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Edited on Fri Dec-04-09 11:47 AM by zulchzulu
I'm going to predict that Obama will demand withdrawing from Afghanistan even sooner than the July 2011 timeline date.
Here's the playbook:
The "mission" will not go well at all. Britain will have withdrawn their troops. The UN will be citing human rights issues and the continued bombing of innocent Afghans caught in the cross-fire from the combined civil war skirmishes between the Taliban and other Pashtun tribes who are fighting each other and concurrently both fighting the nearly toppled Afghan government and the US troops.
More targets will be available for the Taliban to pick off, hence many more US casualties and KIAs. The media will be reporting an average of 50 dead US soldiers a week during the warmer months.
Karzai will continue to run his Mafia-style narco-kleptocracy even though he will have been marginalized by NATO. Hell, he might even get assassinated (by the CIA/ISI) and the Afghan government will continue on a tailspin. The ISI (Pakistan secret service) have been doing special ops with the CIA and have grown tired of Karzai's narco-trading with the Taliban.
The Taliban will take over like they did in the 1990s with our approval and know we can come back and carpet-bomb them if they dare return alliances with Al Qaeda, which is fading out anyway. Other new groups have been spintering off from Al Qaeda since it has a big target on its back.
Pakistan will invade Afghanistan's eastern mountain region and all hell will break loose. They will have grown tired of the Taliban staging attacks in their country and will want to squash any Al Qaeda remnants that the CIA/ISI/Special Ops haven't slit the throats of.
Obama, faced with tumbling approval numbers on the quagmire, will demand the withdrawal happen even earlier than July 2011, since it actually is a "grab our shit and mop it up" operation anyway.
By the beginning of 2012, there will clearly be all indications pointing to a nearly complete withdrawal from the region. Unfortunately, another terrorist event will have gotten our attention either soon after or around that time. I hope not, but I just have a hunch.
On edit: if you Unrec, tell me where I'm wrong. Don't be a coward.
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