Max Boot on Afghanistan
Writing in Commentary, Max Boot describes President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy as everything John McCain would have done — with some changes in atmospherics.
The new Afghanistan policy that President Obama unveiled at the White House today was pretty much all that supporters of the war effort could have asked for, and probably pretty similar to what a President McCain would have decided on. … The big news — though it had been apparent for some time — is that Obama is eschewing those who argue for a major downsizing of our efforts to focus on a narrow counter-terrorism strategy of simply picking off individual bad guys. Instead, Obama is embracing a more wide-ranging counterinsurgency strategy focused on enhancing “the military, governance, and economic capacity of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” …
I am not sold on every aspect of the Obama policy. For instance, he endorsed legislation to send even more money to Pakistan promising that there would be “benchmarks” to make sure the aid isn’t wasted like previous U.S. donations to Islamabad. … I also have grave doubt that the “new Contact Group for Afghanistan and Pakistan” will do much good. … Count me skeptical that Iran, for one, actually has a stake in “lasting peace and security” in Afghanistan if that means that Afghanistan will be a democratic ally of the United States, a.k.a. the Great Satan. But it is true that the Iranians were mildly helpful in Afghanistan in early 2002, and it wouldn’t hurt their willingness to provide cooperation in the future while remaining skeptical of any promises they may make.”
In an earlier post, I wrote that it made sense to treat both Pakistan and Afghanistan as one theater, but that this entailed the additional risk of dragging the already complex situation in Pakistan into the equation. Like Max Boot, I doubt the Iranians will help for nothing. There will always be “linkage”; there’s no free lunch. Having said that, I remain convinced that Afghanistan/Pakistan can in some sense be meaningfully won but only if resources and patience are devoted to it. The challenges are huge. Afghanistan is a bigger country, geographically, than Iraq and all its institutions are starting from a far lower base than the Land Between the Rivers. And because of the complication of Pakistan the theater can degenerate into a crisis that had no parallel in the defeated empire of Saddam. A senior military officer who spoke regarding Afghanistan at a dinner I attended also believed Afghanistan could be won “if”. That’s the crucial word: “if”. Bing West wrote about the ifs:
“Obama has reason to tread carefully. Pres. Jimmy Carter also had high goals, but the gap between his performance and his rhetoric inculcated an attitude of cynicism throughout the ranks of the military. To win in Afghanistan, Obama must lobby his party to support the war effort, year after year, and to supply the necessary resources. Instead, by promising that he will win while reducing funding, he’s made a daunting task sound impossibly easy.”
You can always walk across a long high wire if you keep your nerve and nobody twangs the thing under you. In this I predicted that BHO would receive more support from conservatives and the members of his own party. The bottom line is you can get across a wire stretched across the Niagra but it’s a long way to fall.
We already saw the support that the fat bombastic senator-for-life from Massachusets is going to give the O-admin when they do anything responsible in foreign policy. It will be interesting to see the coalitions forming behind the Afghan/Pakistan policy. It does not seem though that this policy is where Obama’s heart is. I can’t imagine him as part of his own support!
They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but that’s diagnosable schizophrenia, if you ask me.
OH Come on…Anything can happen when enough resources are used (why look at the stimulus package, hint, hint, wink, wink. How many more stim paks we gotta go thru) what a lame report, Iranians love the “thousand cuts” method of bleeding the US dry, Iran was shitting their pants in 2002! FEAR makes it happen and I do not see any FEAR in the happy face of Obama, “0″ can’t even rattle a sword with any thoughts of ever pulling it out, wishful thinking. The Republicans need to buck the “Clueless-in-Chief” at every opportunity and point out the absolute hypocrisy of the Democrat’s at what they continuously say and promise with their actions. This is a fight for our freedoms and liberties not a “Can’t we just get along” when their guy is in power, they didn’t! And we have too much at stake here at home to let them get away with their lies and misleading intentions. Iran ain’t gonna truly help because there is nothing to fear so it is a simple feint to draw more of our precious resources and blood, We the Non-Muslim Country have NO FRIENDS in that area, the Afghan are not our friends (No Muslim can be!) the Pakies, the Iranians, the Russians have absolutely no good intentions and every plan to bleed us! Nation building is not what we should be doing there, getting out is the best solution now.
