DRAGONS Are Not GO
General David McKiernan claims the war in Afghanistan is not lost but he needs more troops, equipment and resources to complete the task. He indicates they need more and better spies and a better propaganda machine on the ground, too.
A comment we heard on TV was interesting, set against the fact Taliban income derives largely from a huge and flourishing drug trade based upon cultivation of the opium poppy, a traditional wildflower of the region. McKiernan stated, “We don’t want to go after the farmers. We want to target the middlemen who deal in the drugs.”
That being a given, the Dragons are deep in our dens.
An adequate armed force in Afghanistan would number almost as many as the Afghan population. A culture of ‘rejection’ would need to form, not just a rejection of Taliban members but of the cultural ethos, philosophical and religious niches they occupy in the minds of the local inhabitants. The Afghan people would have to openly embrace the values of the West in order to permit piecemeal assassination of every person in their midst who was an adherent to the cult of demonising the West.
We don’t see Afghan undergoing any such polarisation any time soon.
What we see is an opportunist Afghan political elite feathering their nests with Western largesse while turning their people against the USA on the basis of ‘civilian casualties’. In fact, their leaders turn the hearts of the people more against the West the more effectively the West does their dirty work for them.
Truth has not yet risen to the surface of this scum. We shall gladly toss in a handful of hubble and bubble and toil and trouble.
The people throughout Afghanistan and that entire region of mountainous Hole-In-The-Wall Pakistan hill country, are not sophisticated western college graduates who might be presumed to be amenable to a reasoned outreach. These people are the survivors of thousands of years of survival level privation, for whom the austerity of Islam is a comforting palliative. They live to all practical purposes still in a dim and distant past where entirely local and present issues not only dominate their mental horizon but are the ONLY issues.
Daily food and water, shelter and domestic concerns are the sum total of their existence. The next level of authority comprises the Warlords, essentially regional thugs who exert their control by shedding blood as they have for millennia. Don’t be fooled by the apparent similarities to modern Italy – survival in the West is a foregone conclusion compared to the cut-throat matters of the Afghan Hill Country.
These men, their wives, children, animals and land have no access to the idea of peaceful cooperation. Never in the histories of their various Tribes have they gone down the path of coexistence. Dominion is the Rule of Law and Survival.
When the Time comes, whereby the West will find itself in its final extremity, confronted by the simple fact that Civilization as WE know it is about to be truncated globally, our feted and self-assuming leaders will decide which of the great Unwashed will also survive along with the scraps of our own.
The decision will be simple.
If the greatest Illuminations of the planet are to be extinguished, the planet will not be inherited by Peoples who never struggled out of the Dark Ages.
It will not be a matter of Politics in that day.
This is the day of Politics, when Generals at the Front suggest they are not actually losing the war but desire more be done to provide their essential materiel. Sending in the Dragons at this juncture would be overkill. We remain stalled at that point where Politicians continue to embellish their personal standings and bank accounts, in the hope someone else will come up with a way to actually make the problems go away.
Don’t send politicians to do dragon’s work. The last thing they want is War.
Don’t send a dragon to do a politician’s job.
Eventually Time will pass and people will begin to be consumed by History as it advances upon Mankind, its feet shod with teeth. Then the need will at last be comprehended, that millions upon millions must die if any survivors will be left to inherit Peace. The need will be to unleash every form of warfare known to Man. This will include all the means NOT known to the man in the street but secretly dreaded by the few who do know.
When the decision is finally made, that the World wants War, Dragons are Go.
Went@wenublog.com
November 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Thanks! Nice post.