Needlenose

It’s gonna cost us about a $1 million per year for every soldier we send to Afghanistan.  Seems like a crappy investment for a war we are going to lose.

Update on that Pakistan thing (from the link) – their push against the Taliban strongholds appears to have limits, and they are concerned that our escalation will break those limits.

*Update 11/25/09* Juan Cole believes Afghanistan ‘escalation’ will be the albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party in 2012

Well at least I’m glad they are finally talking about the ‘new strategies” for the Afghanistan war.  Not sure why they waited so damn long though.

Frankly I’m with Colin Powell on this one – Mr. Obama, please be clear on what you hope to accomplish with U.S. Troops, and what conditions will trigger the end of the operation – give us a frickin’ exit strategy!!

The unspoken exit strategy, of course, is the neutralization of the Taliban & the destruction of Al Qaeda’s safe haven in the region, which as I’ve suggested before, is impossible without expanding the conflict into Western Pakistan.

Since the Pakistani government is scared to death of inviting US troops into the country to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the ground, and since we can’t invade without their permission, this pretty much rules out the current exit strategy.

So I imagine the conversation is pretty much revolving back to the old Nixon standby “how do we translate ‘Peace with Honor’ into Pashtun.”

The conventional wisdom is that the “McChrystal leak” is the Obama Administration getting blindsided by “some on the Obama team [who are] are dismayed at the White House’s slow response and fear that this is an indication that President Obama is leaning towards rejecting the inevitable requests for additional U.S. forces that this report tees up.”

Another possibility is that Obama is trying to backtrack from his campaign promises and early moves to escalate the war, perhaps giving some time for public opinion and debate while he comes up with a new strategy.

Maybe he’s finally come around to my realization that this war was doomed from the get-go.

I know I had a brief twinge of hope when Pakistan entered the fray and whacked some Taliban moles in the Swat Valley that maybe the Taliban could be put down, but even with the occasional capture of a few high-profile leaders, I’m back to my former pessimism – too little, too late.   McChrystal certainly figured out that the real front is in the tribal lands of a weak and untrustworthy ally.  As before, I certainly don’t see how throwing more bodies on the fire on the other side of the border will put out this fire.

*Update* In the spirit of pithiness, I want to rebut McChrystal more succinctly:  Adding more troops to Afghanistan will only postpone the inevitable defeat.

I found this puff piece on ‘secret’ negotiations between the US and so-called ‘moderate’ members of the Taliban on HuffPo and I was quickly skimming through it when this bit caught my eye:

Also included in the negotiations is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the notorious renegade Afghan warlord whose active insurgency continues to fight against U.S. and coalition forces.
Two former Pakistani intelligence officials say a deal was underway in which Hekmatyar would call for an end to his insurgency and be allowed to live above ground in Saudi Arabia with a budget of $85 million. At least one Afghan government official confirmed that a deal with Hekmatyar was being assembled.

Seriously?  Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? If there is any credence whatsoever to the article, Obama will just be the next in line to be taken by this consummate “Khan” artist.

Several weeks ago I wrote a despairing post about the state of our war in Afghanistan, criticizing Obama for following Shrubya’s tired strategy of fighting a counter-insurgency conflict in Afghanistan while the enemy thrived, unmolested, across the border in Pakistan.

Since then, Pakistan really bumped up their game and has made major gains in fighting the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their sympathizers in the Swat Valley.

I should probably have posted something about that  earlier, but their past claims of ‘victories’ and gains were either gross hyperbole or outright lies.  However, I’m actually heartened by Osama Bin Laden’s latest missive blaming Obama for “ordering” President Zardari to attack the guerrillas.

Check out the speech – it strikes me as the typical ‘tough talk’ a leader has to give when his followers are backed into a corner – kinda like that some of the speeches given by the (now dead) head of the Tamil Tigers as his guerrillas were increasingly trapped by Sri Lankan forces.  The other comforting thought is that Obama could actually ‘order’ President Zardari to do anything!  Don’t you wish that were true?  I guess American Liberals aren’t the only people that believe Obama has magical powers!

