A story in the Telegraph says the French have leaked a report saying the British Ambassador to Afghanistan believes the NATO mission is doomed because the Karzai government is terminally corrupt and its existence is only being prolonged by foreign help. Corruption undoubtedly exists — as it exists in Pakistan, Mexico, Venezuela and practically every Third World Country, including the African states where France has troops. But if Afghanistan is no different from any other Third World country, what’s bothering the British ambassador, at least according to the French? The logical answer is that NATO presence makes things different. Corruption in the Third World is ordinary: but linking it to a Western military presence makes it a problem.
One of the problems inherent in fighting the War on Terror is that it will have to be waged in cooperation with, or through governments pretending to govern territories which are extraordinarily lawless, impoverished and venal even by Third World standards. Coalition forces will by definition be fighting in the armpits of the world and things will always smell, to one degree or the other, in those regions.
In such places, the United States cannot maintain permanent friends, only pursue permanent interests. What this implies to the probable discomfort of the diplomats, is that Coalition authority must somehow be separate and detached from the legitimacy of the Big Man in the Capital, who in the nature of things is usually replaced by another Big Man waiting in the wings. But diplomats have the disconcerting habit of treating Third World Presidents and regimes with more deference than American officials. And while the recent financial crisis may prove the diplomats justified, the deference nevertheless creates the fiction that these Third World governments are just as legitimate as the governments of Britain, Canada, Australia or the USA. The result is that the coalition winds up with permanent “friends” along with permanent interests.
The Telegraph claimed the British Foreign Office said “that the cable did not accurately reflect the views of the Ambassador”, but what what the Ambassador was alleged to say was that “in the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan . . . The American strategy is doomed to fail.” These conflicting signals make it difficult to figure out what the British Ambassador really said as opposed to what the French want the public to think he said. But let me make a guess as to the bottom line: France and probably Britain are afraid of any escalation of hostilities in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater. Perhaps neither has the military or political resources to do anything but hang on for a little longer.
This suggests that the attraction of Afghanistan all along wasn’t its status as the “central theater” where the “War on Terror begins and ends”. That was all bullshit. Afghanistan was simply an excuse to get out of Iraq. And now that Iraq can no longer be used as an excuse to get out of Iraq, Afghanistan must now become the reason to get out of Afghanistan. Maybe the real question, which diplomats are presently too timid to phrase baldly, is how to get out of the War on Terror business altogether. Then NATO troops don’t have to keep propping up corrupt foreign regimes. They can leave that to the diplomats.
One of ironies in the world is that while it sees diplomatic engagement “without preconditions” as a virtue it simultaneously subjects the military engagement of its enemies to the most rigorous pre-conditions. Maybe this is really a case of making a virtue out of a necessity; and reflects the reality that the West as a whole has actually lost the politico-military capability to mount a conventional resistance to its enemies and now seeks to use diplomacy as the substitute, or rather the placebo for action. Afghanistan is on its way to becoming the “bad war” because there can be no good wars. They simply can’t be afforded, old boy.
Corruption? What have you heard.
Corruption in Afghanistan, Pakistan etc.
Read Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile.
It’s about how the CIA and ISI armed and eqipped the Afghanis to roust the Soviet Army.
Corrruption? You bet. So what.
As long as the corruption doesn’t infect our military and the CIA in the so-called GWOT aka The Long War.
One problem with having a serious military presence in a country like Afghanistan is that the local regime may never concern itself with its own security as long as we are there visibly underwriting it. We have to cut back to a visibly useless presence (diplomats, specifically programmed to evacuate rather than fight) before the local politicians will lift their heads from the trough to address the security and operation of their own state.
I was thinking yesterday that purpose of the otherwise incomprehensible election of a man like Obama as president of the US could be to send a related sort of ‘tough love’ message in spades. It would assert in no uncertain terms that a majority of the US electorate are serious about being unserious, thoroughly committed to being undependable, etc. Viewed from this point of view, Obama’s lack of experience, narrow left wing natural base and epic self-absorption become a feature rather than a bug.
We have to cut back to a visibly useless presence (diplomats, specifically programmed to evacuate rather than fight) before the local politicians will lift their heads from the trough to address the security and operation of their own state.
In “countries” called Failing States, the local politicians never actually get around to addressing the security of their own state. All they want is a chance to loot under the sovereign protection of their flag. This is what happens in Failed States by definition. The Telegraph article implies the Coalition will be better off simply installing or countenancing some brute or dictator and doing the same for the brute who eventually kills him, seriatim and ad infinitum.
