Canada has her exit strategy from Afghanistan: come next year, we are just going to walk. Minor Europeans (they are all minor, even when aggregated, in contemporary military terms) find no serious difficulty in doing the same, under pressure from electorates that no longer see the point of fighting in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration declared a similar 2011 wind-down, or wind-off, in advance; though in the American case, leaving can’t be so easy — they’re the ones who must turn off the lights — and I doubt anyone in State or Defence seriously thinks they can quietly check out, after the much-advertised “surge” never happens.
For the result of an American exit would be ugly: the probable return to power of exactly the party that sheltered al-Qaeda, and made 9/11 possible.
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What David Warren says here may apply to the US and should defiantly apply to the Euroweenies. But our jig is up for awhile in 2011, let’s give our troops a rest and let the Euroweenies live up to their reset with their Obamarx kinfolk in the White House.
Nevertheless, David Warren’s flypaper theory definitely has merit. He set out that theory 8 years ago and it particularly applied to Iraq where drawing the murdering scumbags to the flypaper worked. While Iraq is not yet Denmark, it is viable and most importantly the oil commodity is flowing but the oil funds stopped flowing to weapons for Saddam and recruitment of terrorists.
David Warren was raised in the region and is one of the most knowledgeable journalists on the planet on these matters. He spent several years as an elementary school student in Pakistan in the 1960s which gave him insight into how Islam does its work on little boys. He has a site davidwarreonline.com with copies of his columns (warning: many here won’t like his social conservatism). He is the kind of guy that if the CBC was “fair and balanced” they would have on as an “expert” to inform us on geopolitics in the ME. Maybe Sun TV will do so.