Jona Lewie sang: "Wish I could be home for Christmas." That's hardly likely for thousands of allied troops in Aghanistan, Iraq and other trouble spots.
In short, there is no real plan to come home, except at presidential level:
The military industrial complex is pushing for a continued presence:
One key aspect is the insistence on including the Wahhabis in the Pakistan issue:
In fact, what it does is bring two powers who ordinarily would not be natural allies, except on geographical grounds, to find mutual interest in military and aid pacts. For all Russia's weakness compared to USSR days and for all Iran's saddling itself with a nutter for a leader and a nation sapping theocracy of the worst kind, the U.S. itself is none too strong economically these days either.
Then you can bring in China and India. The U.S. is powerful but look at that combined opposition and it is opposition to what looks, to them, as the territorial ambitions of one superpower, under the guise of "anti-terrorism".
Looking at it from the American point of view, there is prima facie evidence that the Muslims are conducting a covert assault for the hearts and minds of Europe and failing that, at least in body count. They are also looking to expand their influence worldwide in accordance with their perceived destiny. In the non-Muslim world - trouble and chaos, in their world, peace and harmony.
The trouble for the west is that, with the leadership having abandoned the pretext of a Christian society manning the ramparts against the infidel, all there is now is some sort of wishy-washy humanistic, pc, government enforced love-each-other nothingness to counter the assault, along with a drug-addled, disillusioned, dumbed down new generation who would ordinarily have been counted on to fight for God, Queen and country but who now openly question each one of those.
This is a lose-lose scenario out there. Just as the American hawks conceded that Vietnam could not be won, so they apparently concede that Afghanistan and Iraq can't be won either. Therefore there are two choices - stay there and battle on or pull out completely.
The global political minds are at odds over which will turn out to be the more efficacious. Leaving morality aside, the choice is to either hit with maximum prejudice and do the job properly, with huge concentration on psy-ops and decent supply lines or else forget it, get out and leave the diplomats and trade delegates to get on with it.
In short, there is no real plan to come home, except at presidential level:
On the contrary, in the dying weeks of the Bush administration, the US is robustly pushing for an increased military presence in the Russian (and Chinese) backyard in Central Asia on the ground that the exigencies of a stepped-up war effort in Afghanistan necessitate precisely such an expanded US military presence.
The military industrial complex is pushing for a continued presence:
United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.
One key aspect is the insistence on including the Wahhabis in the Pakistan issue:
Again, the Bush administration's insistence on bringing Saudi Arabia into the Afghan problem on the specious plea that a Wahhabi partner will be useful for taming the Taliban doesn't carry conviction with Iran.
In fact, what it does is bring two powers who ordinarily would not be natural allies, except on geographical grounds, to find mutual interest in military and aid pacts. For all Russia's weakness compared to USSR days and for all Iran's saddling itself with a nutter for a leader and a nation sapping theocracy of the worst kind, the U.S. itself is none too strong economically these days either.
Then you can bring in China and India. The U.S. is powerful but look at that combined opposition and it is opposition to what looks, to them, as the territorial ambitions of one superpower, under the guise of "anti-terrorism".
Looking at it from the American point of view, there is prima facie evidence that the Muslims are conducting a covert assault for the hearts and minds of Europe and failing that, at least in body count. They are also looking to expand their influence worldwide in accordance with their perceived destiny. In the non-Muslim world - trouble and chaos, in their world, peace and harmony.
While long-term demographic trends favor stability, European societies will have to live for some years with the large cohort of young people born before the recent decline in fertility, the youth bulge that will not shrink until after 2020.
The intervening years could well provide a bumpy ride. If the poor and deprived come to link their condition to their religious identity—if the young, poor, and Muslim overtly confront the old, well-off, and Christian—then Europe would face a turbulent future.
Having said this, modern European society does not seem hospitable to institutional or dogmatic religion of any kind.
The trouble for the west is that, with the leadership having abandoned the pretext of a Christian society manning the ramparts against the infidel, all there is now is some sort of wishy-washy humanistic, pc, government enforced love-each-other nothingness to counter the assault, along with a drug-addled, disillusioned, dumbed down new generation who would ordinarily have been counted on to fight for God, Queen and country but who now openly question each one of those.
This is a lose-lose scenario out there. Just as the American hawks conceded that Vietnam could not be won, so they apparently concede that Afghanistan and Iraq can't be won either. Therefore there are two choices - stay there and battle on or pull out completely.
The global political minds are at odds over which will turn out to be the more efficacious. Leaving morality aside, the choice is to either hit with maximum prejudice and do the job properly, with huge concentration on psy-ops and decent supply lines or else forget it, get out and leave the diplomats and trade delegates to get on with it.
Is it a bad thing that we can question those institutions that have sent so many to an early grave?
ReplyDeleteNot a bad thing at all but the consequences of the abandonment of the Judaeo-Christina ethic and the societal solidarity it gave, the cohesion, has left the west as vulnerable sheep going this way and that, prey to the wolves.
ReplyDelete