Needlenose

Gingrich has been gradually creeping out from the shadows into the limelight since his fall from grace when leading the impeachment crusade against the very popular Bill Clinton.  But the Gingrich of the 90s seems relatively tame compared to the teabaggers and birthers of today – and even compared to Gingrich 2010!

In a recent speech to the reactionary American Enterprise Institute, Gingrich seems to have planted one foot firmly amidst the teabagger camp with his calls to forbid the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero), and the other solidly planted in the Wolfowitz/NeoConArtist era of never-ending war on Radical Islam:

“I believe [Bush] was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we’re one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 — and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it — then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it’s because we’ve stood at brink, looked over and thought, “Too big a problem.”

“If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in ‘41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won,” Gingrich said. The U.S. has to “over-match the problem,” he said, adding, “That’s what Americans are all about.”

I wonder if he got the memo that various Repug leaders were starting to bail on Shrubya’s Afghanistan Folly?  Palin/Gringrich in 2012 – the worst of 3 eras of Repug misleadership!  It would be kinda luck the Germans in WWII – invading a bunch of weak countries (Iran, N. Korea), then going crazy and attacking Russia from Palin’s house…I don’t even want to think about the hell they’d create.

GOoPer Senator Dick Lugar comes to the realization that Shrubya’s Afghanistan Adventure is unwinnable.  It’s about time, Dick!  Welcome to the Reality-Based Community.  Shame you didn’t figure that out before the invasion, or read Needlenose back in ’03 on Afghanistan’s slide into chaos – we coulda schooled you!  Now if we could only get Obama to take our advice and start the withdrawal immediately!

Seems like a risky gambit for the Reactionaries to remind voters of Shrubya in the lead-up to the elections, as well as split the Reactionary Jingo Consensus.

Related news, pundit Joel Brinkley writes off Afghanistan, Dumbass Gingrich cracks open a newspaper,  Michael Steele thinks Obama started the war (in his alternative reality shared by scary man-woman Ann Coulter) and our military continues to blow up Afghani civilians.

*Update 7/21/10* HuffPo has video montage of a bunch of Repug pols repudiating Shrubya’s Afghanistan Adventure.  Or is that refutiating?

Juan Cole discusses some of the fall-out from the latest blast in Mess-o-potamia.  Given that the blast wounded some members of the Iraqi parliament, Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament rightly asks:

“We’ve heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front,” he said. “Where are these successes?”

Good question.  Seems like things are heading South again, with increasingly brazen attacks reminiscent of the Groundhog Days of ’04 and ’05.

In the same post, Juan Cole discusses how affairs between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq are heating up around the flashpoint Kirkuk.  Those of you who aren’t afflicted with American Amnesia might remember how we called Kirkuk out as a flashpoint way back when, and how the Kurds have been continuously working to reclaim demographics and control on the ground in this oil-rich city.

I guess with Obama shifting his focus on our other failing occupation, and with our gradual troop removal the Petreus plan to stabilize the Iraqi Civil War is slowly and painfully coming off, like a band-aid on a hairy leg.

jobless recoveryThe Los Angeles Times has an article this morning about our confused priorities in rebuilding Afghanistan:

“Our biggest fear is that this opportunity will be lost because pressures for the appearance of success, particularly internationally, will lead to money being spent in the wrong way, on the wrong kinds of investments,” said Paul O’Brien, advocacy coordinator for the U.S.-based aid agency CARE International. “What we need is long-term, sustainable benefit for Afghan people so that we help to create an environment where they can rebuild their country.”

The U.S. has paid $60 million to build schools, provide textbooks and train teachers. However, Afghanistan’s cash-poor government is responsible for paying the teachers — and it doesn’t have the money. Teachers are quitting and schools closing because warlords who helped the U.S. military during the 2001 war — and received money and weapons in return — are resisting Karzai’s order to hand over an estimated $800 million in annual tax revenue.

“We have to worry about our priorities if we can’t find enough money to pay teachers $100 a month,” said Paul Barker, CARE’s director in Afghanistan.

In March, Washington agreed to give $35 million in financing and political risk insurance to Hyatt International to construct a five-star hotel where the legions of entrepreneurs and aid officials can stay when they visit Kabul.

Yet the city’s estimated 3 million people live without such basics as a sewer system, and there is no plan to build one.

Actually, this sounds unnervingly like the Bush administration’s game plan for America, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, the New York Times chimes in with a report on the natural corollary of our failure to rebuild the country — the resurgence of the Taliban:

As the weak central government has failed to extend its writ in isolated parts of the south, Western diplomats say, the Taliban are trying to fill the vacuum. In many districts, the only evidence of government authority is a district leader protected by a small group of poorly paid and ill-equipped police. Residents complain of lawlessness and say that while they do not support the Taliban, they miss the strict law and order they enforced.

Some of the stepped-up Taliban campaign has involved basic propaganda. “Night letters” left in villages and cities play on the lack of aid and a sense among Pashtuns that they are not adequately represented in the new national government. Residents are told that the United States is simply interested in occupying Muslim countries, not in aiding them.

. . . Afghans who cooperate with the government or the United States are being killed. Two police chiefs, two pro-government imams, and more than 30 policemen were killed in the south and east in July and August, Afghan officials said.

An attempt to assassinate the governor of Helmand Province was thwarted in early August.

. . . “They have a sophisticated strategy of going after local people,” a senior Western diplomat said. “The mantra they use is that the Americans and the international community will leave someday, and we will come back.”

I guess the locals in Iraq would find this approach all too familiar. But don’t worry, the U.S. thinks they have a solution:

Colonel Donohue, as well as Afghan officials, said the struggle in the south would be won by aid workers, not soldiers. The problem is stabilizing the area so they can create jobs and gain popular support.

“Those are the guys who are going to win it for us,” he said, referring to aid workers. “That’s how we’re really going to defeat the root causes.“

Are you starting to buy that? If so, go back to the top of the post and read the Los Angeles Times article again. That should crush any remaining hope, I think.

$80+ billion for the war on Iraq and nothing to rebuild Afghanistan – Dubya is daring history to repeat itself.  Before the war, Dubya inadvertently summarized the Gulf War II succinctly: “As I said, this looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.” He was in fact criticizing Iraq’s cooperation with the U.N. weapons inspectors (which in hindsight, appears to have been nearly complete).

But like any good Hollywood producer, he’s laid the groundwork for a sequel to the Afghan conflict as well. While lavishing more than $80 billion on the Gulf War II, he has apparently reneged on his promise to rebuild Afghanistan. Although the U.S. maintains a military presence in that country, its activities appear to be focused on a futile and expensive cat & mouse game on the Pakistan border as well as protecting “our” bully, Afghani President Karzai (although apparently the privatization-minded Administration has actually outsourced the latter to the corporate mercenaries at DynCorp).

This neglect of the folks we “liberated” in this last war is causing the same sorts of unrest that led to the original emergence of the Taliban from among the numerous thugs and warlords pillaging Afghanistan following the end of the Soviet occupation. In an eery echo of Dubya, Karzai’s brother recently summarized the current situation: “It’s like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem.”

I’m confident that the Oily Men in the White House won’t neglect Iraq completely. My prediction is that U.S. aid, funded at least in part from Iraqi oil revenues, will go into rebuilding Iraq’s petroleum industry. Oil Slick Bush will “pass the buck” for the remaining reconstruction, if any, to its patsy friends in Europe and the U.N. If Afghanistan is any indication, this won’t be a high priority for Dubya. So expect to see these new blockbuster hits:

Afghan War II and Gulf War III!

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