I’ve never disagreed with Boot on so many points before.
He was on Bennet show, comparing the vastly greater violence in Iraq in 2006, and stating that Baghdad was until recently, a city under siege, comparing that with a relatively Peaceful Kabul.
All true, but it is also true that we had 130,000 troops, and spent mountains of money on operations and equipment, not to mention the Anbar awakening, for which there is no prospect of anything similar in Afghanistan. Nor is there any realistic prospect of an effective central government actually in control of the country.
He downplayed the importance of Pakistan, saying that if we could stabilize Afghanistan, we’d be in good shape wrt dealing with Al-Q in Pakistan.
—
Yon makes more sense to me:
Yon,
President Obama has just spoken on AfPak. I closed my eyes and listened closely to his words, coming via the BBC from the other side of the world.
The President’s words were disappointing. He talked about our goal to reach a force level of 134,000 Afghan soldiers and 82,000 police by 2011. This is not even in the neighborhood of being enough. Further, the increase of 21,000 U.S. troops is likely just a bucket of water on the growing bonfire. One can only expect that sometime in 2010, the President will again be forced to announce another increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
If there were not people like Gates and Petraeus up there, my gut would say to pull out. It is only my faith in the military, and what I saw them accomplish against heavy odds in Iraq, that gives me hope.
—
Carlotta Gall has emerged as a premier voice on AfPak. I’ve noticed over time that she seems to be ahead of the curve on reporting, and so when her name appears, my eyes focus on her words.
It remains popular to bash the New York Times, but when it comes to war reporting they are tough to match.
Alternative media sources seem to be mostly avoiding serious firsthand Afghanistan reporting. Have any non-active duty dedicated-bloggers spent a year there yet? I’m currently reading through the latest of about $600 worth of books on the fight — waiting quietly in the back of the room, for today –before the rough journey ahead. Unfortunately it looks like Mexico might fill the off-seasons from AfPak.
From the New York Times:
Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx
The story had this disturbing anectdote:
At the same time, American officials told The New York Times this week that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency continued to offer money, supplies and guidance to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan as a proxy to help shape a friendly government there once American forces leave.
Yon had this goofy quote from a Brit:
Yon,
Others would disagree with me. A well placed and very experienced British officer just emailed me his impressions, to whit:
The Brit:
“An impressive statement of intent – I particularly liked the bits about bearing down on Afghan corruption and corruption in how USAID money is spent. The speech inspires confidence and, as he is not Bush, it could encourage others to come to the party in a more meaningful way.
I don’t mean any offence about Bush as I for one see history judging him more favorably than contemporary commentators it’s just that the Europeans might follow Obama in a way that they never would Bush.”
—
Sounds like the Mere Statement of intent by the Messiah should be sufficient to end Afghan corruption!
Inspires Confidence!
Jeesh
The Pakistanis will just rob us three times as much. The Iranians helped us in 2002 – after letting at least 2 9/11 hijackers through their territory. Perhaps the Iranians helped us in order to look docile and helpful precisely so that we would be lured the more defenselessly into the maelstrom of the Kush, which had been the Russo-Chinese-Persian plan all along? Perhaps the Iranians began aiding the Taliban precisely at the moment when they realized Bush was not going to abandon Iraq – the invasion of which had not been in their plans (Iraq-Iranian enmity was a farce between two dilapidated states being put to other uses at the time)? Perhaps Hekmatyar and the other warlords, long-time Soviet clients who ran to Herat and Iran in the immediate aftermath (which no one remembers) and who are still at large, simply play stupid when it suits the strategy, and then ride roughshod over agreements as soon as the coast is clear? Have not the KGB regime in Kremlin created a Persian mini-superpower? Have not the Chinese made large deals with the Iranians? Is not Pakistan China’s traditional ally? And how is it, exactly, that a country which ought to be absolutely preoccupied with its own survival should be engaged rather in profoundly destabilizing its own government and its neighbors, to say nothing of the USA and the entire Order? How can such a ridiculously incompetent country expose itself like that, at a moment like this? And so on.
