Eurasia is the Enemy. Eurasia has always been the Enemy.


Patrick Cockburn makes a point that I've wondered about with regards to the larger GWOT:

Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa’ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic Jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post 9/11 ensuring that Jihadi groups always had a base.

Not only has the Bush administration allied itself with Pakistan, but it has maintained our existing--and rather strong--alliances with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. To be sure, some might say that pure pragmatism REQUIRES the maintenance of these allliances...but again, that underscores the lunacy of the very concept of the war.

We're allied with the enemy, while combat--in Iraq and Afghanistan--is mostly a meaningless sideshow, albeit one that's tragic, deadly, awful, horrific, and ongoing, ridiculous declarations of victory notwithstanding.

Of course, a REAL war would be even MORE horrific, and would entail some genuine sacrifice on our part...sacrifice I doubt most could even fathom, much less deal with.

And if last week's events haven't made it clear that the Bush-style GWOT--like so many other Bush-style policies/actions, etc.--isn't as dismal a failure as, well, pretty much every other endeavor Shrub tried before falling into high office, then I don't what it will take to make it clear.