A couple weeks ago, in Scylla’s Shrub thread, I made the following comments about the Administration’s conduct of the Afghan war:
Boy howdy, was I ever wrong.
We haven’t yet gotten bin Laden, but I was so totally wrong on everything else that I thought I’d go ahead, eat crow now, and avoid the Christmas rush.
Seems our Northern Alliance allies now control a good deal more than ‘one corner of the country, at best’, and wherever the Taliban leaves, men are shaving their beards, women are burning their burqas, and there is general celebration in the streets. Can’t ask for a much better outcome than that, at this point.
Got to say, I’m very, very glad to be this wrong about the Administration’s war plans.
I could join you, for having started The war does not seem to be going well - now what?. OTOH, from what I’ve been reading, the US actually did adjust its strategy, to a closer alliance with the Northern Alliance, due to the fact that not enough progress was being made.
Good for you, RT. I sure know how to pick 'em! (favorite posters, that is.)
I know for myself, reading about the women throwing off the burqas and going back to living real lives, I feel kinda like I think free blacks must have felt for slaves after the Civil War… Sometimes stuff works out in ways you never expected, and even if nothing else major is accomplished, this is more than enough for me.
Requisition for sackcloth: denied
Requisition for ashes, suitable for pouring over head: denied.
You didn’t know? Hell, Arty, nobody knew! Nobody knows now! Unintended consequences is war’s middle name. Brilliant strategies fall apart for a whim, suicidal attacks prove the genius of drooling doofuses (doofusi? doofusim? something)
And now we will be treated to the spectacle of our noble allies dispensing justice. Afghan style. Getting Old Testament on thier respective asses.
Or not. 'Cause you never know.
Beside, even I was wrong, back in '68. Thought I made a mistake.
I saw a picture yesterday of Kabulites (Kabullians? Kabulsters?) practically knocking each other down to get into a movie theatre. It was opening for the first time in years; films, you see, were banned by the Taliban. They didn’t even say what was showing - folks were just thrilled to get to see a movie.
It’s easy to take our liberty for granted, and easy to forget that it’s worth fighting for, until you see what life is like without it.
I think a lot of folks were looking forward (well, not “looking forward”) to a Vietnam-style “grinding along in low gear for years” fiasco. Who could have expected that the whole thing would be over, not by Christmas, but by Thanksgiving?
Send the crow (still frozen, one hopes) over to Cal Thomas’s house, RT.
uh huh.
But see, they’re just playin’ possum…
[sub]snippety snip snip snip[/sub]
I love the smell of paranoia in the morning…
[sub]and yes, cal, i agree with you that the u.s. should make all its foreign policy decisions based on novels–the cuban missile crisis would’ve been over MUCH sooner if the state department had read the old man and the sea–there was a subplot that could have taught us much about the Cuban mind if we would only have listened…
not to mention the way they could have wrapped up the whole cold war thing in a couple of weekends if they’d read the hunt for red october sooner
as it was, we all had to wait for the movie version to come out, and by then it was all over but the shouting[/sub]
I know what movie it wasn’t–I think it’s safe to say that the Kabul theater is probably the only theater on the face of the planet that isn’t showing Harry Potter.
C’mon, Elucidator, don’t you ever get tired of the same, old, cliched rhetoric? Fact is, the U.S. bombing worked! It demoralized the Taliban and made them scatter and abandon their positions. We were right, you were wrong (no big surprise there). People in Kabul are free to shave their beards, to watch TV, to live their lives unrestricted.
You were WRONG!
And who said the Northern Alliance were noble? Useful, yes, but not noble. They come from a tradition that doesn’t believe in whipping the enemy in a fair fight and then having a drink in the pub afterwards. They kill their enemies, rob the body, and cut off a souvenir or two.
The problems we have now are to 1) prevent the renewal of tribal feuds and warlord squabbles that allowed the Taliban in the first place, and 2) to cobble together a coalition Afghan government that will be acceptable to all ethnic groups.
Acknowledging you’re wrong when someone calls you on it it classy - although I’d suggest it’s actually the minimum conduct required for a participant here. But it happens rarely enough that I’m happy to call it “classy” when it does.
Starting a thread pointing out your earlier mistakes is, in my view, the epitome of a reasoned debator. Yy got class, RT!
Ahhh, the stalwart goober. Ever dependable, a light dim but constant.
But you bring up an interesting point, albeit inadvertantly. Without tiresome research, did anybody post “The Taliban will crumble toot sweet, our allies prove loyal and forbearing, the trajectory of the shit shall not intersect the locus of the fan and, this time, Our Boys will be home for Christmas…” In other words, did anybody call this one?
Ye Cats and Little Fishes! What if its true! The Yale bumpkin with the Kennebunkport drawl is just an act, we are in the thrall of an evil genius…! Or just an ordinary lab mouse bent on world domination.
“are you pondering what I’m pondering, Dicky…”
RTFirefly was right. History went wrong. Thats my story and I’m sticking to it.
So elucidator’s position is, “Even though RT was wrong, I’m vindicated in my theory that things would be a clusterfuck because other people believed it as well”? I’m confused.
And as always, RT is classy as hell.
