Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Generational Dynamics World View
*** 25-Jul-17 World View -- Massive Kabul bombing on Monday leaves US Afghan policy in tatters

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • Massive car bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, targets Hazaras, kills 36
  • Brief recent generational history of Afghanistan
  • Kabul bombing puts America's Afghanistan policy into further confusion

****
**** Massive car bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, targets Hazaras, kills 36
****


[Image: g170724b.jpg]
Men look at the remains of their properties at the site of the car bombing Monday in Kabul (AP)

A massive early morning car bombing in Kabul, the capital city of
Afghanistan, killed at least 36, wounded dozens more, and damaged 15
shops.

The blast occurred in a part of the city where the ethnic Hazara
community live, near the house of the deputy government Chief
Executive Mohammad Mohaqiq, also a Hazara. The Hazaras are Shia
Muslims, and have often been targeted by Taliban groups in both
Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The same area has been the scene of several attacks, including the
suicide attack that killed prominent Shia Muslim cleric Ramazan
Hussainzada on June 15. Hussainzada was also a senior leader of
Afghanistan’s Hazara community.

Monday's massive attack occurred exactly one year after another massive Taliban attack on Hazaras in Kabul.
At least 80 people were killed in what was considered the
worst terror attack in Kabul since 2001.

The attack on Hazaras last year on July 24 energized the "Hazara
Enlightenment Movement," an activist movement demanding an end to
discrimination against Hazaras by the Pashtun government. There was a
big march planned for Monday to commemorate last year's attack, but
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani convinced the movement leaders to cancel
the march, for reasons related to security. The march was cancelled,
and then several hours later Monday's massive car explosion took
place.

In the future, we can expect to hear more from the Hazara
Enlightenment Movement. Tolo News (Kabul) and Reuters and Khaama Press (Kabul)

Related Articles

****
**** Brief recent generational history of Afghanistan
****


There is a fantasy at large among politicians, generals, journalists
and analysts in various nations around the world that the Taliban in
Afghanistan can be convinced to enter peace negotiations, or that they
can be defeated on the battlefield, or that they'll get tired of
fighting. This is the sort of fatuous nonsense that politicians and
generals tend to claim, when they're fighting the last war.

Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the extremely bloody
civil war fought between 1991 and 1996, filled with enormous
atrocities, massacres, rapes, torture, and so forth. The war was
fought mainly between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the
Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern
Afghanistan.

The Pashtuns won that war. Radicalized Pashtuns called themselves the
Taliban, and ruled Afghanistan brutally and viciously after the war.
They also permitted their good pal Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan
as a home base from which to launch international terror attacks.
After 9/11/2001, the US-based coalition invaded Afghanistan and backed
the Northern Alliance in quickly defeating the Taliban. Thus, the
Pashtun victory in the civil war was snatched away and turned into
defeat for the Pashtuns and victory for the Northern Alliance.

The reason that the Taliban lost the 2001 war so quickly was that
everyone was traumatized and war-weary from the civil war in the
previous decade, and had little will to fight another war. That's
what always happens to the generations that survive a generational
crisis war. They're traumatized by the atrocities the other side
committed, but they're even more traumatized by the atrocities that
they and others on their own side committed.

Today, 16 years later, a new, younger generation is coming of age,
with no personal memory of the 1990s civil war. These young Pashtuns
have not been told of the atrocities that their parents committed.
They've only been told of the atrocities that the other side committed
-- the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in the Northern Alliance. They want
revenge for those atrocities, so they do things like set off car bombs
in crowds of Hazaras in Kabul.

So those who are looking for a way to bring peace to Afghanistan are
dreaming. There is no solution to this problem. And when I say "no
solution," I don't mean that the politicians and generals simply
haven't been clever enough to figure out the solution. What I mean is
that no solution exists. Taliban is strongest today as it has been
since 2001, and will continue to get stronger, as young post-war
generations continue to grow and come of age.

Related Articles

****
**** Kabul bombing puts America's Afghanistan policy into further confusion
****


Monday's bombing makes clear that America, the World's Policeman, has
a stark choice in Afghanistan: walk away and let the Taliban take over
completely, or try a military solution with more American troops.

President Barack Obama, who never had a clue what was going on in the
world, decided to go for a 30,000 troop surge. In December 2009,
Obama gave a West Point speech where he announced the surge:

> [indent]<QUOTE>"As cadets, you volunteered for service during this
> time of danger. Some of you fought in Afghanistan. Some of you
> will deploy there. As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a
> mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. And
> that's why, after the Afghan voting was completed, I insisted on a
> thorough review of our strategy. Now, let me be clear: There has
> never been an option before me that called for troop deployments
> before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources
> necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period.
> Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions, and
> to explore all the different options, along with my national
> security team, our military and civilian leadership in
> Afghanistan, and our key partners. And given the stakes involved,
> I owed the American people -- and our troops -- no less.
>
> This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have
> determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an
> additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months,
> our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that
> we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan
> capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces
> out of Afghanistan."<END QUOTE>
[/indent]

Obama was heavily criticized for announcing an 18-month end date,
which he had to extend several times. Obama announced the Afghan
troop surge in the hope of duplicating the success of President Bush's
troop surge in Iraq in 2007. I wrote a detailed comparison of the
Afghanistan versus Iraq wars in mid-2009 in "American army general warns of imminent defeat in Afghanistan war,"
, showing that the Iraq "surge" strategy
could not work in Afghanistan. This comparison was based on a
Generational Dynamics analysis, and it turned out to be completely
correct. In the end, the troop surge accomplished nothing. In
interviews last year, all three of Obama's former secretaries of
defense confirmed that the Obama administration ignored military
advice, and made military decisions based on inexperience and
ideology.

