The attached BBC report/video by John Simpson describing Afghan attitudes toward the US/UK exit struck me as bizarre. The weight of Simpson's gist is that most Afghans do not want us to leave. But the report based most of its information on interviews in Kabul and only a short part (the wobbly part) on the countryside where the vast majority of Afghans live — i.e., Helmand. Simpson did not mention of Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and the border areas with Pakistan,nor did he mention the western areas like Herat, or the Northern areas. So I asked an Afghan friend who follows events in Afghanistan closely for his take on this report. Attached below the video link is my friend's reaction and a NYT piece with yellow highlights.
(BBC) The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson visited Kabul, a city he knows well, to discover what shape Afghan government forces are in and whether the Taliban could take over after UK and American troops leave.
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Email from Mr. X
(a highly educated Afghan — ethnic Pashtun — an expat living in Europe)
JOHN V. WALSH | Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 11:31 Beijing
China has stated its goals quite unambiguously. “A moderately prosperous society by 2020” is the first goal and “a strong socialist nation by 2049” as the second. But this may be simplified: China’s leadership wants its people to have a standard of living equal to that of the developed nations of the West.
And that, along with restoring and preserving sovereignty, has been the main part of the Chinese program since 1949 – at least. China’s great historical achievement is to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, accounting for most of the eradication of poverty in the recent past. This achievement is rarely mentioned in the West.
Consider the simple consequences of that fact. China has a population of 1.36 billion and the United States has a population of 320 million. So if China is to have a per capita GDP equal to that of the United States, its total GDP must be more than four times the size of the US economy. Four times.
As we have known at least since Thucydides military power flows from economic power. That is also true of “soft” power, scientific discovery and technological achievement and capacity. (This week USA Today carries a story on the rapid growth of new and original patents in China., alarming the Pentagon.) Growth in China’s economic power therefore closes the door on US global hegemony.
Editor's Note: Shula Aloni was the most principled Israeli elected official I ever met, a champion of the downtrodden and a fearless crusader for the rights of Palestinians. So i was very delighted when she agreed to speak at Tikkun's “Strengthening the Peace Forces” conference that we convened in Jerusalem in 1991 and a subsequent conference in 1994 which we convened at Columbia University. As the preeminent leader of the Ratz (later Meretz) political party, the primary electoral vehicle for the Israeli peace movement, Shula was perceived to be the spokesperson for all of us who sought peace and reconciliation with Palestinians.
Shulamit Aloni
Sadly, Shula had an understandable but in my view counterproductive religiophobia that led her to antagonize not only the ultra-orthodox, but also the “traditional” Israelis who, while rejecting the extremism of the ultra-orthodox, nevertheless felt a deep commitment to Judaism. In this she was completely aligned with the majority of people in the Israeli peace movement who shared her disdain for “the religious” and never made any attempt to articulate their peace and justice message in the language of the Jewish tradition, though that tradition had a wealth of peace and justice traditions upon which they could have drawn to show that reconciliation with the Palestinians and social justice for all the citizens of Israel were goals mandated by Judaism itself, and provided a foundation for a rigorous religious critique of the West Bank settlers and ultra-orthodox fundamentalists.
