Comments on Belmont Club"More Afghanistan"

There are significant Pashtun minorities in the UAE and in the UK. This chart is from the wiki:

Regions with significant populations
Pakistan                  28 million (2005) [1][2]
Afghanistan            13 million (2006) [3]
UAE                             315,524 (2008) [4]
United Kingdom      200,000 (2006) [5]
Iran                              150,000 (2005) [6]
India                               11,086 (2001) [7]
United States                  7,710 (2000) [8]
Malaysia                         5,100 (2008) [9]
Canada                             1,695 (2006) [10]

The terrible thing about all the retreat and defeat, the humiliations and betrayals and deprivations that the Democrats prepared over the preceding 8 years and have now begun to unleash on us is that none of it was inevitable. We had everything needed to achieve victory but a confident population and a loyal political class. We had the wealth, the population, the technology and the opportunity. We could have knocked over the mullahs in Tehran and their lackeys in Damascus, we could have crushed the barbarians in Pyongyang and in Riyadh, we could have liberated billions and lead the world into a new age of liberty and prosperity and creativity and within sight of the goal we threw it all away.

hdgreene,
The upshot of the short sighted policy you describe is that when, I did not say if, the mullahs fall from power the Iranian people will not turn to the Americans but instead to the Chinese.

Wadeusaf,
The only true costs are opportunity costs. We had the capacity and the opportunity for Victory. Now the military is signing on to the only war in town. Sure they can do their jobs and sound enthusiastic about it but the bottom line is that they are providing a credible layer of activity to cover an exit strategy.

In so far as it does any good, building an Afghan army and police force and starting to develop a Civil Society behind the enemy lines, it will be the unacknowledged continuation of Bush’s plan. Without the stamina to stay the course and confront the “root causes” of hatred and violence in Tehran, Moscow and Islamabad the good works done will prove as ephemeral as the Gazan greenhouses.

wretchard launched four threads in close proximity, so the discussion became diffuse and I will collect my commentary.

On Who's Allah?, regarding the diplomatic aptitude of Hillary R Clinton.
This is really a fiendishly clever plot to convince the rest of the world that the can’t depend on Uncle Sugar to play the adult so they have to stop being free riders.

JMH,
She could be the answer to Global Warming. The room temperature drops when she shows up. I’ve felt it.

On Obama to meet Assad?
Israel has already been called the “Twice Promised Land.” Now Obama is selling them to Iran and Syria and Hamas and Al-Q (who really don’t care) and heck he’ll offer to screw the Jews for Chavez just as icing on the cake. Bibi takes office on Tuesday, will he pull the rug out from under BHO?

My prediction is that we see serious thumb suckers by the media pushing this line in a few months.

Mike Sylwester,
He has Russian equipment, no reason for him to tie himself into an American supply line. Assad shares interests with the Turks regarding the Kurds. That is another betrayal that BHO can add to his collection. There are a range of things that the Syrians want aside from the obvious in Lebanon or the Golan.

On Iran and North Korea:
RWE,
I call it the Long War.
Bush pulled one punch when he didn’t make eliminating the fascist Ba’ath rump regime in Damascus part of the original “Axis of Evil” formulation.
We should be cutting steel right now, should have been 5 years ago really, to triple the size of the fleet.
You want a jobs program? That would be a jobs program.