In this modern frontier, the modern cowboy is supposed to just poke his head into the saloon and and order his drinks from whoever is standing behind the bar. Never mind asking where the previous barkeep went. If his mortal remains are in plain view, he ain’t there, he ain’t never been there. Live and let live. And who gives a s**t.
But the problem with that is that Failing States are the breeding grounds of al-Qaeda. So simply letting Afghanistan be Afghanistan or Somalia be Somalia means letting al-Qaeda be al-Qaeda. Turning a blind eye is not an optin. For so long as the Coalition needs to go in after al-Qaeda you’ll always have the problem of diplomats saying, ‘look, the President of the country we’re fighting in has dirty fingernails’. Just remind them that the phrase is “fighting in” not “fighting for”. The only thing the forces should ever fighting for are mom and apple pie. That there is corruption might be true; but I’m not persuaded it will be relevant, at least not in the way that is implied.
I think the only way forward in Failed States is to simply run parallel structures like everybody else. Bing West wrote a book called the Strongest Tribe. A marveling Iraqi said, ‘you Americans are the strongest tribe’. Once you put it that way it all becomes perfectly clear. In tribal societies, America comes not as a nation to another nation, but the strongest tribe to tribal world. If you’re not in France, the UK or Canada, the Coalition should just become a law unto yourself, like everybody else. Of course they should deny it. And maybe they ought to recreate Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac for the sole purpose of hiring every journalist and politician who questions the denial. Because as long as you are suitably hypocritical and hire enough lawyers, things pass muster and remaisn well. Success in modern life depends largely on becoming sufficiently hypocritical. I know that sounds awfully bad, but unfortunately in the matter of hypocrisy, the public has had good teachers.
The telegraph article hints that the British ambassadors statements may have been somewhat embellished by french diplomats who oppose French President’s support of NATO operations.
The inability, blindness or resistance on the part of professional diplomats, to the use of military units presence as a means of extending diplomatic efforts and goals is to me astounding. The lack of cooperation and in fact the persistence of intimidation and rivalry is almost criminal.
I should not be surprised that the same disconnect between our own DoS and DoD exists in other countries as well. The hypocrisy of Senator Biden in misquoting the statement of the commander of US Forces in Afghanistan is typical of the political mindset. Facts be damned, just repeat the lie until it blurs into meaninglessness as semblance of reality or truth. It is the numbing of American minds.
No, seriously, what have you heard?
Is this about Frannie Mac? Or Feddie Mae? I had nothin to do with it. I was not there. but let me say this, corruption, if you want to use that term, in housing market, has nothing to do with Wall Street Fat Cats. No ,let me refraise that, it had everything to do either with Wall Street Greed or Bush Admin Policies. We’re still checking.
It is all over now. The long battle is almost finished. Your corrupt, degenerate “civilization” can no longer win any military campaigns, maintain its hollow, usury based economy, or prop up its unjust, utterly corrupt governments.
Look about you. Everywhere Islam is triumphant. Every day, Muslims enter your countries and fight in the cause of Allah (swt). Every day, more mosques are built and more Christian churches are abandoned, destroyed, or converted into public toilets. Every day, more Muslim babies are born, while you kill your own children in your filthy abortion mills.
The outcome of the long struggle was never in doubt. Allah (swt) has promised us victory and now that victory is at hand. Embrace Islam now and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah (swt).
Your grandchildren will be Muslim.
Allahu akbar!
American Muslim,
You again? Why don’t you have a nice pork sandwich and a pint of beer, then light a joint and just chill out.
Frothy-mouthed, bug-eyed, and ignorant are no way to go through life, son.
The old Belmont Club had a classic thread http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/10/far-line-of-sand.html that included a passage from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with the gunboat lobbing shells at a jungle. The diplomatic track devoid of military action with people who believe they are in a state of war is of course a non-starter. In fact diplomacy presupposes that you have an empowered soveriegn to negotiate with. If the tribes and maddrasas cannot be relied upon to submit to a representative with plenipotentiary powers then they may need social workers as well as a military presence but diplomats can’t work. The inconveniant fact that Waziristan is not within gunboat range means that the military alternative to boots on the ground would be random retribution for terrorism by cruise missile. That would be a return to the Clintonism that worked so well in defending the world against al Queda before.
