Will Afghanistan foul Obama’s presidency?
If this becomes Obama’s war, it will poison his presidencyPakistan is being ripped apart by the fallout from the Afghan occupation. If the US escalates, the impact will be devastating
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Seumas Milne The Guardian, Thursday 5 March 2009 Article historyThe armed assault on Sri Lanka’s cricket team in Lahore has been a brutal demonstration, if any more were needed, that the war on terror is devouring itself and the states that have been sucked into its slipstream. Pakistan is both victim and protagonist of the conflict in Afghanistan, its western and northern fringes devastated by a US-driven counter-insurgency campaign, its heartlands wracked by growing violence and deepening poverty. The country now shows every sign of slipping out of the control of its dysfunctional civilian government – and even the military that has held it together for 60 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/pakistan-conflict-afganistan-obama-administration
It’s a landlocked country with minimal resources (cement/concrete, like that’s useful to anyone anywhere else) and 88 people groups, none of whom liked the Taliban but all of whom are Moslem. While one would like to just let them run themselves, doing so means letting many of those 88 groups grow, harvest, and sell opium (the one good thing the Taliban did was end the opium/heroin production there.) We have the British Empire to thank for the current borders, as well as for the idea that the current borders should have one government. If I were Obama, I’d say let them do what they want and shoot anyone bringing the opium out of that country or into this one. “War in Afghanistan” or “War on Terrorism” or “War on Drugs”–pick your losing policy. Okay, scratch that. I’d leave the Afghanis to themselves but government produce the opium here in a legalized form and crash the whole market for opium, forcing them to farm something useful.
