How to deepen a widening quagmire in one easy step: Just think like the Bush administration

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/11/how-to-deepen-a.html

How to deepen a widening quagmire in one easy step: Just think like the Bush administration
pm carpenter


Just one morning I'd like to get up and discover the Bush administration hasn't gone and done something incredibly stupid, again. So far, little luck.

This morning's anti-treat waiting to greet me was headlined, "U.S. Hopes to Arm Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda." Yes, that's just what that region needed, assuming one believes the Middle East powder keg isn't yet packed fully, tightly, or impressively enough.

The "plan," as outlined by "planners," is to introduce $350 million of American military training and all manner of things that go boom into Pakistan's volatile periphery that is already heating up the volcanic interior. It's modeled on our Sunni-insurgency aid in Iraq's Anbar province, a ticking time bomb of an idea that will see all those U.S. weapons and all that U.S. training pointed right back at us, just as soon as the assisted locals clear out their unwanted hombres and then remember they're not that fond of the Great Satan, either.

But at least both fighting fronts will be less "asymmetric" by then, that undesirable state of military conflict in which the U.S. can't figure out how to whip an enemy armed only with the modern equivalent of sticks, stones and slingshots. The enemy will, instead, possess the latest in military know-how and toys, and therefore be more easily subdued. And if you follow that logic, there's a high-level planning job for you at the United States Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., where counterterrorism mavens devise such incomprehensible humbug.

Some Western military minds are a trifle skittish at the idea of arming those already "blamed ... for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks" into Afghanistan, not to mention that "the assistance to develop a counterinsurgency force is too little, too late." What these minds fail to appreciate, however, is that the best quagmires -- the ones, that is, that offer mounting arguments for the mounting presence of permanent U.S. forces -- are indeed the ones initially created with assistance provided in quantities too little and timed too late.

snip//

And, of course, we see that stability re-flowering today, as we prepare to shove hundreds of millions in military hardware into the hands of Pakistani tribal leaders who possess absolutely no love for the United States, nor share its preposterous vision of a more peaceful Middle East through greater firepower.

What next? I can promise only one thing: It'll be incredibly stupid.

They spread fear world wide while selling weapons on the side...all on our dime.

concept of looking at the world in the future. The ill will they've created could definitely bite us in the butt down the road.