Afghanistan Options

Afghanistan: which way now? | World news | The Observer: "As the British and US governments ponder their next move, the Observer's foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont examines the four most likely scenarios"

Peter Beaumont has carefully outlined four plausible scenarios regarding Afghanistan and none of them work. He does not say this. He does not make a choice. He merely outlines them. They range from a covert option to a Basra option to an option that essentially gives up much of the country to protect some cities.

I will go with the option I posted yesterday, Replace the current corrupt government. (We cannot do this but the Afghans can.) Keep the Taliban out of power. (We might find ways to do that without occupying the country. We certainly have no interest in the ten or twenty years it might take to ward off these thugs.) Stop killing people -- aka civilians. Stop occupying. (We can do that by leaving.)

So it comes down to figuring out how to keep the Taliban out of power. There is only one smart way. Fund those who want to keep the Taliban out of power. That would be Afghans. Alternatively strike some bargains. Alternatively recognize that the only solution to the Taliban problem is to let the manifest absurdity and cruelty of Taliban actions create enough resistance that the movement dies of its own noxiousness.

If we want to reflect on the cruelty of leaving good Afghans in the lurch, let your mind go over the globe and think how many others are suffering oppression equal to what would take place in Afghanistan if we left.

Our best offense is to keep our own nation from falling into the hands of the firm of Palin, Bachmann, Paul and McConnell. And to solve our own formidable problems. It would be a supreme and tragic irony if the hubris of our Afghanistan involvement was the cause of our political downfall at home.

Beaumont's 4 Afghanistan Options - None Works Peter Beaumont has dug deeper into the scenario pool than most, but none of the ones he suggests for Afghanistan will work, for reasons he makes clear.