Malou Innocent has a new blog post up at the Huffington Post in which she argues that:
– Supporting a functioning state in Afghanistan is a waste of precious US tax dollars –the most precious dollars of all!
Rather than propping up a failed state, U.S. leaders should focus on
countering the al Qaeda threat still clinging to life in this region.
– A Taliban takeover of the Afghan government would be kind of a bummer for Afghans, but we shouldn’t really care about that.
The uncomfortable truth is that without indefinite foreign protection,
the Government of Afghanistan would probably fall to the Afghan
Taliban. But Americans should not equate the fall of that regime with
“losing” to al Qaeda. Violent, Islamist extremist groups indigenous to
this region threaten the Afghan government, not the American
government. Because these radical groups lack the ambition–let alone
the capacity–to threaten the sovereignty or physical security of the
United States, they do not merit the strategic obsession that they
currently receive.
– We totes not only have super awesome weapons we can use to kill the Taliban from afar, but we have these cool Special Forces teams we can send in to kill the baddies under cover of darkness too. Better still, OMFGLOCALMILITIAS!
Technological advances over the past decade allow us to monitor places
without having 100,000 boots on the ground. Furthermore, the blueprint
for an effective counterterrorism approach is the initial U.S.-led
invasion in 2001, when small Special Forces teams, working in
conjunction with local militias, assembled quickly and struck
effectively and cheaply at “real” enemies.
– There are terrorists and insurgencies in rich and democratic countries. This disproves any correlation between lack of development and political violence.
Americans should reject the misguided belief that terrorists can only
flourish in failed states like Afghanistan. After all, India, a major
U.S. ally far more stable than Afghanistan, is fighting several
internal insurgencies. Likewise, the very al Qaeda terrorists
responsible for 9/11 not only found sanctuary in poverty-stricken
Afghanistan, but also in politically free and economically prosperous
countries like Germany, Spain, and the United States.
– Less talk about governance and crap like that, and more killin’ people.
Policymakers in Washington must stop conflating the punishment of al
Qaeda with the creation of stable societies, particularly when ensuring
the survival of an illegitimate foreign government distracts from the
conceptually simpler task of finding and killing terrorists.
As craven as Innocent’s arguments are, they’re also refreshingly honest. She isn’t pretending to care about Afghanistan but disagree with the current strategy, she’s saying I don’t give a shit what happens to those turbany folks, I just want to pay less in taxes and see some terrorists minced by drone strikes.
Transitionland 
You sound hysterical, like one of those batshitcrazy feminists over at Femnisting or Feministe who take what people write and twist them in a very snarky and annoying manner into something they’re not. Reasonable people see throught it and you just look bad doing it.
Here’s a hint: don’t assume you know the motives of an individual who makes an argument you disagree with it. There are people who disagree with you but who aren’t necessarily negative/immoral/evil. Most adults, and most thoughtful people, understand this.
Pingback: The return of Batshitcrazy « Transitionland