Assuming a can opener in Afghanistan

By Dave Anderson:

First assume a can opener....

That is one of the unstated assumptions about quite a bit of discussion about Afghanistan; massive assumptions about what is possible and what can be done about it. One Canadian military thinker actually assumes the can-opener and describes the "last best chance" and what it would be needed to provide the West and the concept of an Afghan nation state with that chance. More than a can-opener is assumed at the Torch:

The reality is that Afghanistan is, for a host of reasons, likely to remain an impoverished, fragmented and underdeveloped nation. The threat of the Taliban insurgency is but one issue. Afghanistan�s almost total economic reliance on either foreign aid or the opium economy will not be resolved in the near future, unless opium is legalized, taxed, and begins to contribute to the development of society, as opposed to destroying it....

It will take a generation to create a sustainable Afghan economy, and even then, it will be weak, fragile, and relatively dependent on outside assistance � just like many of the economies of the world....

More importantly, the fact that we are so clearly outsiders underlines the importance of getting Afghans to fight for their country, a responsibility that the West to some degree absolved them of by acquiescing in Karzai�s refusal to implement conscription...

The Afghan government must be urged to adopt a conscription policy in order to generate sufficient forces in the short term to deal with the existential threat posed by the Taliban and its compeers. The warrior tradition of Afghanistan needs to be fully exploited by the moderates in defence of their future. Karzai and his tribal leaders need to call for a Afghan levee en masse, a clarion call to arms to the people of Afghanistan. This �Afghan Awakening� would serve as a real indication of their earnestness to their Western allies � and the Taliban. Anything less must be seen as wanting on the part of Afghans....

China and India need to be diplomatically engaged to assuage Pakistani fears of a �two front war,� so that full resources may be pushed toward the Durand Line. In fact, that troublesome imaginary line should be considered irrelevant for military purposes, as neither nation can enforce their sovereignty over it, and therefore it need not be recognized. Allowing forces and effects to flow across ineffective and imaginary boundaries (in other words, acting like the Taliban in some small way) again helps to erode their asymmetrical advantage....

So in just a few of my favorite excerpts of stated assumptions, the argument is to legalize heroin throughout the entire world (which would be ineffective in defunding the Taliban as most of the opium profits are much further down the refinery and distribution chain and the best evidence suggests that the insurgencies in Afghanistan have a diverse funding base anyways), accept a generation or more Western intervention with massive legitimacy issues, encourage a weak and corrupt government to call for a levee en masse when there are already massive training and motivation issues of the volunteer security forces, and massively destabilize Pakistan by ignoring any pretext of sovereignity. As you read through the entire argument, there are a couple of other doozies...

Bruce R @ Flit has the appropriate blogogpsheric reaction as he is aware of all internet traditions:

I'm sorry, but reading that in this context is not unlike reading "first we need to breed a race of superponies. Then the superponies need to spawn a new breed of flying superponies. The flying superponies will need to be extremely small, so they can power all our electronic devices with their minds." It's nutty...

Remember, the above argument is not an argument which promises a Switzerland in the Hindu Kush, it is an argument for the preconditions of a weak, poor nation-state with a weak hold on a monopoly of violence that will take a generation of Western COIN and flying ponies to achieve.

When flying ponies are needed to reach the minimal goal set, it is time to change goal sets.