{"id":6400,"date":"2012-05-02T11:18:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T18:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/?p=6400"},"modified":"2014-01-09T10:16:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T17:16:18","slug":"so-whats-decent-interval-in-pashto-%d8%b3%d9%85-%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b3%d9%8a-%d9%be%d8%b1%d9%8a%da%96%d8%af%d9%88-%d9%88%d9%82%d9%81%d9%8a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/so-whats-decent-interval-in-pashto-%d8%b3%d9%85-%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b3%d9%8a-%d9%be%d8%b1%d9%8a%da%96%d8%af%d9%88-%d9%88%d9%82%d9%81%d9%8a\/","title":{"rendered":"So What’s ‘Decent Interval’ In Pashto? (\u0633\u0645 \u0644\u0627\u0633\u064a \u067e\u0631\u064a\u0696\u062f\u0648 \u0648\u0642\u0641\u064a)"},"content":{"rendered":"

V<\/b>ery little actually happened during Obama’s stunt visit to Kabul. His mastery of obfuscating optics remains unmatched: America is leaving in 2014 to rebuild at home, except we are staying to ‘finish the mission’. The most cheeky line? His declaration that ‘the mission is on a clear path to success.’ Do tell.<\/p>\n

Pure focus group gold. The twinkle in Obama’s eye during his speech seems to say ‘This is how you do it.’ Soaring verbiage for all persuasions and voila – Afghanistan politically neutralized for 2012. After that, not really his<\/i> personal problem. Who says he can only slow roll news?<\/p>\n

We’d prefer a more honest and coherent withdrawal. And an open rejection of nation-building, COIN and (add your list here). Afghanistan as an even moderately functioning society should be far more pressing for Moscow, Beijing, Islamabad and whoever is the next Mayor of Kabul\/Afghan president. <\/p>\n

\"Afghanistan,<\/a><\/p>\n

The scale of American profligacy over 13 years understandably makes a clean walk away difficult. Lives and a trillion dollars thrown away, mostly for nothing. A pointless surge that cynically bought time but accomplished little. An entire generation of national security bureaucracies and personal careers built on the whole Islamo-Terrorist\/Drink-Tea-Complex. That’s a lot of inertia for Obama to take on. Particularly for one instinctively prone to compromise. So Decent Interval today is a more drawn out affair.<\/p>\n

The $4-5 billion being brandied about as a post-2014 annual ante for graft<\/i><\/strike> aid to Kabul is expensive, even compared to Tel-Aviv. Sure, it keeps the American hand in the Great Game. In for a trillion, in for a billion, amirite<\/i>? A lighter CT footprint requires some infrastructure and logistics after all. Obama concedes we’ll be in Afghanistan for another decade anyway.<\/p>\n

Most of the aid money will be a psychological sop to alleviate American guilt. Does anyone really expect a dollar given to Kabul after 2014 to yield sudden benefit and efficiencies? Guilt’s emotional echo likely will fuel AgitProp for future mission creep again, most prominently from the so-called ‘Left’ [sic] with their emotional, impulsive ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) cant. The humanitarian calls for action here will be to alleviate oppression of helpless [gender\/minority\/pet] left destitute by callous abandonment. People may even Tweet about it. (We suspect those agitators (and Afghans) will be disappointed; America, once she’s psychologically withdrawn, will treat Afghanistan like an office party in a cell phone commercial ‘-so 45 seconds ago’)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obama’s dazzling skill fuzzing up political conversation may be welcome in some quarters now. We’ll all rue it later. ‘Lessons of Afghanistan 2001-2014’ inescapably will be on a future political blackboard. Not that we as a society are particularly adroit at drawing lessons, let alone studying them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very little actually happened during Obama’s stunt visit to Kabul. His mastery of obfuscating optics remains unmatched: America is leaving in 2014 to rebuild at home, except we are staying to ‘finish the mission’. The most cheeky line? His declaration that ‘the mission is on a clear path to success.’ Do tell. Pure focus group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[28,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-6400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-foreign-policy","7":"tag-afghanistan","8":"tag-obama","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}