The Great Game, another loss

[Tribesman]

Nato forces, led by the US. They're invading Pakistan already, aren't they?

Yeah right

Western taxpayers, as usual.

I think you will find that western taxpayers are screwed at the moment and ain't gonna be able to stump up the cash or credit for such an endeavour .

[Adrian II]

Yeah right

Are you short on arguments again?

I think you will find that western taxpayers are screwed at the moment and ain't gonna be able to stump up the cash or credit for such an endeavour .

Oh, that's what people always say when faced with workable ideas.

Politicians shouldn't listen to the people. They should tell the people that they can't have (inter)national security on the cheap, or if they think they can, they should find other leaders asap to implement it because cheap security policies sure as hell ain't gonna work.

[Tribesman]

Are you short on arguments again?

Nope , your position is just laughable .
America and the coilition of the bribed couldn't provide enough troops to do Iraq , America and Isaf cannot provide enough troops to work Afghanistan , and now you propose that they can invade and partition a country of nearly 200million people that has lots of long established thoroughly entrenched terrorist groups .
Have you been down the coffee shop eating funny cakes ?

[Adrian II]

Nope , your position is just laughable .
America and the coilition of the bribed couldn't provide enough troops to do Iraq , America and Isaf cannot provide enough troops to work Afghanistan , and now you propose that they can invade and partition a country of nearly 200million people that has lots of long established thoroughly entrenched terrorist groups .
Have you been down the coffee shop eating funny cakes ?

Are you drunk again?

Seriously, in 2001 we were told that the Americans could never 'do' Afghanistan because the Russians never could. Yet they did 'do' Afghanistan inside of 4 weeks.

Same with Iraq in 2003. Remember we were told that the house to house fighting against Saddam's troops would take months, nay years? Yet they 'did' Iraq inside of 10 days.

The notion that either country could be rebuilt into a functioning democracy was a mistake, or a white lie if you want. Even with the best of efforts it couldn't succeed. As Francis Fukuyama has pointed out in State Building (2004) formal elections aren't enough to constitute a working democracy. It requires free, peaceful and enduring public debate backed up by free media, it requires security, functioning public services, an independent judiciary, a functioning neutral police force and an army that follows political orders. None of these can be established without the will of the people, or a large majority of them. This will was clearly absent in Iraq. That's why in the first 'free' Iraqi election everyone voted for their own ethnicity or religion, out of fear instead of confidence in the future of the country.

Same, mutatis mutandis, in Afghanistan. Your illusion that these countries could be somehow' rebuilt' into functioning democracies is much more costly and much more dangerous than my view that they should be left to rot, in order to contain the potential damage which their unworthy or fanatic leaders could cause.