10 October 2010

The unerring GPS of Fareed Zakaria

I have read the ingenious proposal by Fareed Z. on How to end the war in Afghanistan and am still trying to get the bad (very bad) taste out of my mouth. Why ingenious? It looks like with a few small compromises with Taliban, like selling the Afghanistan's women down the river and some such little confidence-building gestures, peace in Afghanistan could be achieved in a jiffy. But I'll let better people write about this travesty. Meanwhile, a question to the history buffs (or just experts) on this quote:

If you look at any good study of civil wars, what you find is that most of them end in a negotiated settlement.
I suspect that, like the rest of the article, it is full of crapola, but could someone confirm this feeling for me? Or reverse it?

Thanks.

9 comments:

Pisa said...

"If you look at any good study of civil wars, what you find is that most of them end in a negotiated settlement."

Yeah...ask the Serbs...or the Tamils...

If you look at any good study of civil wars, what you find is that the UN, USA, UE and millions of NGOs are stucking their noses in pretending to help the parties end the war with a negotiated settlement. I'd ask Fareed Zakaria to give one example of a successful negotiated settlement, one that holds. Not the IRA, please - there are still troubles there, and the wall in Belfast is still up.

good 1! said...

How to order a bouncy castle.

It just goes on.

YOU BIG FAT FUCKIN IDIOT!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I suspected that much...

Rebecca said...

Well, one data point - the American Civil War ended when the north beat the south militarily - there was no negotiated settlement.

peterthehungarian said...

The biggest civil wars of the XXth century - the Russian and the Spanish ended with non-negotiated settlements - the winner eliminated the loser.
F. Zakaria must be very well versed in history...

Dick Stanley said...

Yes, he notes that the North "crushed" the South in the American Civil War. Although it took another hundred years and the rise of television with its homogenizing culture to eliminate the culutral Confederacy. Hard to see how Lincoln or anyone could have been negotiated it to an end, anymore than the English Civil War.

I doubt the Taliban (i.e., which means the Students) could be successfully negotiated with, any more than the current generation of Palestinians are likely to be.

On the other hand, it's hard for me to imagine the U.S. keeping large numbers of troops in Afghanistan for another nine years. Much less the hundred or so it would take the Afghans to join the 20th century. Something is going to have to give.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

"On the other hand, it's hard for me to imagine the U.S. keeping large numbers of troops in Afghanistan for another nine years."

Which is, in fact, the only thing that stops me when protesting the withdrawal.

soccerdhg said...

You wrote:

I suspect that, like the rest of the article, it is full of crapola, but could someone confirm this feeling for me?

You've also mentioned that the authors name is Fareed Zakaria. That should confirm the feeling for you.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Well, to be frank: I am not familiar with Mr Zakaria's body of work. As for the history question: I am not a student of history, and while I am fairly sure that his statement is so much BS, I wanted an expert opinion. So far my feelings seem to be confirmed.