Instahoglets Sunday

By Steve Hynd

Some linky love and Weekend must-reads.

--  Jeff Huber notes that despite White House promises that the new Af Pak strategy doesn't involve nation building, the white paper they're talking about delineated such strategy goals as “Promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan” and “Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces” and “Assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan.”  Jeff Writes: That’s not just nation building; when two nations are involved, it’s called region building. Moreover, the white paper describes these goals as “realistic” and “achievable,” which they most assuredly are not.

-- And Bob Gates admits "our long-term objective still would be to see a flourishing democracy in Afghanistan".

-- The Spectator's Daniel Korski writes that "the Taliban has a better co-ordinated political and military strategy than we do."

-- Charles Lemos at My DD: The Afghan Trap. Including a snippet of an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski from 1988 in which he admits a secret US operation to draw the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and says he has no regrets about it. Charles writes "I wonder if Mr. Brzezinski still has no regrets but even that aside this is another instance of blowback, covert operations having unintended consequences now decades after their conception." The U.S. is now apparently ensnared in the same trap it set for its rival.

-- Col. Douglas MacGregor writes at the Armed Forces Journal about the alternative to persistently waging small, long wars that leave the U.S. paying through the nose for the privilege of living atop "an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.” It's called Refusing Combat. Duh!

-- Who watches the watchmen? Stirling Newbury writes The ultimate principle under debate is whether the present collapse is an irrational moment which is preventable with restrictions, or a recurring feature of the present financial system...The shape of how it is to be debated is taking place, and the public, angry at the outcomes so far, is still stuck at the door, without even the ability to jump in to the deliberations and shout "Veto!"

-- Global Post's Ioan Grillo presents a guide to Mexican drug cartels, their kingpins, areas of operation and preferred methods. As Mexico suffers from an onslaught of massacres, decapitations and execution-style hits, six major drug cartels have carved up the country into fiefdoms. Like the armies of authentic warlords, the cartels attempt to completely dominate their territories, controlling trafficking routes, local drug sales and other criminal enterprises. Clashing over disputed turf, the cartels all have carried out murders on an epic scale.

-- Shaun Mullen on the continued meltdown of the GOP -  when the sanest wingnut voice writes for RedState they've got a real problem.

-- The Sideshow has a lot more links worth reading, every day.

Comments

[Curmudgeon]

There's a real fun bit towards the end of MacGregor's article in the AFJ:

"Legitimacy is not exclusively a function of elections. Legitimacy is also defined by a government’s competence to win and hold power in ways that benefit American and allied interests."

Maybe that's just a bad choice of words but it certainly looks like he's saying non-Americans aren't entitled to self-determination. Nice.