Having lived in the woods (although not raised by wolves nor bears last I checked) there were certain things the city presented that took some time to engrain in my little cornpone consciousness.

My dad (ostensibly the human one) likes to tell the story of taking me to Mandeville, Louisiana where his parents lived. Anyone that has been to Mandeville can tell you that bustling metropolis it aint, but it puts on good airs of being a real city with real city things in it.

At one point I asked if I could go outside to play. My dad said that was fine but to stay on the sidewalk. At that moment I looked up at him with my little five or six year old rube eyes and asked in all earnesty, “What’s a sidewalk?” The Ball Gunner has since, of course, learned what a sidewalk is (not that they build any in Panama City) in addition to mastering the further acoutrements of civil society: computers, automobiles, literacy, pants, all those fanciful things so mysterious to the little hick of yore.

What yon youthful woodsbilly Ball Gunner has to do with now is that the Pentagon, the war architects, the civilian planners, the money spenders, the wonks, snonks and bonks hurling us endlessly into the chasm of Central Asia do not know and make no pretense of learning that the various ethnic groups that compromise the ill-fitting region known as Afghanistan are just as oblivious to 21st century political boundaries as Wee Billy Ball Gunner was about pedestrian ones.

You’d have to be inordinately slack witted to think the Global War on Terrorism is going anything but resoundingly poorly at the moment. This weekend’s blast at a Marriott in Pakistan are solid evidence that whatever we might have done to the terrorist networks of Al Qaida, we haven’t taken away their ability to plan and carry out an operation that kills 53 people including two American troops.

There’s an old saying about if you sit a monkey at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time he (or she) will eventually reproduce a given text through sheer chance. We can only assume the current strategy in Central Asia was one of the unsuccessful monkey forays into grand literature. Really no part of it makes sense. The U.S., for instance, wants to woo the Pashtun in Afghanistan while waging war on them in Pakistan. Ball Gunners everywhere are scratching their heads at this one. The United States has put a man on the moon, but is apparently incapable of understanding that the Pashtun care less about the imaginary line separating Pakistan from Afghanistan than Ball Gunner Jr. knew about sidewalks.

I’d imagine if old Osama hisself designed the U.S. policy in Pakistan he could not come up with a better way for us to utterly flub the war on terror. The primary threat in Pakistan is not Al Qaeda, the Taliban or any other be-bearded horrors lurking in the corner, dangerous though they may be. The threat in Pakistan is legitimacy, and the U.S. is undermining the legitimacy of the Pakistani government faster that any terrorist organization ever could.

From the NY Times:

Pakistan’s President Calls for End to Terrorism and Criticizes Intervention by U.S.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of Parliament on Saturday, his first speech there since his election two weeks ago, and offered a program of peace and reform while vowing to root out terrorism and extremism.

Mr. Zardari, who is seen as pro-American but is confronted by public hostility to American policy toward militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, said his government was determined to meet the challenge posed by terrorist and extremist elements in those areas.

His government would offer peace to anyone willing to renounce violence, and would invest in development and political reform of the border areas, but would use force as a last resort to those who challenged the authority of the government.

He declared that his government should be firm in its resolve not to allow terrorists to use Pakistani soil to carry out terrorist activities against any foreign country, and said he wanted to improve relations with two of Pakistan’s neighbors, Afghanistan and India.

But he also warned that Pakistan would not abide further American military incursions into the border areas. “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism,” he said in a comment that was broadly greeted by legislators, who loudly thumped on their desks to show their support.

The recent collapse of the Pakistani coalition that brought Zardari to power is the last warning we are likely to get. No one seems to aware that the days of Musharraf shucking and jiving to Washington’s strings are now relegated to the good ole days. If we make any more efforts to sour this punch we may well find ourselves with not only a recalcitrant Pakistan but a hostile one. What that could ultimately mean is pretty murky. That the Pakistani military and intelligence services are compromised is so apparent that no one even tries to tart up the ugly truth. But when there are open reports of “Pakistani troops and tribesmen” firing on U.S. helicopters it’s pretty obvious that the wheels are coming loose from their screws.

We have no way of knowing where the tipping point will be and how far we can push before the entire Pakistani government comes crashing down like a Jenga game. But if we lose Pakistan we will certainly lose Afghanistan, a fate that may already be sealed, regardless.

On that note, the Intel Dump at the Wa Po has an interesting analysis about the raging drought in Afghanistan and what that means for the coming winter. Carter, of the Intel Dump, argues that the U.S. should begin preparations to provide food for the remote villages during the coming winter. What he neglects to note that if we do not the Taliban will make every effort to exert themselves in our absence. He does mention that these would be efforts on a similar scale to the heroic Berlin Airlift, and if you ask me, the chances of mustering that much political will in this nation are roughly zilcho.

I don’t know what flavor of sky pie they serve at CENTCOM that makes people believe blowing the Pashtun to bits in Pakistan and giving them Islam friendly meatpies in Afghanistan constitutes a winning strategy. But unless some strategic mana from heaven falls to the ground the U.S. is either going to be forced to create something resembling a unified strategy in the region or keep stoking the fire until the roof blows right off the contraption. A shooting war with Pakistan or a governmentless Pakistan would be a collassal failure. Alienating the Pashtun will mean defeat. The Pentagon’s refusal to move beyond World War 2 style military planning in the “kill things and break stuff” vein potentially will be viewed in history as the thing that wrecked American global power. As General Petaeus takes the reigns at CENTCOM it will be interesting to see if he takes counterinsurgency seriously or if all his bluster blows out. Afghanistan is not Iraq. Central Asia is not Arabia.

There have been two great failings of leadership in the Global War on Terror since Sept. 11 inaugurated the 21st century:

1) An expansion of the War on Terror to anything resembling hardline Islam regardless of its connections to terrorism. The Taliban never had wide-spread support among any groups, let alone Pashtun peasants. But adamantly connecting the Taliban with the Pashtun has birthed us slews of new enemies.
2) The often repeated belief that victory is inevitable causing us to continually underestimate our opponents.

We’re operating under the belief that the Central Asians are like us, that their experience and development and understanding of the world is like ours and that, deep down, they want to be like us. But connections in ancient peoples are deep. This was their land before we got there and will be likely long after we’re gone. There aren’t a whole lot of people throughout history that have gone to war for the arid high country. We can sit them down, tell them to play by our rules, make nice, solidify their political boundaries, and join hands for the love chain. And once we tell them that, our only likely response will be a very old language responding in a different variation that classic phrase summarizing unfamiliarity with what is expected:

“What’s a sidewalk?”