Now President Donald Trump is faced with the same decision. One
difference is that his close adviser, Steve Bannon, knows very well
what is going on in the world. As I've described in the past,
I've worked with Steve Bannon off and
on for several years in the past, both on his movie "Generation Zero"
and when I was cross-posting articles on the Breitbart National
Security site. So I know that Steve Bannon is an expert on military
history and world history, and he's also has an expert understanding
of Generational Dynamics and generational theory.

So Steve Bannon understands very well the generational analysis that
concludes that there is no solution to the problem in Afghanistan, and
has undoubtedly conveyed this conclusion to Trump. And this has
thrown the administration's Afghan policy into confusion, with policy
differences between those who are still fighting the last war and
those who don't want to repeat Obama's mistakes.

What should a politician do when you have to solve a problem for which
there's no solution in existence?

One interesting example to look at is Greece's financial crisis, when
it became clear in 2009 that Greece had lied about its financials for
years and was overwhelmingly and unsustainably in debt.
The Greek crisis lurched from one
last-minute fix to the next, with some sort of compromise often
reached on Sunday night, before the Asian markets opened.

As I wrote many times, the Greek financial crisis had no solution. By
that, I didn't mean the EU politicians and economists haven't been
clever enough to figure out the solution. I meant there was no
solution in existence. Indeed today, Greece is still overwhelmingly
and unsustainably in debt.

So what happened? The EU politicians "kicked the can down the road."
The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund loaned enough money to Greece to make all
their bond payments for a few months, and then the crisis would rise
again. These compromises did nothing to resolve the problem -- in
fact, they usually made the problem worse by increasing Greece's debt.
But "kicking the can down the road" allowed them to ignore the problem
for a few months. Interestingly enough, they're still kicking the can
down the road, but they've done it so often that it doesn't make news
any more.

So presumably what the Trump administration needs to do in Afghanistan
is to find a way to "kick the can down the road." In fact, there are
reports that the Trump administration is considering send 20,000 more
troops to Afghanistan. Those troops would be no more effective than
the 30,000 troops that the Obama administration sent, but they would
"kick the can down the road" for possibly as much as a year or two, or
at least until some military disaster occurs in Afghanistan. Daily Caller and Washington Post and Politico

Related Articles


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Kabul, Afghanistan,
Ashraf Ghani, Taliban, Pashtuns, Osama bin Laden,
Northern Alliance, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Hazara Enlightenment Movement,
Mohammad Mohaqiq, Ramazan Hussainzada

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
Reply


Messages In This Thread
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-14-2016, 03:21 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-23-2016, 10:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 08-11-2016, 08:59 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 01-18-2017, 09:23 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 02-04-2017, 10:08 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 03-13-2017, 03:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 02:56 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 03:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 05-30-2017, 01:04 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 07-08-2017, 01:34 AM
25-Jul-17 World View -- Massive Kabul bombing on Monday leaves US Afghan policy in ta - by John J. Xenakis - 07-24-2017, 10:03 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-09-2017, 11:07 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-10-2017, 02:38 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 10-25-2017, 03:07 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 03:35 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 06:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by noway2 - 11-20-2017, 04:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-28-2017, 11:00 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-31-2017, 11:14 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 06-22-2018, 02:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-19-2018, 12:43 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-25-2018, 02:18 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-18-2018, 03:42 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-19-2018, 04:39 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 09-25-2019, 11:12 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-09-2020, 02:11 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Camz - 03-10-2020, 10:10 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 03-12-2020, 11:11 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-16-2020, 03:21 PM
RE: 58 year rule - by Tim Randal Walker - 04-01-2020, 11:17 AM
RE: 58 year rule - by John J. Xenakis - 04-02-2020, 12:25 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Isoko - 05-04-2020, 02:51 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 01-04-2021, 12:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by CH86 - 01-05-2021, 11:17 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-10-2021, 06:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-11-2021, 09:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-12-2021, 02:53 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 03:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 04:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-15-2021, 03:36 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-19-2021, 03:03 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-21-2021, 01:41 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 06:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 10:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 12:26 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 04:08 PM

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Why the social dynamics viewpoint to the Strauss-Howe generational theory is wrong Ldr 5 4,800 06-05-2020, 10:55 PM
Last Post: pbrower2a
  Theory: cyclical generational hormone levels behind the four turnings and archetypes Ldr 2 3,387 03-16-2020, 06:17 AM
Last Post: Ldr
  The Fall of Cities of the Ancient World (42 Years) The Sacred Name of God 42 Letters Mark40 5 4,660 01-08-2020, 08:37 PM
Last Post: Eric the Green
  Generational cycle research Mikebert 15 16,218 02-08-2018, 10:06 AM
Last Post: pbrower2a
Video Styxhexenhammer666 and his view of historical cycles. Kinser79 0 3,322 08-27-2017, 06:31 PM
Last Post: Kinser79

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 9 Guest(s)