It’s much too early to determine if this is a true sea change in the battle – who knows how many Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors donned burkhas and slipped out among the civilian refugees?  And don’t forget that Pakistan is only one of the countries bordering Afghanistan suitable for a base for the guerrillas, and that is a horribly corrupt country at that.

But it’s definitely cause for optimism – let’s hope this reduces some of the strain on President Karzai and the NATO forces in Afghanistan!

*Update 6/4/09* A friend of mine just got back from a couple of weeks in Karachi – he tells me things are really messy there right now – lots of internal divisions between groups such as the Muhajirs and the Pashtuns are boiling up to the surface resulting in pitched street fighting.

I did some further reflection on the ‘same tired strategy’ issue, and I think the crux of the problem is ‘same tired premise.’  Although Obama renamed the ‘War on Terror’ to the Global Contingency Operation, nothing has essentially changed.

After the USSR imploded, the reactionaries were left with gays, aborted fetuses, illegal aliens and Libruhls as The Enemy.   Unfortunately (for them), you can’t justify ridiculous levels of defense spending to fight that  enemy, so their corporate masters in the defense contractor sector were unsatisfied.

9/11 gave Shrubya & Cheney all they needed to create a new bugbear to replace Raygun’s defunct ‘Evil Empire’ – a “global conspiracy” of Islamic terrorists, dedicated to destroying Pax America through the use of terror.  They fanned the flames of fear mercilessly through ‘doomsday’ speeches, Threat Level warnings and airport strip searches.

The reality-based community’s arguments that these threats required greater intelligence and coordinated international police actions were laughed at and shrugged off by the Repugs who for a time completely dominated the MSM.

In the case of Afghanistan, the original goal, was to catch Osama Bin Laden ‘dead or alive,’ neutralize the threat of the other architects of 9/11 and their sympathizers, the Taliban, then  install and nurture a Western-friendly government and do some nation building to eliminate the terrorist ‘breeding ground.’   Of course Osama and the Taliban had plenty of time to escape into the ‘failed statelet’ of Western Pakistan, which continually threatens to distabilize the installed Karzai government, forcing us to remain and even escalate our presence just to stay in place.

Osama accepted this status quo and just did his first escalation – I guarantee there will be more.  The original premise – that we are in a life-or-death struggle with a global, violent fundamentalist Islam – remains.  The follow-on reactionary addition to the premise is that this threat can and should be dealt with via military means, and that by doing so, we can make America ‘safe from Terrorism.’

Current reactionary talking points revolve around Dem rule making America ‘less safe,’ for anything from (re)outlawing torture and closing Gitmo, to cutting boondoggle projects from the defense budget.

Obama needs to attack this premise head-on, or it will continue to drive him down the doomed policy path we are currently on.

Here are the reality-based premises that he needs to push forward to counter the reactionary bullshit.

First, the government can’t make us completely safe from terror.  It’s impossible.  It’s a cheap and easy tactic easily employed by malcontents.  Suspending civil liberties and employing harsh tactics internally just create more and nastier malcontents.

Terrorists come in many flavors.  Notice how the reactionaries freaked out over the government’s report on the danger of our own home-grown, reactionary terrorists.  No mystery there – they want us to ignore the Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph and the Anthrax Mailer behind the curtain and focus on the Islamic Fundamentalist bugbear.    This is a critical point – even if we were somehow able to magically lock down all of the Islamic world, we still wouldn’t be safe from terror!

I won’t belabor the third point, that massive occupations of jihadi-prone foreigners punctuated by kid-killing blind airstrikes creates more terrorists – that point has been beaten to death over the last 8 years.

This leads me back to the premise specifically underpinning the current Afghanistan policy – if we pull out, the Karzai government will fall at the hands of the Taliban, leading to failed state and becoming another breeding ground/homebase for terrorists.   Here is the crux of the problem – the Al Qaeda home base has shifted to W. Pakistan, a failed statelet, and neither Shrubya or Obama hase the inclination to take the war there.  Ergo – stalement.

