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This is how Anders Fogh Of War Rasmussen’s WaPo op-ed on Afghanistan concludes:
In the end, it comes down to this: When Taliban soldiers come to take a young Afghan to fight on their side, what will his father do? If he sees that the Taliban has no chance of winning, if he sees that his life is getting better and if he believes in his government, then he will say no. And the insurgency will lose. It’s that simple. Those are the conditions we have to create, and next year we will start to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Of all the staff positions necessary to serve a NATO secretary general, none may be more important than the obviously vacant office of the Senior Adviser for Avoiding Painful Ironies.
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And how much literal skin does Razzie have in this game?
Quite a bit. The Danes (AFR was Danish PM) are in the dangerous province of Helmand. I think they have 700 troops there — which, for an army of 10k, is a ton.
Yes, “quite a bit” – by percentage of its armed forces. Looking at the total ISAF commitment of 71,000, that’s about one percent of the forces in country. Noted, they’re fighting in Helmund, all credit to them, but let’s be clear on the “literal skin” point.
is the light at the end of the tunnel anywhere near the exit ramp?
His conception of the dynamics of success and failure is compelling (though of course subject to empirical confirmation). He resorted to a colloquialism that we have taken to be ominous. So the f*&k what? Deal with his earnest point.
What, we’re supposed to judge them by their proportion of someone else’s armed forces?