Remember the old Belmont Club piece that had a passage from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness about the gunboat? http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/10/far-line-of-sand.html
Unfortunately Waziristan is not within gunboat range. Relying on diplomats exclusively is a non-starter when the other side believes they are in a Sate of War with you. It is an especially feckless approach when confronting a collection of tribes and madrassas who do not have a sovereign authority who can send a representative with plenipotentiary powers. Osama bin-Laden is not, despite his pretensions, the Caliph of Dar al-Islam. Obama is simply wrong in believing that killing, or talking to, him or any other individual will end this war. The lawless regions may benefit from an influx of social workers but diplomats have no one to talk to. The only alternatives to boots on the ground would be cruise missiles delivering random retribution. That would be a return to the Clintonism that served so well before in deterring al-Qaeda.
Remember the old Belmont Club piece that had a passage from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness about the gunboat? Look at fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/10/far-line-of-sand dot html but I can not post links in here, Wretchard this is getting frustrating. Unfortunately Waziristan is not within gunboat range. Relying on diplomats exclusively is a non-starter when the other side believes they are in a Sate of War with you. It is an especially feckless approach when confronting a collection of tribes and madrassas who do not have a sovereign authority who can send a representative with plenipotentiary powers. Osama bin-Laden is not, despite his pretensions, the Caliph of Dar al-Islam. Obama is simply wrong in believing that killing, or talking to, him or any other individual will end this war. The lawless regions may benefit from an influx of social workers but diplomats have no one to talk to. The only alternatives to boots on the ground would be cruise missiles delivering random retribution. That would be a return to the Clintonism that served so well before in deterring al-Qaeda.
Chicago’s Dirty Little Secret.
Please see http://www.chicagooilscandal.com
How a family in Chicago was contaminated by an Oil Company’s underground storage tanks for over ten years. Members of the family got sick, lost their home to the banks because they could not sell it, had to sell their belongings and leave to the safety of another country because their city and state politicians kept quiet and did nothing. The community,s health is still at risk.
With very best Regards.
Jennifer Carter.
The Far Line of Sand
Taliban PSYOP is directed specifically at the NATO members considered by them to be vulnerable at home to Morale Operations.
That the Germans, Spanish and Italians haven’t been hit hard yet indicates limited Taliban capability in their areas and massive devotion to Force Protection.
Dane to head EU police mission in Afghanistan
Danes are not your stereotypical Euroweenies. My perception has been managed to think EUPOL hasn’t been particularly useful so far. Maybe that will change.
More Afghan feet in more ANA, ANP, and Afghan National Auxiliary Police boots is the way out. Afghanize the war. Recruit Kit Carson Scouts from Taliban chieu hoi‘s. Pay/bribe selected tribal lashkars/warlord private armies to serve as CIDG’s and Ruff/Puffs. We don’t have time to do Focused District Development at the rate we’re going.
Afghanistan as the “Good War” has been providing cover for the left for the last five years. Listening to Obama’s strident assertions that Iraq has distracted the U.S. from the real war on AQ in Afghanistan, one can’t help but wonder how anyone can take this man seriously. To acknowledge Afghanistan is host to an enemy is to acknowledge the U.S. has mortal enemies that must be fought. As the Democrats have admitted on several occasions, AQ is present around the world… but they must only be fought in Afghanistan, and nowhere else, and certainly not in Iraq.
Obama’s cries for more durm and strang in Afghanistan are political rhetoric, and will be tossed aside eventually. The Good War will turn into a “quagmire/civil war/propping up corrupt dictatorship/U.S. imperialism” soon enough.
We are arrogant enough to attempt to impose a Western-style national police force on Afghanistan, but not arrogant enough to appoint an American Governor General and American judges and an American officer as Chief of the ANP.
Where are the 21st Century’s Big Bill Taft and Henry Tureman Allen?
Unfortunately Waziristan is not within gunboat range.
No more gun boats anyway. The US Navy tried to bring back the gunboat at billions per, but wiser heads canceled the LCS.
In the 21st century, the function of the gunboat has been taken up by the B2. No place on planet Earth (or planet Gore either) is out of range of a B2. We just haven’t had a president with the stones to use them.
A B2 cannot be detected outside it’s weapons range, which means in a B2 EVERY target is a baby seal.
Not sure it is doomed to fail, but it won’t be won by military means alone. Logistics goes thru Pakistan, which limits the amount of troops in Afghanistan to the number that can be supplied by air in an emergency. That in turn depends on the number of airports that can handle big cargo jets. I figured about 100,000 troops but I havn’t done that sort of thing in ages and I’m sure the lift available is different from published figures as is the daily consumption. I used 200 Lbs per day, which I suspect is low. Heilos use LOTS of fuel, which really pushes up the tonnage needed. Without the tactical air, the grunts would eventually end up in deep dodo.