The bottom line is Alexander demonstrated how to deal with the Asiatic Gordian Knot a long, long time ago. The answer is not to try and out-conspire the conspiracy-saturated, cunning civilizational weaklings: the answer is to inflict so much pain they collapse into the abject servility for which they are also well-known and which is their rightful place in the hierarchy. What – don’t some extremely nasty diseases find their home in the Kush, and can’t we just introduce them via espionage? Haven’t we known how to do this since early in the Cold War, just in case? Well, now’s the case. Nuke their organs with botullinum.
Doug, the key to the statement “If there were not people like Gates and Petraeus up there, my gut would say to pull out. It is only my faith in the military, and what I saw them accomplish against heavy odds in Iraq” is without a president with a backbone like Bush you cannot have a “Gates and Petraeus”, “0″ ain’t got backbone for Military Operations, so you can have all the troops Yon thinks we need but when the blood flows and the bodies pile up “0″ won’t be there to back “Gates and Petraeus” so they can’t be the “Gates and Petraeus” in Afghan that they were in Iraq! Wake up folks, you all talk like Iraq is over, I think we are going to be in a new beginning soon and the Iraq conflict will fail, Have faith in our Left, liberal, Democrat Brothers (and sisters)! Their second chance has only started…
Freedom Too Potent for Eunichistan:
…any prospective tenants worried about another terrorist attack
“might balk at a name with such potent ideological symbolism.”
Editorial
Freedom to Name That Tower
March 28, 2009
A few years ago, former Gov. George Pataki of New York declared that the tallest skyscraper planned for the World Trade Center site should be seen as “a freedom tower.” So Freedom Tower became the structure’s name — and also its burden. As David Dunlap notes in The Times, any prospective tenants worried about another terrorist attack “might balk at a name with such potent ideological symbolism.”
Now, quietly and sensibly, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is promoting the place as One World Trade Center, its legal address, as it seeks to market leases in the building.
Since Obama is bailing out Pockestan, can we expect him to ask for the removal of their CEO?
Another, just as effective (perhaps) and much sneakier way to solve this problem (rather than the various forms of WMD so far proposed) might be to give the Afghans a little present, or set of presents. A cocktail of wheat rust, various forms of blight and assorted insect pests. One never knows – a plague of locusts might persuade them of the error of their ways!
Since this Afghan-Pakistan-Iran problem is the result of a global strategy, I wonder whether the State Department and our “reset” team might be able to pursue a novel diplomatic strategy: namely, let it be known to the SCO powers that, “hey, while we were rummaging around in the Evil Bush/Cheney files looking for indictable crimes against humanity we happened to come across all these intelligence reports and memos of backchannel conversations about how you’re effectively funding these guys and providing transport and diplomatic cover and bribes and the usual baksheesh…. Gee, it might not be good for a bunch of your business relationships, among other things, if in the course of our upcoming blitz against the prior administration, to be led by the redoubtable and phlemy Sen. Pat Leahy, it should become known exactly how you m______f____ers operate…”
But I doubt it. There me must be something short of genocide we can do (not least because that’s just (an evil) pipedream anyway).
Gallegher is talking to Daniel Hannan!
When power is not exercised, is it still power?
Now that we have declared, in one form or another, that we do not desire to exercise any power (NK shootdown, Serious Push in AfPak, Cold steel in Iran, etc) We will see the world reform into new spheres of Exercised Power. Some of the rearrangement may be useful, some (most) deadly, all unexpected and, for a short time, amusing.
Then, having eviserated our own Will to Power, much less the actual capability, will we be able to “Reset” our own global interests? I think not.
Given that, will the liberal appetite for American humiliation be sated? Again, not, for they want us reduced to a quivering third rate rag-tag jumping to whatever frog is king for the decade.
I continue to search for the why behind the self destruction. Yeah, I read all the stuff and can recite the intellectual arguments but I just can’t get it in my gut.
Be very reasonably afraid.
Jimmah + steroids = Obambi
2010 is sooo far away.
I’ve always been a hawk, but Afghanistan is the totally wrong geography in which to make any statement on how the US can turn things around.
I support the volunteer, very professional services we have but have no interest in seeing more young men chewed up in a place with marginal importance to the USA.
