Yeah, I'm stuck on this today.
So we have to end the military confrontation and engage the Taliban and other malcontents. Negotiation is the only path to stability in any country. You can’t get any progress from imposing military action. This leads to the questions: What do they want? How can their demands/needs be incorporated into the bigger picture of the rest of Afghan society?
I don’t think there’s that much of an ideological gap between the Taliban and the leaders of the country. The recent case of the Christian convert spoke volumes. The judges and local religious leaders will set the agenda. Karzai’s govt is irrelevant. He’ll only survive as long as he is protected. I’ll miss his cape.
There’s a huge gap between the Taliban and us, but we aren’t the issue here.
2 comments:
Regardless of his dress sense, Karzai is there because of his past working in the oil industry (because thats what its all about in the end) and will survive while the Americans still think he is of use to them.
Maybe not Western democracy, but surely something more civilised than the medieval Taliban rule? You have to wonder about people who think stoning and cutting off hands are reasonable punishments in the 21st century.
I agree there's got to be something better than the Taliban, but what they end up with is going to be a lot closer to the Talibs than it is to us. And we're going to have to be okay with that, or else we're going to be there forever, not making things better.
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