Afghanistan – The unreachable goal

Thanks to WikiLeaks, the true colors of Afghanistan are now showing. What the leaked documents show is that very clearly US political ambitions of a military pullout are only paper dreams that will take a decade or more to be realized.

There is no way to put this other than WikiLeaks has very simply proven that what Connecting the Dots has said about Afghanistan is absolutely right on the mark. But this entry is not about building our ego about being right again, this is all about the reality of the situation and what will no doubt happen.

To find a suitable metaphor about the situation, we would have to say it is like trying to build a F18 fighter aircraft out of paper mashy and balsa wood. The first true tests the wings will simply break off and the jet comes crashing to the ground. Simply put Afghanistan is probably way too far from having the required discipline needed to be self supporting. With everything up for sale, and the Taliban’s ability to get significant cash during the next opium harvest, it is likely things will revert back to the way they were in 2000 inside of 18 months.

There is little doubt this is known by President Obama, but for the sake of politics and looking at getting elected, implying that there is a so called out target date will win the votes of the naive. The realistic situation suggests there will be American boots on the ground for at least 10 years. Any exit before that is simply a politically induced hallucination.

What needs to be done is very simply install corruption proof infrastructure. That is only achievable by removing humans from the equation.  That requires electronic transfers of money to the end users. But because Afghanistan is still in need of the most basic things like running water, ATM machines and bank accounts are simply not in the cards for several more years.

In fact it is not too hard to imagine some rural bank being broken into by the entire local community. You really need to think back to the days where religion ruled to get a grasp on what it is like. No wonder such extreme religious views are seen in the Taliban. That is how life was a millennium ago in other parts of the world, and apparently still is in a significant part of Afghanistan.

So giving Afghanistan the fast forward will still take the better part of a decade as for each 3 steps forward, there will be 2 pushed back as someone pockets what they can if nobody is looking. This is simply the reality that WikiLeaks has confirmed.

So on that thought, we must wonder how much damage will be done to political careers, and how much motivation there is for political survival as compared other alleged security reasons to be upset with WikiLeaks. Of late politicians have been self centered, so this simply exposes all those little political secrets kept from view to get re-elected. This also somehow in its own way says political correctness is all about an artificial projected reality that has nothing to do with the real world.


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