Cutting to the chase

Time for an update, if for no reason than I have a bit of time and it’s been a few days.

First of all, a shout out to all of you who I was railing at in person last night (you know who you are); I am pleased that you found my ranting informative, entertaining and well-reasoned, so all my homework is paying off. In particular to our “Belgian” connection, feel free to spread this link to this around to your friends, but the caveat remains that my upcoming “trip” will limit my opportunities to update this for the next several months. I’ll be around though, albeit sporadically for while.

Topics for last night included Afghanistan (largely) and Iraq (to a much lesser extent). The problem I have is that the more people ask me what good Canada is really doing in Afghanistan, the less useful I really see our military presence being.

When I say “useful” I must be clear that I mean “critical to our National Interest”. I could very well be wrong, but I really don’t think us spending the next 10 years playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban, etc. is going to help Canada or NATO one bit in real terms. This does not mean I’ve gone soft (no fear of that), just that we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns in terms of dealing with a tangible threat to the West.

I invite a challenge on this, really I do. The idea for going into Afghanistan in 2001/02 was that the status quo, unacceptable as it already was, had shifted far beyond just flinging some cruise missiles at the Al-Qaeda camps there. Nobody could be bothered to do a whole lot when the Taliban took most of the country, or even when they blew up the Buddhas in Bamiyan and outlawed anything that even vaguely resembled fun. Oh yeah, and the general repression, stoning, executions for “un-Islamic” behaviour, etc.

In this vein, I return to my earlier postulate that we should salvage the civilizable parts of the country and write off the others (like Kandahar and Helmand) as a free-fire zone or, if we feel compelled to be nice, an autonomous “Talibanistan” that can do what it likes as long as it stays in there. This we could back up and enforce with NATO’s current force levels, and the useless German and French troops wouldn’t even have to move, lucky them.

I am all for rebuilding the place, except that a) it’s not working because we don’t hold it, and b) there are a lot of other places that need the same sort of thing and we sure as death and taxes can’t help them all. Reality rears its’ ugly head once more, for those who have the moral fortitude and clarity of vision to see it.

This reminds me of a debate I had with someone last night. It was about my (hardly exclusive) position that Islam is FUNDAMENTALY at odds with secular government, whereas Christianity (and some other religions no doubt) is not. I feel that my contention was better presented (if not proven) than that of my opponent. The reason for that was not that I know more, but that I cut through a lot of “noise” and try to look at the fundamentals. I don’t care about how things are misused (except that the effects can be significant and unpleasant) but about what they ARE.

A spade is a spade, and the fact that someone uses it as a hammer or a screwdriver does not change its’ nature.

Speaking of that, what about Iraq at this point? The general disastrousness of it is well established on all bands of the political spectrum, but the resistance to the US just bailing out of the place and leaving it to its’ fate is starting to crumble, even on the Hawkish sites I look at. Iraq is even more of a bag of snakes than Afghanistan, but the question is being raised seriously of whether things would be worse for “us” if they’re left to fight it out. It would then be a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians, with the Turks ready to roll over the border into wanna-be-Kurdistan and get all Ottoman on their ass.

Really, I fail to see a downside to this for the US which is more serious than what is happening to them right now. Pull out, re-group, take a deep breath, and figure out what you (Uncle Sam) REALLY NEED. The capability to smash things and even do “in-and-out-clever” invasions (ala Operation ANACONDA) would be unimpaired, in fact improved since your troops are no longer tied down in Iraq.

A re-hash perhaps, but while my thoughts on these subjects are evolving, they are not changing because I see the world any differently. Containment is looking more and more manageable than “Engagement” and getting bogged down. I want to see a world that still has room for peaceful, progressive, productive societies that allow you to have fun without being a soft target for the anti-fun forces of the world. “We” have our parts of the world (the best parts) and “they” can go to hell in the rest of it.