It might seem an odd time for it, with most of the Afghan capital still cleaning up after a bloody 18-hour siege, but NATO officials are loudly cheering their “progress” in the war.
“The attacks were planned, they were coordinated, they grabbed the headlines, but they didn’t cause mass casualties,” insisted NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu, adding that the Afghan forces were able to deal with it “largely on their own.”
NATO’s attempts to spin the attack as vindication aren’t convincing everyone, however, and President Hamid Karzai faulted NATO both for its inability to predict such a huge attack and for reacting so slowly.
The bottom line of NATO’s reaction mirrored those after the Kandahar massacre and the Quran burnings—that it is going to “stay the course” and that the current war strategy, 11 years into the occupation, is still good enough.
Since when does creating mass casualties have anything whatsoever to do with an insurgency? The attack obtained everything it was designed to obtain – it was a total success, regardless of how you measure it.
It also demonstrated that NATO is incapable of responding to such an attack. Karzai is right.
Why change? Things have worked out so well thus far that victory is at hand. Any day now, any day.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~ Albert Einstein
Why change? The war profiteers are doing quite well, thank you. The dead? Who cares. There's lots more suckers where they came from.