(a) Elections. Americans fucking love elections. Westerners in general have fucking hard ons for elections and just-add-water “democracy”.
Wrong start. Elections in a country of massive illiteracy, no infrastructure to speak of, no tradition of western style organized parlaimentary democracy are not going to be a bright idea. Neo-traditional shoura and consultative councils are the only real way to go for a long range view. Practices with real roots in society. Not institutions that please us.
(As for the poppy growing, well it ain’t illegal as far as I know in Afghanistan to grow poppy. If westerners want opiates of various kinds its NOT Afghanistan’s fault. The business is legit. Our beef is with opiates is our problem.)
(b) NA: no they are not a future enemy as they’re just a name for an ethnic coalition of people who (i) didn’t like the Taleban or (ii) plain warlords who didn’t get a cut. Something bad might emerge from the government down the road but not likely in the short term. Depending on the sophistication of US on the ground policy, whether we understand that we’re working a system of tribal politics, not our familiar cultural structure. If we do that, I think all will work well. If not, well Somalia comes to mind.
Also to keep in mind, set up mewling sycophants is the best way for the government to lose its credibility with the people. Don’t expect every fucking foreign gov to be our butt-boy.
© What the fuck are Arab oil conglomerates? (i) OPEC is not an Arab or even a Muslim organization, its most hawkish member is actually Latin (ii) There are state oil companies. They sell their oil to the international majors, in general, somewhere along the stream. (iii) OPEC does not have a monopoly, they are residual demand providers with if I recall 30-40% of the market. A share which if they actually cooperated could be show market power as an oligopoly, but as their last meeting shows, they cheat like cheap bitchs. Meanwhile non-OPEC production runs flat out at max capacity (allowing for repairs). Oil prices are at historic lows and Russia just gave them a big fuck-you. They still might get prices up if Mexico and Norway kick in with big cuts since they have an interest in avoiding a price collapse. So does Russia but who the fuck knows what their political decision making is now.
As for their “betrayal” in the 1970s, econometric analyses virtually all agree that there were only 2 short actual oil-withholding episodes short of demand, the real damage was actually self-inflicted through (a) command economy responses such as price and import controls (b) panic buying and stock hoarding. Given the degree to which the old seven sister’s consortium had operated a real cartel, cutting them out of the loop, the 1970s reaction is hardly a surprise nor really betrayal at all. OECD idiocy did more damage than real actions (as opposed to bluster from OPEC).
So Arab Control of Oil is a big motherfucking myth. Now, anytime you get a significant % of world’s proven reserves in one place --Middle East-- there’s some market power built into that, but its pretty fucking weak.
(d) Ramadan is not a holy day. It’s a bloody holy month. The concept of having non-Muslims bombing muslims doesn’t sit well with a lot of folks. Good or bad, hypocritical or not, that’s the way it is. However I think this is a dead issue. The strategic bombing was the real problem, that’s over unless something goes badly wrong.
(e) the Ayatollah Khomieni was never on a pro-US platform. The US blindly and stupidly backed the Shah Pahlavi, Khomieni’s foe. Get your basic facts straight.