Craig Crawford's Trail Mix

Woo? If so, well, I'll be dipped.

That's ckind of a GTHO (get the hell out) plan - which I endorse. After all, what's a little bribery in the grand scheme of things? Now getting the Congress to agree to bribe someone (as opposed to being bribed - with which they are intimately familiar) may be a little more difficult.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/beware-antiwar-presidents.html#comment-260065

bear...

How very true. They will wake up the sleeping giant that they always talk about and it won't be the one they think it is.

I doubt that there are any rocks big enough to hide them or to crawl under.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

I think it could work, they may not want paid in U.S. dollars though ;) Some tweaking and training. I have zero interest in nation building, and a good amount of those people move around like gypsys and live in tents. I doubt very seriously they want to be Americanized. We went into Afghanistan right after 9-11 with suitcases of money, that got results.

The bigger problem is keeping the Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Secure. The terrorist would love to have access. I suspect that is why the President wants a Military presences in the geographic region.

But even the Vice President said, he thinks that only 20% of Taliban support is hard core. The rest are guns for hire, he said something like 80% so we offer to pay them better. We need to cut off the Terrorist source of funding, the Poppy Fields than we are the only game in town.

Max, returning to the earlier discussion - Your false equivalents are tiresome. Yes, Bush dropped the ball - our purpose for being in Afghanistan THEN was to defeat the Taliban because they were giving safe haven to the terr'ists - especially OBL and to capture the terr'ists. Bush left before either of those jobs were done to go seek retribution agains tSaddam on cooked up evidence with no real defeat of the Taliban, no capture of OBL. They aren't a threat to us anymore - time does matter, you see. Typical conservative failing to recognize that things do change over time. That was a different time and a different reason than our current messing about, which is ineffectual at best, particularly since we once again are in a war with no real objective "victory" to be acheived. See, that has changed.

As to the Russian incursion in Afghanistan, it argues against your worship of Reagan and his "negotiation" of the end of the cold war. If anything, the internal political and economic tides in the USSR brought it to its knees, and the system fell apoart because the USSR did not have the resources to impose its will on its own republics any longer, due at least in part to its attempt to defeat the Afghanis. A little study of history might have suggested that could happen to the mighty.

And I'd love to see your parallels between Iran and Venezuela today and Germany in the 00s and early 10s and the 30s. Aside from the presence of a nutty leader, the comparisons fall apart quickly. Sounds a lot like warmongering to me. World wars indeed.

Craig,

Your assessment makes perfect sense which is why it would never be adopted. We he to do that, he'd be labeled by the people who traded arms for hostages to fund the Contras, as an appeaser of terrorists...

Old saying: You can't buy an Afghan war lord. but you can rent one.

Old saying: You can't buy an Afghan war lord. but you can rent one.

Posted by: Patsi Author Profile Page | September 14, 2009 2:10 PM

That was a good one GRIN.

Well, let's make them bonafide contractors working for, no, not that outfit from North Carolina, instead we'll have them working for those great patriots at Halliburton!

Craig,

The idea is good as far as it goes. There is something of a problem. Afghanistan is over 250,000 square miles. Population density outside of the few major cities is pretty well non existant, and Al Quaida is in Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes.

We supported the Taliban against the Russians now we are opposing the Taliban ... Does anyone have a card with all the players and who is fighting with whom?

Yes, withdraw from Afghanistan and let them have at it until the people establish some form of stability (or at least as much as possible in the 4th century). Now where do we stand ... between Afghanistan and Pakistan? Between Pakistan and India? Marching up and down the lines on the map in all of the icky stans?

Instead of the world's policeman, we become the world's referee.

Somebody chain this man to the Resolute Desk. He can't seem to stay away from cameras.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/obama-may-do-back-to-back-tv-interviews-sunday/?pagemode=print

if we go with warlord u-haul, hope we have tighter inventory control accountability than we did with the iraqi contractors.

Oh, and Max, you might check your history of the US Congress - the Democrats had control of the House for the entirety of Reagan's term (the House - where all spending bills originate) and control of the Senate during Reagan's last 2 years in office.

how many guns was that that were misplaced/lost/disappeared?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/beware-antiwar-presidents.html#comment-260018

bw, a friendly sitdown with a local paper/tv might be in order if you have good figures on your personal congress critters receiving big insurance donations coupled with their form letters of no-help plus a good tear-jerking account of your recent travails documented. you know, one of these problem solver type programs that likes to show how effective they are fighting city hall and scammers on behalf of the little guy citizen/consumer. squeak that wheel, bw.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302962.html?hpid=topnews

The latest public pulse on health insurance reform.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260084

Jamie, A minor quibble, but we did not support the Taliban against the Russians. The Taliban didn't come into existence until about 1994, I believe.

Cynical, appeals to warlord venality, and workable. Good idea, Craig.

Perhaps you could cut a deal where we don't spray their poppies.

Most of the Taliban are Pashtuns, and they have wanted some autonomy for sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtuns

According to About.com, there were no Taliban in Afghanistan until the Afghan civil war after the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

http://middleeast.about.com/od/afghanistan/ss/me080914a_2.htm

Bribing warlords -

Didn't we try that with the Barbary Pirates ?

or

" I'll take Ferdinand Marcos for $500 Alex ".

