As every armchair military historian knew from the start, it’s not going to happen. But this is a morbidly amusing commentary on eight years of occupation:
America’s deputy chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan has issued a damning indictment of the work of US spy agencies, calling them clueless and out of touch with the Afghan people. Major General Michael Flynn described US spies as “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced… and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers”….
It quotes one operations officer saying that the US was unable to make informed decisions about what to do in Afghanistan because of a lack of much-needed intelligence about the country.
Bad strategy always leads to confusion, bad tactics, and demoralized troops. And the U.S. strategy has been completely hapless in Afghanistan and Iraq… don’t think for a second that the situation in Iraq is settled. It’s no wonder the global jihadists are feeling increasingly confident and stepping up their activities in the Dar al-Harb. Even the most rabid Republican neocon nattering on about the imminent danger to national security that can only be prevented by an immediate invasion of Iran/Pakistan/Yemen/Dubai should now understand that military occupations are not an effective means of convincing the world of the danger of offending a superpower. Shock and awe has been replaced by contempt.