[Peace-discuss] Why are we in AfPak?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The Petraeus faction in the Pentagon -- who gave Obama the death-squad general,
Stanley McChrystal, to run his AfPak war -- had to go abroad to find its 
official Deep Thinker, an Australian called David Kilcullen.  Obama says we're
killing people in Afpak to prevent another 9/11.  But Kilcullen's explanation is
even more fantastic...  --CGE]


...the New York Times reported that McChrystal had been given "carte blanche to
handpick a dream team of subordinates" as he carries out "an ambitious new
strategy" of "stepped-up attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotics networks"...

The latest member of the dream team McChrystal has been given carte blanche to
handpick is counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen.
David Petraeus, who is now head of U.S. Central Command and McChrystal’s boss.
In a recent appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Kilcullen predicted that
the U.S. will see about two more years of heavy fighting then either turn things
over to Afghan forces or “lose and go home.” He outlined a “best-case scenario”
for a decade of further U.S. and NATO entanglement in Afghanistan. These
counterinsurgency wonks have an odd sense of time. Maybe that’s why
counterinsurgencies go on forever. The people in charge of them start having so
much fun that they lose track.

Kilcullen also has an odd sense of why Afghanistan is worth a 10-year
commitment. We have "compelling reasons" to continue the fight, he says, but
counterterrorism isn’t "at the top of my list"...

One of his main reasons for staying the course in Afghanistan is that it may be
the only way to preserve the NATO alliance. See, NATO was formed to fight a
different kind of war than the one in Afghanistan against a different kind of
enemy than the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but that war and that enemy doesn’t exist
anymore. NATO needs a new kind of war and enemy to fight, and if Afghanistan and
the Taliban aren’t it, then there’s no reason for NATO to exist anymore...

http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/08/10/the-man-with-the-plan-for-bananastan/