" Health care for Warlords ! "
Same as congress gets , they'll sway em'.

Maybe hip replacements at Walter Reed ?

I got to believe walking those Afghan mountains , lot's of old warlords need knee and hip work.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260091

CJ

Sorry Al Quaida against Russia. IN any case, our guys with guns were fighting their guys with guns. The state of the world during the Cold war... our bad guys against their bad guys.

jamie,

Yes. And, excuse me for quibbling, but your posts are always worth reading and usually dead-on accurate.

cj

Taliban is a religious movement. I think it is similar to Pablo Escobar, who was a pseudo socialist in Colombia. He played robin hood to the poor, and he kept himself insulated politically this way.

The Taliban are made up of the Pashtun tribes. It is why Musharraf kept saying while Bush was President, he didn't think attacking the Taliban was a good idea in Pakistan. it would create a civil war. The Taliban at first restricted the growing of the poppy crops (because of religion?) when they came to power but later it's believed they did this just to drive the market price up - pseudo religious movement used for local political cover.

The Vice President thinks only about 20% of the Taliban are hard core.

First, phony numbers, now phony photos. Did this thing really even happen?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/912-tea-party-photo-false_n_286082.html

And Robert Samuelson sort of hits the nail on the head.

"The candor gap reflects a common condescension. One side believes it must fool Americans into thinking "reform" will do more than it will; the other thinks it must frighten Americans into believing that it will harm them in ways that it won't. Given Americans' contradictory expectations, any health-care proposal can be criticized for offending some popular goal. We refuse to face unavoidable -- and unpleasant -- choices. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302250.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Now, gotta run - see ya.

Three figurines of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love, have been found buried underground in the remains of a shop in a Roman city built in the second century B.C.

The hidden figures hint at the reluctance of some denizens of the Roman Empire to give up their pagan beliefs despite the spread of Christianity.

http://www.livescience.com/history/090914-aphrodite-statues.html

From TPM Reader RD ...

What to call the Teabaggers gathering in DC this past weekend--the 2009 Birthing Man Festival!

It only *seems* like you've dropped acid.

Max Blumenthal's Unauthorized 9.12 Teabagger Tour

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3418440&ref=fpblg

Pogo -
Looked at the overhead shot of the protest, the wingers were using as the size of the crowd . Sunny day whenever that one happened, ( Hint there's shadows ) Max's clip it's cloudy.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260075

Pogo, Why call it a bribe, when it would could just as easily be called an incentive program. :)

TORONTO, Sep. 14, 2009 (Reuters) — A new wave of documentaries at this year's Toronto International Film Festival poses a disturbing question: is environmental and social disaster on a global scale imminent and perhaps inevitable?

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58d44l-us-toronto-environment/

Giant Stone-age Axes Found In African Lake Basin

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911134624.htm

---------
They're not kiddin'.

On second thought, the payout-to-warlords reminds me of Rudyard Kipling:

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you;
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Danegeld,
And we've proved it again and again,
That if ever you once pay the Danegeld,
You never get rid of the Dane.

Substitute "war-tired" for "lazy" and it does somewhat apply. So do we keep paying the warlords to take down the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or do we go on feeding troops into an inhospitable land where nobody has ever won--not even Alexander the Great?

Nasty conundrum.

Okay, time for the knobite to quit showin' off and return to lurkin'.

Italian authorities have discovered a ship that was sunk by the mafia off the coast of southern Italy with 120 barrels of radioactive
waste on board, a local prosecutor said Monday.

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/090914175727.spou2wq4.html

The Gaza Strip's underground water supplies are "in danger of collapse" following years of overuse and a devastating war Israel waged in the territory at the turn of the year, the UN said Monday.

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/090914134501.xhlxlydw.html

Male bass in many US rivers have female features

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1501ap_us_sci_intersex_fish.html

cbob, what do the tenors look like?

Hey-O!

"Okay, time for the knobite to quit showin' off and return to lurkin'."

Posted by: Fairweather Lewis http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260115

Why lurk? That was a good post.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260121

Why, thank you, DL.

But Republicans are playing a dangerous game. They are benefitting from all this anger in the short term, but they have tapped into something deep and ugly that they can’t control. Calling the president a communist or even Hitler is something far beyond simple incivility or street theater—it is an accusation that intentionally stirs the crazy pot. It is ultimately an incitement to violence.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-14/becks-beast-unleashed/

If we had paid Saddam Hussein the money he requested from us, we would have saved a bundle. I think Craig's idea is workable and less labor intensive.

I think we need to make this guy a chief negotiator on the world stage...he'd have to have some success...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnc2GGcs4o

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260103

CJ

Quibble away. It's one of my favorite pasttimes since it makes me go find answers. :-)

Why doesn't the US call their bluff and cut US Aid to them?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/netanyahu-strikes-defiant_n_285422.html

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/09/the-trail-mix-afghan-plan.html#comment-260129

Asked and answered before, Bear.

But, one more time, because they are our proxy in that part of the world. A proxy with the weapons and willingness to do what we might be unable to attempt because of the global politic.

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