I think it would be better to get all the non-combatant nations out. We still have to supply them, even when they aren’t fighting. Not sure how much political value they have, since they give nations like Germany a political fig leaf that prevent them from actually getting involved.
“The majority of people are timid by nature, and that is why they constantly exaggerate danger. All influences on the military leader, therefore, combine to give him a false impression of his opponent’s strength, and from this arises a new source of indecision.”
- Karl von Clausewitz
The Commission of July 18th last provided for the establishment under the general supervision of the Governor General of an insular constabulary: This is in charge of a Chief, and is to consist of not less than 15 and not more than a 150 privates, with proper officers, for each province. The archipelago has four police divisions, each under an Assistant Chief. There is a corps of inspectors, not to exceed four for each province, to inspect the municipal police. Sergeants, corporals and privates are selected from the residents of each province and serve two years. The Chief and the force generally are declared to be peace officers, and are authorized and empowered to prevent and suppress brigandage, unlawful assemblages, riots, insurrections, and other breaches of the peace and violations of the law. Capt. Henry T. Allen, Sixth United States Cavalry, late Major of the Forty-third Volunteer Infantry, and Capt. David J. Baker of the Twelfth United States Infantry have been detailed to serve, respectively as Chief and First Assistant Chief of the Insular Constabulary upon the appointment of the Civil Governor. — The New York Times November 29, 1901
American Muslim, is doubtless a sock puppet. Ace of Spades website does this all the time, fake mocking comments from Dan RaTher, Elvis, etc.
Wretchard — I think you need to look deeper. There is no real reason for France, Britain, and the US to wish to simply abandon either Iraq or Afghanistan. The casualties, regrettable, are not much compared to historical standards, including projected casualties in the first Gulf War. Only 17 years ago. Nor are the dangers (nuclear strike from an abandoned Afghanistan-Pakistan via deniable terrorist proxies, to advantage one faction internally over another) inconceivable.
Though no one wants to speak it, everyone knows it. Even Hollywood has been full of imagery of a nuked NYC (Heroes) or variations ala Japan thereof (Cloverfield). Everyone knows, well and good, that nuclear proliferation by Pakistan and North Korea, and now Iran, plus AQ and factionalism in failed states, means death of major Western Cities. It might be London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copehagen, instead of NYC, but it will come.
The reason the fight has been abandoned is two-fold: first the elites in all Western countries are “priests” who know they will cede power to the military, and industrialists, and machinists, and ordinary people who do the fighting and killing and dying, and those who supply them with ever-better weapons.
But the second is that society in the West as a whole has degenerated due to the rise of single motherhood. “American Muslim” is not that far off — only a middle class society can fight abroad (a peasant society can fight in it’s own country), and only a middle class society has more to lose from not fighting than fighting when long term survival is as stake.
Those with no children don’t care about the future. Why should they? They have no “skin” in that “game.” Single mothers, care about the future, but care in a feminine way, that precludes violence in defense of it, and clings to a fantasy of “peaceful” solutions. Europe is a society of singletons, mostly childless, the rest single mothers, with married couples a rarity. The US is not much better.
The West CANNOT fight in Afghanistan or anywhere else, until it is a matter of raw, physical survival. We lack the men, coming from two-parent, traditional families, with either their own or likely prospect of their own, families in turn.
Thus, Western cities will die. Not just one, several, as meek and mewling responses by a deeply feminized “priesthood” tries the rainbows, hugs, and puppies approach to hardened killers seeking their own advantage within their factions.
THEN, and only then, will people in a pure survival mode, flock to the idea of fighting. And it will not be a moderate, “hold-the-line” model as in Afghanistan, but rather a war of pure survival with no quarter asked or given. Best guess? Half a billion dead, with some ethnic groups ceasing to exist for all intents and purposes.
This was inevitable as far back as 2006. Perhaps even further back, as Bush refused to lay out straight for everyone the stakes and importance of adjusting to nuclear proliferation and failed states.
So what was wrong with letting the Russians clear these areas of Jihadis?
Couple of thoughts on this.
1.) As I watch McCain sink in the polls and begin to try to wrap my brain around the thought of an Obama Presidency, I thought My God, It’s Going To Happen Again. In 1973 a Republican Administration in the US left VietNam a stable, albeit deeply flawed, independent NON-COMMUNIST nation after a long effusion of blood, treasure and prestige. Only to see a craven, leftist America-hating Congress cut them off dead while our enemies poured MASSIVE resources into preparing to restart the war when the timing was more favorable. Republicans winning the war only to have the Democrats follow and lose the peace. It is going to happen again.
