Afghan election fraudulent

[FluffyMcDeath]

Up to 1/3 of Karzai's votes are fruadulent - quite enough to change the outcome of the election.

However, it seems to be the result that the powers that be wish for, so no investigation - thank you very much.

 

[Glaucus]

What a joke. This really isn't much of a surprise to us as this kind of news has been trickling for some time now. Not sure why NATO and even the UN keeps shooting themselves in the foot. You'd almost think they want the Taliban to win.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Not sure why NATO and even the UN keeps shooting themselves in the foot. You'd almost think they want the Taliban to win.

The Taliban won as soon as the US decided to stay. If the US had rushed in, bombed the hell out of Bin Laden and his minions and then left - the US would have won. That would have been something they could call a victory and then they could go back to diplomacy after a nice big meaty show of force. However, going after Bin Laden was not the point ever - owning Afghanistan was the aim - and that is when they lost.

 

[Glaucus]

True, but I don't think dropping a bunch of bombs and then leaving would have done much - the Taliban and al Qaeda would be back before you knew it. But what they needed to do was spend a lot more on rebuilding, especially the Afghan army and police. By now the Afghan army should have been the best equipped and trained army in the region but they are instead next to useless. Also, they're using the wrong tactics - calling in air support seems to be the only weapon NATO forces plan on using against the Taliban, when really this is purely an infantry war.

The Taliban could have been destroyed early on if they flooded Afghanistan with troops, permanently securing every town with heavy NATO presence 24/7 via integrating NATO troops with local defense in the most rural areas while rapidly rebuilding the political, economic, education and physical infrastructure from the ground up. In other words, if the US committed the troops and money it sent to Iraq instead to Afghanistan George Bush would be considered a world hero right now.

Why they went into Afghanistan may be up to debate, but my point is that if they played their cards right they could have had their cake and ate it too. Now all they have are body bags.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

The Taliban could have been destroyed early on if they flooded Afghanistan with troops, permanently securing every town with heavy NATO presence 24/7 via integrating NATO troops with local defense in the most rural areas while rapidly rebuilding the political, economic, education and physical infrastructure from the ground up.

Nobody anywhere has the resources to do that, not militarily ... except the Taliban.

The Taliban live there. They can hide. They can wait. Not only do the Taliban know that, so do the people of Afghanistan. When the occupiers leave as they eventually always will, the Taliban will still be there.

The US is hoping for a Japan or a Germany. What they want is a puppet state that they can leave a few bases in and rule from afar with just a few power brokers left behind. But Japan and Germany had the advantage that they were both disciplined hierarchical societies. Even Iraq has more of that quality (partly thanks to Saddam) than Afghanistan.

The mistake that the Americans made was overestimating themselves. A hit and run leaving a chastened but mostly in control government in place would have been so cheap that said government would not have doubt that it could easily be done again and again as necessary. It would have been far more cost effective (and effective in general) than trying to rid the country of governance and rebuild a government from scratch.

 

[Glaucus]

Obviously we're both speculating wildly here and we'll never know either way. I do however want to say that I believe that if the Afghan government and security forces were built up quickly enough, they could have then taken over from NATO early on as well. They say the safest time to go to Afghanistan was shortly after the Taliban's defeat. But that was also before NATO lost faith with the civilians by bombing the crap out of them. Like you said, Afghans know NATO will leave, so we should never ask them to trust NATO. They should however trust their own police force and their own military. For some reason NATO never gave them the opportunity as they assumed those roles and never bothered to hand over that responsibility. Of course, I think if NATO left too soon the war lords would have just kept the wars going.