotations to Afghanistan, also due to the presence of Arab resistance-fighters and suicidebombers in this country.*
Only in America - the youngest country of the five here mentioned - could such an impossible thought have originated.
But look what they have done. Everybody talks about that NATO 'cannot afford to loose'. Surely it will not look good on the CV, but loosing is what they are going to do. What then to think of the ones that are responsible for this mistake?
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*) Incidentially these same experiences were also the reason why they refused to participate in the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, whatever Neocons smeared at the time and refused to eat French Fries (). Jacques Chirac was in Algeria as a young lietenant and never forgot. He tried to convince Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara of the dangers of invading an Arab country, but they knew better. Particularly Bush, whose only experiences with the military was training flights over Texas, knew better.

Strategies pursued have "Neo-con" written all over them

Why are neo-cons so pre-occupied (sorry for the pun) with Afghanistan? Cause in their twisted minds they need to have US troops close to Pakistan, which is the only islamic country with nukes, and therefore a potential threat to Israel.
Again we see here a prime example of the way the colony in Arabia - with an inhabitable size of Delaware and the adjacent Cecil County in Maryland - constantly are twisting U.S. Foreign Policy, and that American soldiers has to die every single day in order to satisfy Israels strategic interests.
Nobody asks if having US troops in Afghanistan is making Pakistan more or less stable than it was before. The Neocons are Amateurs, political driven lobbyists for a foreign state - and as Walt & Mearheimer have shown, they are not even good at that, but they are harming Israel as well.

GRAND SEN-OR

10:22 PM ET

February 16, 2009

Yeah tell us more about unipolarity...

a second panel on the implications of unipolarity.

Tell us more about unipolarity.

On which level you imagine that it can be established and susteained?

What will be the constitution of such a scheme?

I have some bright ideas about that too. I can disclose them if and only if I get clever interactions. I am not here to spill pearls around, am I;->>

Professor, hope you are now quite well equipped to stand tall on the side of reality without blinking your eyes. Remember, there is nothing to be scared of reality.
If you get into trouble, just drop us a few lines and we will give what we can to support you.

May God open your tongue to express reality as it is. Don't try to save the phenomena, try to be saved by reality - by seaking refuge in reality.

I wish we had an access to the ISA via this Blog.

Grand Sen~or