On 10/26/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 10/26/06, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm not sure I'd buy into any timetable for a likely US withdrawal from
> Iraq. Any president who would do it--or go along with it, in the case of
> the Congress--would make tremendous enemies of the Insane Fifth or Insane
> Quarter of the presently active civil population and a like number that
> defers to the Insane. All whipped into a madness by the people who'd now
> love to get out. I can't imagine a Democrat with the guts to do it.
>
> My guess (and it's only that) is that the US will try to de-escalate the
> conflict to something like the level of Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin.
> Most likely, the more they try, the more the insurgents will take a globally
> embarrassing toll on them.
>
> So, I think that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to last
> for some time.
One option for Washington is to retreat into the Iraqi Kurdish region
in Iraq, for the Kurdish leaders can't have their fiefdom without
Washington and therefore welcome Washington's presence in it, and to
foist much of Afghanistan on Canadians and Europeans, who will hang
around doing nothing and watching the Taliban, the FARC of Afghanistan
allied with opium farmers, retake much of the country ...
one good thing from the Bush point of view is that if the US troops
are in Iraqi Kurdistan, it can help keep the Kurds in Iraq from
working with those in Turkey. That keeps Turkey happy and NATO going.
--
Jim Devine / "I wanna be with you in paradise / And it seems so unfair
/ I can't go to paradise no more / I killed a man back there." -- Bob
Dylan.
