US Ambassador Ryan Crocker apparently believes that a Taliban twenty-hour assault on Kabul’s diplomatic quarter in which twenty-seven people died is “no big deal.” Maybe not for him but it was apparently a big deal for the Afghans who were killed. Crocker, who has always known just what to say to make reality go away in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, wants everyone to believe that the Afghans are ready to assume security responsibility in their country because that is what President Obama wants the American people to believe. Not that it really matters. The BS artist who turns out to be our next president, whoever that might be, will inevitably convince the public that “we have to fight them over there so we won’t have to do it over here,” guaranteeing a US presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.
Crocker Provides a Crock
Posted in Foreign policy, War.
3 Responses to Crocker Provides a Crock
-
James Canning says:
And shouldn’t it be said that a stable or reasonably stable Afghanistan is in the interests of Russia, China, Iran and other countries? Why is the US taxpayer being hosed to the tune of $10 billion per month?
-
I met Reagan’s Ambassador to South Africa Chester Crocker in 1981. I wonder how they are related?
Phil, your right on every point. And yet it is true that even a movement in it’s death throws can stage pinpoint attacks safe in the knowledge that our media attention will be captured. The famous Tet Offensive was a strategic disaster for the Viet Cong but it cost us any chance of forcing a favorable outcome in Southeast Asia.
You are right that the Afghan government is incompetent and likely to fall apart like a cookie in the rain when we leave. It will be interesting to see what coheres and survives the mess to come. I’m betting that the Chinese and perhaps others will defend their mineral interests through bribery and subterfuge, creating a pragmatic and at least, workable state of affairs.