War Forever (as wished for)

In response to General Stanley L. McCrystal’s article in Foreign Policy, “It Takes a Network.” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network

It Takes Forever (as wished for)

Let’s assume your half Crusader/half Plains Indian politico-military-organized crime network remained up and running despite the best efforts of the West Point/Ivy League Protective Association and its Media/Congressional/Supreme Court/Presidential (oh hell, everybody with money) puppets. Public magical thinking from on high is the in-thing, these days – to replace rational thought which is out of TV fascion (Get it? Fascist and fashion?... Never mind).

You, like everyone from President Obama, Gates and etc. on down, have chosen not to declare your victory conditions. You know, those conditions which, if they ever occurred in nonmagical space-time, would allow you to fold up your very, very expensive tentage and wend you quasi-interplanetary way home? “Next war: Mars! Then we’ll start talking REAL money!”

What might those victory conditions be? Here are a few humble suggestions. Mix and match as you see fit -- the more implausible the victory, the better as far as the powers that be are concerned.

Every potential Af-Pak and neighborhood rebel accepts unilateral, unconditional surrender, simultaneously and forever.

You can statistically prove that every leadership element of the opposition network has either been killed or suborned by your own, including all elements as yet unborn.

750,000 Afghan Army, Police and self-defense Militia have their uniformed hands out for American military aid, indefinitely. They even have a stealth jet Air Force, and landlocked though they be, a four-carrier Navy and, of course, a Marine Corps. How do you say Semper Fi in Pashto?

A dependable flow of minerals, natural gas and opium guild Western bottom lines into the indefinite future (already hard at work on that one).

All Afghans convert into pacifist anarchist Jains. No exceptions unless they become card-carrying Republicans.

Afghanistan declares its national sport is badminton instead of mountain/desert/urban warfare against any and all comers, and themselves during brief interims when no outsider is stupid enough to try.

Afghans discover American TV, stop thinking from now on, and thus adopt the American Way of Life. With international support, Afghanistan invades Madagascar in anticipation of destroying enemy sanctuaries during its eternal “War on Grief.”

The country of Pachtunistan is ripped from Afghan and Pakistani sovereignty, and all the Taliban go home to run for public office and murder each other in the street (à la Republic of Ireland, circa 1920s).

All the Pachtuns become organized, Ghandian non-violent protestors (no, that’s already been accomplished around 1912, and sabotaged quite handily by the Brits and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the one and only time in total cooperation with one another). Besides, the Western media wouldn’t consider this a “victory.” Not Republican (bloody-minded and staggeringly costly) enough.

Pakistan and India have a nuclear war, and Afghanistan is sterilized by the resulting nuclear cloud blowing in the wrong direction (the natural one being onto the American Mid-West).

Russia, Iran, China and India offer to garrison Afghanistan with a million men each, thus placing a rifle platoon on every water point and mountain top in-country. NATO pumps up its determination to offer an additional million troops as a “rapid reaction force.” They sit there, doing nothing much but terrorizing the countryside and eating up domestic improvement investments for the next century; then they are sent home to “manage” their respective civil wars induced by that lack of funding. Presumably, using the “network” strategy you perfected, against their own people, including in the USA and Europe.

Ok, those are some suggestions off the top of my head. Got any of your own, in this war deliberately set up to go on forever, smart guy? A war profiteer’s wet dream and a tactician’s nightmare. Please append the date of projected end-of-conflict and final evacuation of neocolonial forces, from among the four that follow: 2111, 2211, 3111, the next Ice Age.

Or are you merely paid to refine the killing, and not put a stop to it?