2.) I believe Wretchard is psot on in his analysis (in fact, first revealed long ago) that there is in fact no war the left is willing to fight. The sad truth is, however, that while everything he says about withdrawal favoring Al Queda is true, the American people (famous for their own self reliance) have little patience for foreign venality when it comes to helping themselves. In the end we in the US wish to just be left alone, not to reform the whole stinking, bloody third world. When the US public concludes the people we are fighting for won’t fight for themselves and are a morally bankrupt, irredeemable lot, support for intervention evaporates fast.
3.) I think whiskey is correct in the “femininization” of the electorate is behind much of the nonsense that passes for Democratic foreign policy. The single-mother angle is a new one to me, though, and rings true. If so, then will we have the necessary rage to rouse ourselves after the next attack. Maybe nuclear this time. Our fate as a nation may well hinge on the answer.
And maybe it should. At least until the next outrage is perpetrated to rouse us from our introspection.
Wrethcard,
So let me see if I understand this closing of the thread above. For days you post videos and threads in the middle of a highly charged Presidential election.
People engage each other and after 42 post you have your say and then blow away the thread? Yes I know you can do what you want etc, etc but it is a curious thing to see an occurance where you are posting the threads which are like raw meat, then refuse to allow full debate on the thread. Very confusing.
American Muslim used to hang out at another blog and send out his same missives, verbatim.
[YAWN!]
I think he is some script kiddie hanging in Mommy’s basement. He needs to go ask his family doc why his tallywhacker is orange.
Habu – give the man a break. He just gets bored with the redundancies and the spiteful little spats and wants to move on. I’m pretty sure you, too, have a short attention span so you should be more accommodating and less whiney.
Wretchard:
“One of the problems inherent in fighting the War on Terror is that it will have to be waged in cooperation with, or through governments pretending to govern territories which are extraordinarily lawless, impoverished and venal even by Third World standards. Coalition forces will by definition be fighting in the armpits of the world and things will always smell, to one degree or the other, in those regions.
In such places, the United States cannot maintain permanent friends, only pursue permanent interests.”
Wretchard, what happened to the democracy agenda? You are beginning to sound alot like a . . . a . . . a REALIST!
Is it time to revisit Mike Sheurer’s Imperial Hubris? It’s going on 7 years now, having adopted the failed Soviet strategy in Afghanistan. If not now, maybe we should re-examine it in 12-14 years.
–It’s going on 7 years now, having adopted the failed Soviet strategy in Afghanistan.
Perhaps those who are ignorant of history should post on another site.
Wikipedia — Soviet ground forces, under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, entered Afghanistan from the north on December 27th. In the morning, the 103rd Guards ‘Vitebsk’ Airborne Division landed at the airport at Bagram and the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was underway. The force that entered Afghanistan, in addition to the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, was under command of the 40th Army and consisted of the 108th and 5th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions, the 860th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment, the 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on the 201st and 58th Motor Rifle Divisions also entered the country, along with other smaller units.[29] In all, the initial Soviet force was around 1,800 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs. In the second week alone, Soviet aircraft had made a total of 4,000 flights into Kabul.[30] The Soviet force rose with the arrival of the two later divisions to over 100,000.
Periodically the Soviet Army undertook multi-divisional offensives into mujahideen-controlled areas. Between 1980 and 1985, nine offensives were launched into the strategic Panjshir Valley, but government control of the area did not improve.[34] Heavy fighting also occurred in the provinces neighbouring Pakistan, where cities and government outposts were constantly under siege by the mujahideen. Massive Soviet operations would regularly break these sieges, but the mujahideen would return as soon as the coast was clear.[35] In the West and South, fighting was more sporadic, except in the cities of Herat and Kandahar, that were always partly controlled by the resistance.[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
In contrast, we have had a “light footprint” and “assistance” from NATO allies which has fallen pathetically short of their commitments. And lets not even discuss the development aid that was supposed to come from Europe
For the man on the Clapham omnibus (well, the Kansas transit perhaps,) the only and cynical hope is that the terrorists will run true to form. However weak the USA appeared the fact is that the last time they were hit they pushed a whole country back into the middle ages. It is amazing to me that anyone still supports terrorists knowing that.
Terrorists like easy targets who don’t hit back. While we may see the USA in that light there are easier targets and many are less able to retaliate. Would the Americans retaliate if a European city was nuked? How many European cities? I think I would rather live in the USA right now than Europe.
There are some first world countries arguably as corrupt (certainly in absolute dollar, esp. yen, terms). And they live with it and do ok, though not great, since it does have its costs and impact on civil society.
