War Handwavium

So, Obama’s claimed plan for Afghanistan is to raise US troop levels to 100k or more for a couple years and in that time train several hundred thousand Afghans to be part of a centralized military/police force.

There’s only one problem with that. No wait, there are a LOT of problems with that. But the two biggies are this: First, Afghans don’t think of themselves as Afghans. They think of themselves as whatever tribe they belong to, and they view the central government as nothing more than a puppet imposed by a foreign invading army, which, well, it is. They view themselves as Pashtuns or Hazzaras, and they don’t give a damn about “Afghanistan”, because “Afghanistan” isn’t their country, it’s the label that we are trying to force on them.

The second problem with Obama’s plan is that everyone over there gets stoned on hash and opium on a daily basis. Drugs is a major source of income over there, and its a major passtime for a lot of people over there. It’s part of their culture. It’s also pretty much something to be expected in ANY location where people are living on a few dollars a month.

And we expect to train hundreds of thousands of these tribal people to care about a country that doesn’t exist to them and care about that country more than they care about their own tribe? We expect to create an army that serves the central (and very corrupt) government in Afghanistan out of separate tribal members whose daily pastime is to get high?

These guys may be smoking dope, but Obama is smoking crack if he seriously thinks this plan will work.

More likely what is going to happen is Obama will send the 30k troops, we will create an artificial “victory” condition, declare victory, and withdraw our troops.

The only part of the discussion of Afghan policy more awkwardly missing from the calculations that there is no Afghanistan, is that all the men there– yes, all of them– are stoned all day, every day on the strongest hash (much of it opiated) on God’s earth.

– from Down With Tyranny.

Something else to keep in mind about Afghanistan:

we call them Afghans, and they don’t even call themselves Afghans. They’re Tajiks or they’re Pashtuns, or they’re Hazzaras or someone else. The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.

–Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL)

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/10/alan-grayson-explains-best-policy-for.html

Via digby:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/everybody-must-get-stoned-by-digby.html