On Feb 22, 2009, at 9:36 AM, Charles Bennett wrote: > I'm not optimistic about this at all. > > Politically, Obama chastised Bush for ignoring Afghanistan (rightly > so) but as Obama commits more and more troops into the region, and I > think he must, > it will become "Obama's war". (As in, be careful what you ask for, > you just might get it) > > Personally, I think he is in a no-win situation, but I will grant that > he is politically agile and has some goodwill stored up.
We need to recognize inelastic demand. Every initial success we have against the Taliban simply drives up the price of opiates and channels more resources to them. The US has only one strategy for defeating the Taliban and that involves greatly increasing the output of the legal poppy farms in California and flooding North America and Europe with high quality cheap or free heroin. We don't seem to have the political will to do this. Fortunately, we don't need to defeat the Taliban. We just need to reach an accommodation with then where they stop providing sanctuary to as-Qaeda. Obama's people and many in the military and even conservative politicians versed in foreign policy seem to get this. -- A young idea is a beautiful and a fragile thing. Attack people, not ideas. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