Doomed to fail? This from the people who screwed up Basra.
Doesn’t mean a lot to me.
I have been in Afghanistan for over three years and almost all that time has been outside the wire living amongst the Afghan people. We are losing here because we are not fighting according to our own doctrine. This is a counterinsurgency fight with a population who, in every corner of the country, is the happiest when a platoon of Americans moves into their village with the intent to stay. The Afghans for the most part love us. But we are not there for them – we are stuck on large bases with no presence in the districts and all our combat operations micro managed by senior officers in Bagram and Qatar.
If you wanted to set up a system that by design defuses responsibility for the bombing and killing of innocent civilians you could do no better than the system our military set up here. Mind you our forces do not target and take out civilians often or on purpose. These mistakes are made because the commanders deciding when to let loose with and air strike are relying on intelligence provided by the Afghans who have walked into the wire with what they claim is good intel on the bad guys. That is score settling the Afghan way and settling scores is one area where the Afghans really excel.
As a retired Marine infantry officer that offends me. Our forces should be living and working outside the big bases with the Afghans like the thousands of international private sector workers who are here now. If our military were operating at the district level we wouldn’t need to do some many “high value target” (HVT) raids because we could simply invite whoever we wanted to talk to in for a chat. If the village elders say you have to go talk to the Americans then you have to go – or they will burn you and your family out of the village, clan and tribe. If we were at the district level we could send our men to observe a reported “large group of Taliban fighters” and they could tell if they were fighters or a group of villagers engaged in the traditional wedding celebrations. How many wedding parties do we have to hit before we learn not to target them?
You do not take my word for it an Army battalion commander named Custer operated exactly that way last year. He and his boys made one of the most violent provinces (Paktika) into one of the most peaceful by getting his paratroopers off the big base and into the district centers. On several occasions he had the local village elders invite a suspected HVT into chat with him and they came every time. The Afghanistan Pashtoons live under the code of Pashtunwali and really have no choice in the matter one the elders have spoken.
LTC Custer is a brave man – he had the courage to deploy his troops in positions that invited attack so that the enemy could be defeated in detail. No other commander has been that effective or that audacious and here is the reason why. It doesn’t matter. Commanders on the big bases are evaluated on what happens inside those bases. This will be their only combat fitness evaluation in 25 to 30 years of service and they could win 100 battles against the Taliban or they could win zero and that will not impact their command evaluation. Voter registration, sexual harassment work shops, consideration of others training, management of personnel records and classified material, sending the troops to career schools, keeping the boy-girl drama to a minimum, management of all the supplies pouring into the base and all the reconstruction money pouring out – that is what they are evaluated on.
Until risk aversion and force protection cease to drive our military operations we will continue to lose ground, lose the good will of the population, and bomb targets we honestly believe to be bad guys but are in reality wedding parties or other cultural gatherings. Technology will never fully compensate for poor tactics, micro management and risk aversion.
Lifeofthemind said: “Unfortunately Waziristan is not within gunboat range”
Actually the Predator is the new gunboat, if you think about it.
Did I miss something? Did Kabul fall last week, while I was distracted by tabloid stuff? We know that News Media won’t report on good news from the front, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as I see it, there isn’t much bad news coming from there either.
I know Obamas political strategy is to make “Afghanistan the central front of his war on terror”, but I don’t see the media complying with bomb cars video in heavy rotation either.
Never mind that his “strategy” is ambivalent at best; he claims that any incursions demmed necessary (by Whom?) into Pakistan will be conducted without consent of Pakistan authorities, up to and including nuclear weapons.
Add to that the logistical problem of moving men and materials into a land locked country. If you want do that, lets clear out the way out through Iran first and make that the “central front of the war on terror”. They are working on nukes, (Pakistan already has them) so lets get both sides to unify (Barrack!) and just get to it, or just shut up with pie in the sky troop surges in Afghanistan to make it Obamas “central front in his war on terror”.
War is always fraught with chaos and blunders, you just do your level best to make sure your enemy is the one awarded the toe tag. And Petraeus is just the man to do it. Sanchez and Abizaid were the ones who had the responsibility for the problems in Iraq that Petraeus solved. not Sec. Rumsfeld, or Pres. Bush. Or maybe Bush, coz he should have fired Sanchez and Abizaid sooner, but that is just water under the bridge. Should Lincoln have fired McClellan sooner? In hindsight, yes, but he got the ones to win the war, and his re-election.
