{"id":917,"date":"2002-02-28T20:27:00","date_gmt":"2002-03-01T00:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=917"},"modified":"2002-02-28T20:27:00","modified_gmt":"2002-03-01T00:27:00","slug":"history-rhyming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2002\/02\/28\/20\/27\/history-rhyming\/","title":{"rendered":"History Rhyming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I read in the Guardian that the US-installed Karzai <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Archive\/Article\/0,4273,4363937,00.html\">controls little of Afghanistan <\/a><a href=\"..\/Webstore\/Afghan%20War\/A%20new%20war%20is%20brewing%20in%20Afghanistan.html\">beyond his presidential palace in Kabul<\/a><\/i>. Meanwhile, the traditional north\/south ethnic divide in Afghanistan is spilling over into renewed conflict and assassination. The US avoided garrison duty, and now the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/hi\/english\/uk_politics\/newsid_1817000\/1817116.stm\">British are desperately trying<\/a><a href=\"..\/Webstore\/Afghan%20War\/Britain%20'ready%20to%20relinquish%20Afghan%20lead'.html\"> to convince the Turks<\/a> to take this hot potato. They are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Archive\/Article\/0,4273,4363959,00.html\">refus<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Webstore\/Afghan%20War\/Troops%20face%20extended%20Afghanistan%20role.html\">ing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Reading about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Archive\/Article\/0,4273,4363937,00.html\">increasingly-embattled <\/a><a href=\"\/Webstore\/Afghan%20War\/A%20new%20war%20is%20brewing%20in%20Afghanistan.html\">Karzai<\/a> remindes me a lot of Vietnam and Generals Thieu and Th\u00c3\u00a9. I read that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Archive\/Article\/0,4273,4359401,00.html\">US warplanes are actively bombing<\/a><a href=\"..\/Webstore\/Afghan%20War\/US%20planes%20bomb%20Afghan%20opposition.html\"> the opposition forces in Afghanistan<\/a>. And then, fortuitously, I came across this article:<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v24\/n04\/sayl2404.htm\">In Vietnam, the United States pursued its interests, as it perceived them, throughout; and as its perceptions changed, so did its allegiances, as any great power&#8217;s would. The rest was rhetoric &#8230; What political lessons can we learn from this tangle? First, great powers are fickle, and only care about<\/a><a href=\"..\/Webstore\/Vietnam\/Why%20the%20bastards%20wouldn't%20stand%20and%20fight.htm\"> themselves, not their small allies of opportunity, the Generals Thieu and Th\u00c3\u00a9 of the present and future. Then again, there is no such thing as a trustworthy surrogate: they have wills of their own, aims that may coincide with their protectors&#8217; only in the short term, and an alarming ability to drag great powers into their quarrels and to change sides when the dollars dry up.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Earlier <a href=\"..\/Blogfiles\/2002_01_20_WeekArchive.php#9047569\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I read in the Guardian that the US-installed Karzai controls little of Afghanistan beyond his presidential palace in Kabul. Meanwhile, the traditional north\/south ethnic divide in Afghanistan is spilling over into renewed conflict&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}