MY AWESOME IGNORANCE ABOUT PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

     I seem, as a citizen, required to understand what is going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and yet my ignorance is so magnificent regarding these two nations.  All I know is pretty much based on war talk in the media.; Even the "news" may be misleading rather than truly informative.  Yet there are these two wars that my nation of residence seems to be involved in, how to get a handle on it.

      I would like to believe, the experts, but it seems that the more the official experts talk the less I know.  I am unconvinced they even know what they claim to be so expert about.  Usually they are skillful salespeople, selling a war or a policy or an illusion that serves power.  In otherwords they are applied intellectuals.  They found jobs casting illusions that benefit the powerful and the legal
thieves of society.

    Looking at a map helps me understand an unknown land.  I like trying to remember some of the names of cities and regions and I don't even know if Pakistan and Afghanistan have provinces or states or what as interior subdivisions.  How many people live there, what are their cultures and languages?  I am comprehensively ignorant about all of that.  I think we American citizens generally are ignorant about it.

  We have no business making wars where we are so darn ill informed and ignorant.  It is a rule of thumb that if you want a disaster plunge into something you know nothing about with a "fine" plan nonetheless.  "Fools rush in where angels dare not tread."  That is a fine summation of how Os ama taunted and the U.S. took the bait.
That was disaster number one, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.  Only Bush also created the second disaster by invading and occupying Iraq.



   I do know that when I saw those first videos attributed to O-sama Bin L -aden that I saw the mountains of Afghanistan all around him and I thought to myself that he certainly wasn't waiting there, that he was probably in some other country and just trying to draw the United States into a ruinous war, similar to the Russian debacle during which Os-ama and the US were allies and when the seeds of AQ were formed in the womb of the US inspired Jihad.  


   Of course the story today is that Osam-a Bin L aden was in Afghanistan and that a botched effort to capture or kill him led to his escape, if he is even alive, to Pakistan.  Still, my view that he was trying to "draw the enemy in deep" seems supported by the facts.  The United States has been in Afghanistan for nearly a decade and has little to show for it except the prospects of a Vietnam-style war or withdrawal without being defeated on the field of battle.

A corrupt puppet government like Karzai's mirrors the governments
supported in the ill fated Republic of Vietnam.  Is Karzai more like the Diem brothers?  If that were true he might make peace with the Taliban and be replaced by his American sponsors if they don't like such a solution.  On the other hand if he is more like Thieu he could end up with a nice fortune in France, after he escapes just before those touching helicopter evacuations at the U.S. embassy. 



  Of course this is a blog about Pakistan but I have come to the conclusion, correct or not, that Pakistan can establish effective control over Afghanistan and that with the civil war in Pakistan that it will surely do whatever it can to snuff out the AQ variants and Taliban variants that try to overthrow the Pakistani state.  I have heard again and again how there is no real border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and about how Pakistan sees Afghanistan as
an area under a sort of proxy control.  So if this is true then let the sovereign be King, so to speak.


I have this image of the Pakistani infantry and military as a meat grinder that can systematically eliminate any perceived enemy from Pakistani soil once that decision is made.  I also believe this will be very hard on the populations in Waziristan.  Whether or not the Taliban or AQ variants can survive the offensive of the Pakistani army is yet to be seen.

The bombing campaign in Pakistan by the insurgents seems very limited and yet it has had the psychological effect of shutting down the schools.  On the other hand it has probably united a majority against the insurgents?  I really don't know. 

So it is in Pakistan, in a sense, that Afghani AQ variants, if they exist, will be defeated.  Of course I don't know if the Pakistani government would like the Afghan Taliban taking over again or not.  That may have to do with its policies towards Pakistan.

It seems the United States should get out of Afghanistan in cooperation with Pakistan rather than remain in a futile counterinsurgency for two decades or more.  Eight years ago Bush could have made a go at getting AQ in Afghanistan and the border regions but he didn't even try.  Eight years later the more simple AQ problem has metastasized and spread throughout the region and the world.  The United States has gotten itself into a bigger mess by just messing around in Afghanistan for so long.  Maybe the US should be doing more economic and social help and let the Pakistanis and Afghans handle their own affairs.