The arguments about tribal rivalries are real, and problematic. But we create democratic governments, and stick with them until it works and the outside threats subside (Germany And Japan were easier, by comparison, ditto Iraq). Soviet Union eventually collapsed). Otherwise we are the worlds policeman, and if Afghanistan remains a tribal backwater, that makes altogether more difficult. But not inposible. Afghanistan was a pretty good place before Soviet Union started in on them, in the early fifties, with Universities and progress toward civility. Soviet tampering changed all that. Bin Laden and his Arab cohorts did not defeat Soviets, and we have to clean up both messes.
How to bring a primitive (gratuitous anti P. C. term) nonproductive backwater (back?) to the family of man?
Einstein probably grapled with similar comundrums. Probably take more than a bunch of miracles. History of America is replete with enormous challenges and the mysterious hand of g-d. Lets pray that the world can appreciate that and see American exeptionalism as equal opportunity means to some miraculous history its own.
“The American strategy is doomed to fail.”
The Brit strategy worked?
More Sound Analysis:
“Perhaps those who are ignorant of history should post on another site. ”
It’s an adoption of the Societ strategy in the following sense: a steady increase in out troop levels and a belief that we can build a centralized government in Afghanistan that supports our interests in the region. They couldn’t and we certainly aren’t currently. The debate is whether we can socially engineer a stable, democratic regime in Afghanistan or whether its a fractured tribal territory that will not be a unified state anytime this century.
Tim has a blog BC’ers should be reading.
Listen to him on Covert Radio. He’s making sense. You lurkers at As Saliyah should subtly point your new boss in Tim’s direction.
Covert Radio
Covert Radio Show: 092408 Covert Radio Afghanistan
Guest is Tim Lynch on the latest from the ground in Afghanistan. Plus a terror round up, and the latest in Mexico. Runs 60 mins.
Ahem. America is sort of going bankrupt back home. *All* of America, given the failures of banks, people having their homes repossessed and Wall Street having to be bailed out. Right now, as we speak.
Given the instransigent stupidity exhibited both by the Iraqi’s and the Afghans (plus the overt evil demonstrated by the Paki’s), I am losing patience with pouring on-going trillions of dollars into their hellholes, when the American economy itself needs hundreds of billions to bail it out. Why are we still focusing on over there, when we desperately need to be fixing over here, which (in case you haven’t noticed) is also so polarized as to be verging on our own civil war?
It seems to me that for over there, we need to look at a cheaper alternative than on-the-ground warfare and trying to kill individual terrorists. A couple of nuke runs wouldn’t cost that much, and would doubtless be very salutary towards addressing the issues being discussed. However, if people in power aren’t feeling that blood-thirsty, then setting up a quarantine of that part of the world hasn’t been tried yet. I can’t see any reason we need to accept any Arab, Persian or Russian into our country at all, whether for medical reasons, immigration, education, or because they want to donate a couple of million dollars to Harvard. And certainly not for tourism because they say they want to visit Ground Zero to pay their respects and look around little bit, take a few pictures, learn how to fly an crop duster. At the same time we could disinvite the United Nations from Manhattan so they could take their anti-American agenda elsewhere along with all the spy-types they have living in America trying to undermine us.
I have Iraq fatigue. I have Afghan fatigue. And I am absolutely sick and tired of having to think of Pakistan as being anything except a bunch of honor-killing savages who desperately need a dose of their own medicine.
I know they’re still trying to kill us and we should probably keep an eye on them, but really – does it have to be so damned expensive, and what about Americans back home being thrown out of their houses and laid off from their jobs because their company went bankrupt?
They’re depending on quitters. Their Morale Operations have always had as the objective the creation of enough Nahncees throwing up their hands in disgust and cutting and running.
They win. We quit. They were right. We were the weak horse all along. Lack of fortitude will be the death of us. Millions of us.
Canonneer – and they starve to death. And we don’t.
Cannoneer No. 4,
It has nothing to do with America being a weak horse or strong horse. It has everything to do with America fighting a real war or a fake war. And this is a fake war.
whiskey; I will simplify your thesis if I may. The initial scenario is quite plausible; the Islamic world lets loose in some place the cosmic forces that lie beneath the surface of ordinary life wherever you may be.
And then they all die. The population of Earth decreases by approximately 17%, and none of the survivors regret it in the slightest. And Islam dies – now, forever and ever amen. And then, just maybe, we can turn our faces toward the stars. And not a single Muslim shares in the fate of Man. Instead, they join their prophet Mohammed (hellfire and eternal damnation be upon him) in the Eighth Circle of Hell. All of them.
@mika2k1:
“So what was wrong with letting the Russians clear these areas of Jihadis?”