How is that different from just letting Afghanistan fall again?  It’s just a slightly bigger breeding ground.  And going back to the War on Terror – isn’t the supposed Islamic Fundamentalist terror threat supposed to be global?  There are no end of Islamic ‘failed states’ out that, or near-failed states, that could harbor another head of the terrorist hydra – admittedly not as well financed as the Pashtun poppy-growers, but not without access to other funding sources.

Bottom line is that Obama needs to start a serious dialog on the broke-ass reactionary fear-mongering premises, attacking the ‘War on Terror’ head on, not just relabeling it and continuing the policy.  And Evil Dick is giving Obama a perfect opportunity to have the dialog.  Obama could take the high ground and just debate him directly, tear him to shreds.  Or we could actually have that truth commission, but open it up to include all the lying and bullshit perpetuated by Cheney to sell the war as well as investigations into renditions, torture and the Valerie Plame scandal.

Otherwise, expect us to continue down this losing path at the cost of tens of thousands of more Afghani and Iraqi civilian lives, hundreds more of our soldiers and budget-busting costs -  and ultimately making this war *the* election question of 2012.

If you thought that by electing Obama we’d get out of the Shrubyian quagmires any sooner, you’d be sadly mistaken.  It looks like Obama is following Shrubya’s brokeass ‘strategy,’ i.e. engagements without an exit strategy, no clear goals and a continuing drain of soldiers and cash.

In a move right out of the Shrubya playbook, Obama is replacing one general with another in Afghanistan, saying that it’s time for some ‘fresh thinking.’  Seriously, Mr. President, the only ‘fresh thinking’ we need is from you!!  It doesn’t matter whom you put in the hot seat, he/she will continue to muddle along until such time as it becomes clear what they need to achieve in order to get out of the quicksand.

And in the case of Afghanistan, as long as the Taliban live free and untouchable just across the border this war will drag on for as long as we wish to expend the lives.  Our ally Pakistan will neutralize the Taliban?  Don’t make me laugh, Mr. President, they are already busy getting their asses kicked by the Taliban’s tribal hosts.

And in case you’ve forgotten, Shrubya already tried launching a ‘death from above’ strategy in both quagmires and learned the hard way that for every ‘terrorist’ you kill, you create dozens of pissed-off new terrorists.

If you want to eliminate the Taliban threat to Karzai and ‘new’ Afghanistan, you need to take the war to them…on the ground…where they are.  If you can’t or won’t do that, then get us the hell out of there.  Fresh thinking, Mr. President, fresh thinking!

Heading home for the holidays? Dreading the inevitable collision with that Libertarian uncle or redneck cousin where you both unavoidably launch into a heated, and family-alienating political discussion after he/she taunts you with Bush? Well, this year stay cool and stay on-message with these handy talking points on so-called conservative issues:

Fiscal responsibility:
* $1/2 trillion-dollar budget deficit and climbing, of which:
* $300 billion is pure government welfare pork
* $100-200 billion additional pork pending in the Energy and Prescription Drug bills
- Remind him/her that Clinton balanced the budget

Small government
* 12.5% growth in Federal Government last year
- Remind him/her that Gore, working for Clinton, trimmed 300K federal jobs and reduced Federal spending 3% (as share of GDP)

Fighting Terrorism
* Where’s Osama?
* Why are the Taliban operating out of Pakistan with impunity?
* Why weren’t the CIA/FBI heads and their staffs sacked?
* What happened to the 9/11 investigation?
* Why does Bush withhold information about possible Saudi complicity in 9/11
* Why is Al Qaeda still blowing things up around the world?

