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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (55569)	9/27/2009 10:01:19 PM
From: bull_dozer	1 Recommendation Respond to of 217742

Too bad nobody's listening... LYNN SHERR: Let me read to you something that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying the other day: "â€¦if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan." RORY STEWART: I would say that Secretary Rice is exaggerating the situation. Pakistan is much more of a threat than Afghanistan to U.S. national security. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan. Pakistan, of course, has a nuclear weapon. Pakistan's a much larger country. It could destabilize India. Afghanistan is, of course, a poor, fragile state. Like Somalia, like Yemen, like many other countries in the world. Of course, we should be doing things to try to stabilize it. But that is — and I want to disagree respectfully with her — not the place where the next attack is most likely to come from. .... .... LYNN SHERR: How is your advice taken? RORY STEWART: I think what I see at the moment is that people are polite, because they imagine maybe I have some experience with Afghanistan. But I'm one of a broad community of people — we have nine people working in my center at Harvard who've worked there for 20 or 30 years and the problem we all have is that if the Administration has for some reason already decided that they're going to increase troops, they're going to do a counterinsurgency campaign, it's very difficult for them to take on board people coming back and saying, "Look, actually, I don't think this is going to work. It's a great idea. I can see why you want to do it. But by trying to do the impossible, you may end up doing nothing. I'd like to present an alternative strategy, which is lighter, more intelligent, and may end up actually achieving something." LYNN SHERR: And again, their reaction? They listen politely, you say? RORY STEWART: They listen politely, but in the end, of course, basically the policy decision is made. What they would like is little advice on some small bit. I mean, the analogy that one of my colleagues used recently is this: it's as though they come to you and they say, "We're planning to drive our car off a cliff. Do we wear a seatbelt or not?" And we say, "Don't drive your car off the cliff." And they say, "No, no, no. That decision's already made. The question is should we wear our seatbelts?" And you say, "Why by all means wear a seatbelt." And they say, "Okay, we consulted with policy expert, Rory Stewart," et cetera. Message 25975070

To: TobagoJack who wrote (55569)	9/28/2009 3:50:40 AM
From: energyplay	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217742

What ? >>>" ...given that the americans had never ever won a war against anyone on asian continent..." <<< Cleverly excluding Japan from Asia - not a bad idea in itself, but why not leave the re-writing of history for Japanese textbooks ? Don't count the Philippines, either. USS Missouri 1945 Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board USS Missouri as General Richard K. Sutherland watches, September 2, 1945. One possible solution is for the US to cut a deal with the Taliban and leave...let the neighborhood take care of neighborhood problems ;-)