If you are talking the 1980s, the Soviet Union was the biggest threat to the west extant, not muslim fundamentalists.
What we did to them via our proxies in Afghanistan just about sealed the fate of the USSR.
And got even for what they did via their proxies in Korea and Vietnam.
@Tim Lynch:
“I have been in Afghanistan for over three years and almost all that time has been outside the wire living amongst the Afghan people. We are losing here because we are not fighting according to our own doctrine.”
Why is that still happening in Afghanistan when the correct way to influence events in a tribal society was proven in Iraq? Man to man on a local basis with our power in reserve.
Do you think Petraeus’ promotion will have an effect on tactics in Afghanistan?
@NahnCee:
“Ahem. America is sort of going bankrupt back home.”
Excellent emotive vent/lament, NahnCee.
But have you considered an even more costly event than what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Like a nuclear attack on one or more American cities?
It would make current outlays look like peanuts.
We’ve incurred our big costs with Iraq and they should start dropping very soon.
I agree about dealing with Iran. We need to fix that problem before they go nuclear.
And, in my estimation, we need to be there in Afghanistan and whomping on terrorists in Waziristan and places like that.
But Iran is the key. And the Wahabis.
Taking a longer term view we need to be competing with the Wahabis in providing education in areas where madrassahs are the only avenue extant.
Teach kids real skills and Koran spouting fools would soon look like the losers they are.
@Fletcher Christian
“…none of the survivors regret it in the slightest. And Islam dies – now, forever and ever amen. And then, just maybe, we can turn our faces toward the stars.”
Crap.
The same leftie limp dicks that postulate, theorise and self-flagellate now about war would be doing the same thing about space expoloration or any other such expansive projection of power.
I heard someone refer to the political Left as a cant cant.
They and that mentality are humanity’s enemy even more so than most tribal fundamentalists.
@Fletcher
It seems quite odd that you keep advocating nuclear/apocalyptic solutions to the challenges western civilisation face.
You from a race that can’t even conquer your own estranged muslim neighbourhoods. It seems prudent and human in the case of any Englishman that you would start facing the challenges at home.
The UK’s biggest threat is within.
One of the biggest problems with the UK has always been that its elitists have always been bolstered by an appalling and mostly hereditary class system.
There was always less chance of knocking some sense into their heads and long ago, your aristocracy’s main focus to paraphrase Wretchard’s hoot of a phrase “turned to manners.
That should be your first order of priorities, Fletcher. Dealing with your own aristocracy and then applying UK law equally to everyone including Muslims.
And deciding whether the UK wants to continue being part of a loser alliance like the EU which will bring the UK down when it implodes.
Bob Murphy,
The only thing you seem to understand are mindless pissing contests. Nobody is impressed by your swagger. Certainly not I. And btw, her race conquered more empires, empires hundred of times its size, than you have knuckles to walk on.
@mika2k1
Her race?
I presume you speak of the English.
America has never aspired to conquer other empires. We fought to disengage ourselves from theirs.
End of story.
Rush hour in Lashkar Gah. Over in Kandahar, an officer from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who is working with our Special Forces, told me that his country is putting $50 million dollars into an Afghan road project. Talking with citizens from UAE makes me want to skip town and head to Dubai where it’s safe and the Arabs are very hospitable, though many Afghans I talk with don’t seem to like Arabs. When my western friends talk bad about Arabs, I think of places like UAE or Qatar where we are extremely welcome and safe. The idea that we are in a global religious war is untrue. Certainly there are wars unfolding that have religious basis, but this is not World War III. We are not in a war against Muslims, and the vast majority of Muslims are not at war with us. Islam is experiencing a culture-wide religious and political civil war, much like the wars that accompanied the Reformation in Europe. We are trying to put out the flames of the Islamic civil war. Yet sometimes we make it worse. — Michael Yon
It has become clear to me that we’re losing this war. But losing doesn’t mean lost.
When someone says they know what to do in Afghanistan, it’s best to remain skeptical. Some folks are flat-out lying, like recent attempts to deny the existence of a secret report documenting how 10 French soldiers who were killed didn’t have enough ammo or working radios. Others are telling us what we want to hear, like it will just take a few more troops and some border incursions into Pakistan to straighten out this mess.
There are a few honest players in Afghanistan, and I’m listening carefully to them. But please understand this much: In a land whose paradoxes can confuse and even crush powerful empires, any solutions – if they even exist – will not be simple or painless. — The Afghanistan paradox
@Cannoneer No. 4
Michael Yon is a singularly impressive writer. He really gets to the nub of it.
It’s incredible that other journalists can be aware of him and just not get it.