The War in Iraq
* War crimes (on the basis of Geneva Conventions) due to U.S. criminal negligence:
# 1,500 civilians killed in uncontrolled looting following the fall of Baghdad; insufficient forces on the ground
# 12,000 unique, priceless artifacts looted from the Iraqi Art Museum
# 1 million unique, priceless historical documents burned in the Iraqi National Library
# 8kg of uranium missing from looted Tuwaitha reactor; enough for several ‘dirty bombs’
# Thousands of Arabs ‘ethnically cleansed’ from Kurdistan
# Dozens killed in ‘reprisal’ slayings and ethnic civil war
# Destruction of houses, farms and other personal property in punative raids
# Hundreds of Iraqis being held without trial or tribunal
# Occupational Authority making significant changes to Iraqi legal system
# Occupational Authority making long term committments of Iraqi resources
*War botched:
# Where’s Hussein?
# Where are the WMD?
# 294 casualties since war ‘ended’
# Soldiers suffering dozens of daily guerilla attacks, the pace is increasing
# Guerillas have easy access to Hussein’s old arsenal
# Large political bloc militias still run free and armed
# No credible Coalition Government has been set up
# Strong-arm tactics appear to be further alienating the civilians
- Remind him/her that Clinton won the war against Serbia without a single U.S. soldier lost

Civil Liberties
* Patriot Act ‘sneak and peak’ provisions clearly unconstitutional
* DeLay used Homeland Security to spy on the movements Texas state legislators
* Why do Bush and war opponents end up on ‘no-fly’ lists?
* The FBI is spying on anti-war protestors
*The Secret Service is selectively enforcing ‘free speech areas’ – America is a free speech area!

I’m under no illusion that I can convince any of my reactionary relations to budge from their simplistic world-view, and I won’t try to persuade you that you will have any better luck. We can, however, potentially discourage them from contributing to Bush Co., and maybe, if they are lazy as well as misguided, discourage them from casting a vote next year. BTW, South Knox Bubba has a more comprehensive list of more general Bush failings that might be useful in political discussions with your non-rabid relations.

– George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

…Unless you’re George Witless Bush that is.
Swopa’s recent post on how things are starting to ‘turn around’ (in favor of the Taliban) in Afghanistan jibes closely with my thinking of late.

Fubar of Clowntech loaned me an interesting book the other day, The Hidden War by Artyom Borovik. The book is that journalist’s account of the (failed) Soviet war in Afghanistan written in two sections – the first part covers the early part of the war, and the second, the Soviet army’s humiliating withdrawal from the country.

What caught my attention in recent A’stan news was the mention of rebel leader and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. What makes this guy so interesting is a) he’s a powerful warlord, and b) he’s a serial turncoat. He makes a few cameos in Borovik’s book.

He started out as a communist, but was kicked out of the Kabul Military Academy. At some point the CIA discovered and backed him, and he became a key part of Ronnie “Alzheimer” Reagan’s covert war against the Soviet Union – but he may in fact have stayed on the payroll of the KGB!!!!

Then, as now, he was periodically forced over the border into Pakistan, where he found succor among his fellow Pashtuns and a strong base from which to operate. And operate he did, not only fighting Soviet and Afghani ‘puppet government’ forces, but wiping out large numbers of Mujahideen as well. In addition, of course, to running a hugely-profitable heroin-smuggling operation. After the defeat of the Soviet-installed government, Hekmatyar briefly became Prime Minister, but it wasn’t long before he had a ‘falling out’ with the other leaders and went back to doing what he does best – fighting the government (he’s the guy who had Kabul shelled into the ground).

Although a self-proclaimed ‘Pure Islamist,’ the Taliban wanted little to do with such a treacherous snake, and drove him out in 1996. But Baby Bush ‘rediscovered’ his Pappy’s favorite war-toy, and employed Hekmatyar again as a key part of the Northern Alliance. As anybody other than a total dolt (like Dubya) could foresee, it wasn’t long before Hekmatyar was back to his old tricks, making war on American-installed President Hamid Karzai. Now he’s back in Pakistan, having apparently ‘patched things up’ with the Taliban leaders, and is destabilizing the North-Eastern region of Afghanistan through guerrilla raids and propaganda.

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.