...that the latest battle in Kabul is "NATO's fault." http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...-slams-nato-over-18-hour-kabul-gunbattle?lite
He's so "wishy washy" that it's predictable now. This dude must not have any credibility at the table any more.
He's giving us the statement BO and MR need to justify the pullout. Keep flapping your lips dude, I'll laugh when you start living in Pakistan.
this isn't a guy who seems to be under the realization that his being in power, AND his personal security, AND his future running of the country all rest on the people he's shit talking. if only Massoud had lived....
If Massoud had lived there would have been a massive civil war, far more than what's been going on the last ten years. He wouldn't have been the magic bullet people think he would have been.
And he would have turned the Presidency over which in this callsigns opinion is why he was exactly the man for the job. Spit I think you really need to go back and look at your research notes on Massoud. The man wasn't a puppet for the Pakis like Karzai is, he wanted a free Afghanistan and was prepared to work with others for it.
He would have had no support from the Pashtuns and ergo the Pakistanis. He was after all "just" a Tajik remember. The war would have been 100x times worse than what it is now IMO. He was a great military commander but as a politician he was lacking. He couldn't even keep his own commanders under control when he was in Kabul after 92, how could he have united a whole country? He never even wanted to *be* President or even for the NA to control power. If offered it, he would have declined. At the end of the day, he's dead and pining after him as some kind of magic solution is purely academic.
Yeah I have heard of it. Thanks though. You didn't address my point properly, however. It's easy to cobble a coalition together when you have an outside enemy to focus on; it was during the civil war that his failings started to show, which is much more relevant to a discussion about what he would have been like today.
So you don't consider the Taliban/Pakistan to be a credible enemy for that focus? I can't think of many other Afghanis who tried to rise above the petty tribalism and sect rivalry that plagues the country. I sure as hell don't see Karzai doing it. The man was a war hero and whilst that doesn't carry much weight in western political circles to the average Afghani it does. The fact that he managed to unite the tribes he did to fight together in the first place is a small miracle. Given the resourcing that has been poured into the place and backed by ISAF muscle I think we would have seen a very different result than what happened during the civil war. He knew what was going to happen in Kabul and tried like hell to avoid going in in the first place. Numerous sources cite his outrage and the crimes that were committed and his attempts to bring the commanders of it to justice. Hypothetically a lot of Pastuns would have to have been put to the sword for him to rule. I don't know how bad I would really feel if that had happened.
I think Massoud would have worked. He couldn't hold together a gov't in 92 in part to tribal politics, but also because he was vastly underfunded when compared to his rivals. In the grand scheme of things he did well with what he had, but ultimately with multiple Muj factions opposing him a draw was the best he could hope for. Charisma can only take you so far over here, you're going to need guns, lots of them, to have any hope of success. The lawless civil war created the conditions which allowed the Taliban to rise. Once the TB rose to power, it was more or less them vs. Massoud's clan. It speaks volumes to his leadership and his followers that the Panjshir was never taken. We could argue that it was only a matter of time before he capitulated, but I think that would have taken years and countless TB lives. The people here were tired of the TB by 2000/2001 because they saw the TB for who they are, but by then they weren't unlike the Ba'ath party in that you're either "Taliban" or you starve/ take a bullet. Massoud couldn't mount an effective anti-TB campaign because again, going back to the Soviet era, he was poorly funded and equipped. He attempted to make up his shortfalls by selling opium and now that he's a "narcoterrorist" the US couldn't dare associate itself with him. Was Massoud a long-term solution for Afghanistan? I don't know. If you look at Karzai, a relative unknown save for his father, and how the country rallied around him I think Massoud would have had much better short-term success than Karzai. At the very worst, Massoud is elected once and then punted in 2009. The Pashtuns wouldn't have rejected him out-of-hand because he wasn't Pashtun, but he'd have had a longer row to hoe with them than the other ethnic groups. In a country where there was the TB and the only opposition to them was Massoud, he'd have had some political capital and clout for a few years. His failures from 92-96 were more external than internal: 7 factions fighting for control, a lack of funds and weapons, and less manpower. Those odds suck in Risk, much less in the real world.
I don't know how Massoud would have fared had he lived. He might have been a great ally, he might have been indicted for war crimes, lol. I do know that AQ saw him as a big enough threat that they whacked him two days before 9/11. I don't think the timing was accidental. Also, anyone whose list of enemies includes AQ, the Taliban, and the ISI is usually OK in my book.
