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October 04, 2010

Comments

Stephen Pampinella

Crap. Beat me to it.

Joseph Fouche

If we pretend such a thing as "politics" and "culture" don't exist for a moment and follow the pure logic of strategy, the optimal thing to do would be to seize the deep water Iranian port of Chabahar, declare an independent Baluchistan, and use the road that India has built between Chabahar and Delaram to bypass Pakistan entirely. The route bypasses such obstacles like mountains filled with hostile tribesmen. Another reminder that the difficulty of Afghanistan shrinks if you can approach it from the west. If the U.S. hadn't lost Iran, there probably wouldn't have been a prolonged Soviet occupation during the 80s and our current conundrum wouldn't necessarily exist.

YNSN

What's not mentioned is who owns the trucks hauling all the stuff. AQ blows up the trucks, then they are blowing up the trucks owned by some very influential people in Pakistan...

A.E.

Joseph, I agree--Iran would have made it easier.

YNSN, that's also an angle to investigate.

YNSN

I would say more. But, I work for a prominent Logistics unit out here in AFG.

Remember how up in arms congress was that we use Host Nation Trucking to the tune of a few billion out here... Well, yeah, that's for a reason.. A couple of them actually.

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=11811251

Exactly. The American public doesn't complain when local national contractors are killed in attacks on convoys.

T. Greer

Putting Iran on the Axis of Evil was the worst foreign policy mistake America has made in the last two decades. Screwed us over in Iraq, is screwing us over in Afghanistan, and - assuming that current demographic and economic trends in Turkey, Israel, and Iran continue - it will continue messing with American policy in the Middle East for another generation.

Cameron Schaefer

the airlift community will end up absorbing a good amount of the work from this fallout which should be interesting as it's already been stretched pretty thin as of late

A.E.

These are all really good points, but I wonder in reference to Iran how much choice the US really had in the matter? E.g. most foreign policy analyses of the decline of US-Iran relations never focus on the strategic interests or perceptions of the Iranians pre-2003.

T. Greer

AE-

That is a very good question. I think the Iranians were much more open to reconciliation than most folks realize. Blog post pending.

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