On handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban

…and holding them to account by threatening to bomb them from the air

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

Bill and Bob’s Excellent Afghan Adventure rips apart Anatol Lieven’s op-ed in the Financial Times advocating a US pullout (linkthanks Joshua Foust). Among others, Dr Lieven recommends that “the aim should be a radically decentralised Afghanistan in which the Taliban can be permitted to take over much of the country in return for a guarantee—under threat of aerial bombardment—not to give shelter to terrorists.” And this is what the former infantryman says in response:

Notwithstanding some of ridiculous recommendations made earlier in his article, this is where Mr. Lieven goes clean ’round the bend….This man is a PhD, for Pete’s sake, and he’s advocating ceding a large area of Afghanistan to the Taliban? Has this man been smoking the Taliban flowers [BBEAA]

You should just read the whole post instead of these sanitised excerpts. But before you do, just look at the perspicaciousness in the following:

You see, short-sighted educated people like Anatol Lieven threaten my sons’ lives. I want for my sons to go to Afghanistan… as tourists, not as Soldiers. Mark my words, if we abandon Afghanistan because it is too hard right now, we will consign ourselves to at least another generation of warfare in what will definitely become known as “The Long War” instead of the GWOT. We will be back in Afghanistan with the stain of two abandonments on our faces instead of just one, and the Afghans will most assuredly not be any happier to see us the next time. [BBEAA]

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