Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Wikileaks document dump

I suppose I need to comment on this, since everybody else has.

  1. The comparison to "The Pentagon Papers" is apt. This is a detailed historical document dump of the progress of the war, from near the start to about 8 months ago.
  2. Note the "eight months ago" part. There's nothing in these documents that puts our troops at risk. If our troops are still in the same positions that they were in eight months ago, we're fucked anyhow.
So what is the bottom line that these documents tell us? Well, nothing that we don't already know -- that we are no closer to conquering Afghanistan today than we were eight years ago. The only way to "win" in Afghanistan is the Tamerlane way -- extermination of entire populations, i.e., genocide. Tamerlane was the last person to successfully conquer Afghanistan back in 1370 or so, and his descendants the Moghuls then swarmed down from Afghanistan in the early 1500s and conquered all of Pakistan and Northern India. But Tamerlane had some advantages we don't have. Tamerlane had no logistics tail -- none. He fed his armies by seizing the food, weapons, and supplies of the peoples he conquered, who no longer needed it because they were, err, dead. Tamerlane was not put off by squeamish notions of killing women and children. If a province defied Tamerlane, he simply turned it into an unpeopled wasteland without bothering to try to kill only combatants. He was by all accounts possessed of an amount of viciousness that make even the Taliban look like Boy Scouts, an amount of viciousness that no army of a would-be democracy could ever contenance because it would repulse too many taxpayers.

In short: Unless we turn the U.S. into an empire led by a vicious warlord like Tamerlane, there's no point being in Afghanistan. The place can't be conquered short of doing it the Tamerlane way. Temporarily occupied, yes. Conquered, no.

'Nuff said on that, we already knew all the above, just felt like ranting...

- Badtux the History Penguin

11 comments:

  1. I like the idea that there are people w/whatever top-secrety clearance willing to liberate these documents. Should be a lotta tail-chasing going on trying to find the culprit. And while I no longer follow the MSM (health care did it for me,) I imagine the White House & friends are trying to shift the focus away from the content & aim it toward the "traitor," allowing for an extra dollop of mirth & amusement.

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  2. The guy who wrote "Imperial Hubris" drew pretty much the same conclusion on the war in Afghanistan. I'm hoping Obama comes to his senses and moves to end this war before it gets to the point where he'll have no other choice...

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  3. All the talk of Afghans and Talibs and Pakis is just so much fluff. The reason we stay there is because someone doesn't have the balls to face the Republican noise machine if he said it was time to go. Brave men and women are dying because of the decisions of cowards.

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  4. I have a friend from India. He knew EXACTLY how this was going to turn out. I had a pretty goo idea what was going to happen because (.....) here in '90 was all top secret and shit...supposedly.

    Snort!

    My roommate was head of security.

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  5. I suppose I need to comment on this, since everybody else has.

    I didn't even look at it, I simply don't give a rats ass.

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  6. I'm hoping Obama comes to his senses and moves to end this war before it gets to the point where he'll have no other choice...

    Hahahahaha....

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  7. I came across an article by Gary Wills last year that suggested that Obama was afraid to end the war for fear of not being re-elected. That's the same kind of political cowardice that kept us in Vietnam for 13 years after John Kennedy acknowledged in 1962 that it was a losing proposition. Apparently, re-election is always more important that soldiers'lives.

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  8. Not so funny thing. Obama is doing exactly what he said he would. We think we heard something else. We wanted to hear something else. Now the guy is carrying out his plan on Afghanistan. I guess it's the way to show those damn Republicans he's got balls. Truth is if he did have any, the troops would be home.
    Off course a bit, these secrets just reassured me of all the things I thought.

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  9. Indeed, Obama did run on escalating in Afghanistan. Can't really blame him for doing what he said he was going to do. Great Penguin forbid that we would have elected some hippie peacenik like Dennis Kucinich... where would the profit be in that?!

    - Badtux the Snarking Penguin

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  10. If the Soviet Union couldn't manage Afghanistan, how on earth can anyone imagine that we can? I've been saying that since the beginning of the war, and nobody listens...

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  11. Wikileaks is a psyop. Wikileaks is linked to George Soros and Soros is linked to trouble.

    http://deadlinelive.info/2010/07/26/wikileaks-911-and-george-soros/

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