Now we are back to bringing in the ISI on drone targeting permission which will ruin it’s efficacy given the ISI is totally compromised. That’s certainly a loser.
We have tools we can use to remedy the problems we face but no will to use them.
So just keep the VA rehab centers fully staffed and the body bags coming because we won’t “win” in any way in Afghanistan. Yes we may stalemate the Taliban and some of the tribal chiefs but it’ll go retro within a decade. The Soviets will see to that. The Chinese are too busy planning the ultimate electronic collaspe of the US, and making great headway. Meanwhile we’re wasting our treasure in a paleolithic place no one in history has ever defeated.
Finally, and with total sincerety, irradiate the NW tribal ares with dirty bombs, now. What are they going to do? The nations and factions arrayed against us are trying night and day to do the same to us. If you don’t understand that we’re in bigger trouble than I think we’re already facing.
Jimmah + steroids = Obambi
Point understood. But the more accurate formula is perhaps:
Jimmah – testosterone = Obambi
Sculpted pects or not, he screams metro girly man. Reminds me of a political Alex Rodriguez. When do we get the photos of O kissing himself in the mirror?
My apologies to anyone eating lunch at the moment.
5. dan:
The Pakistanis will just rob us three times as much.
You have hit the chewy center. Any aid we send anywhere flows to a few. The populations see little.
Great correct call. But Dan, why is it so obvious to 98% of Americans in the US America and so fog shrouded to those who cavalierly spend our money enriching the grand pooh bahs?
Obama is sending in 17,000 troops, or is it 21,000 now? And we’re supposed to be infinitely grateful that someone is finally paying attention to Afghanistan after Bush was distracted by (winning the important war in the heart of the Middle East in) Iraq.
But, remember just last October, the plan being discussed by Bush, and supported by both Obama and McCain was to send 30,000 new troops around this time – for starters?
How does cutting the new forces by a third represent strength?
In the larger picture, as a super-hawk who believes we should have lit up Afghanistan with the big white light before the sun ever set over the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11/01, I’m agreeing with Yon and Habu and others – asking, what are we trying to win over there? I’ve been there, the hope of planting civilization in Afghanistan is a fool’s dream. So what can we reasonably hope to accomplish? Stopping the Taliban and Al Qaeda from reorganizing? The B’s can do that, the B-52, the B-1, the B-2.
Different geography but illustrative of what pouring mass anything (except radiation) into an area can, or in this case cannot accomplish.
At the beginning of the Battle of the Somme the battle was preceded by seven days of preliminary artillery bombardment, in which the British fired over 1.7 million shells.
Once they went over the top the Germans machine gunned them down in the tens of thousands with the ground gained by the Brits measured in meters in some places.
In todays world our Predators work well but special ops aren’t surprising anyone anymore with the ISI involved. We’re now preparing to fire more of God knows what at the bad guys in caves; and for what?
I am open to a primer on the strategic value and the national threat Afghanistan poses to the USA.
Money line from th Salon summary of responses to O’s Afgan plan (see below) – “All hail Obama.” from Bill f’ing Kristol As I was saying – Ya’ll still certain O is an idiot/traitor?…PS Alexis I hear you! But consider that O is also engaged in politics. He’s got a right to cherry-pick from his opposition – Rush, after all, has a real constitutency – I’m guessing he has many more fans than detractors at the Club (which is one reason why you’re in the Wilderness now!) Might make sense for the Belmont Club to make O’s job harder on that front – Play the loyal opposition, rather than insisting he’s the disloyal Manchurian Pres. Instead, most folks here are intent on making it easier for him define his antitheses…SALON summary below…
It’s not every day that you see congressional Democrats, liberals and leading neo-conservatives in agreement on military strategy. For the most part, though, that’s what’s happened Friday, when President Obama announced his administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan.
Perhaps most notable was the very enthusiastic reaction from the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol. Kristol’s no Obama fan, but according to the magazine’s Michael Goldfarb, he likes this much. In a blog post, Goldfarb wrote that Kristol, “said he would have framed a few things differently, but his basic response was: ‘All hail Obama!’”
Similarly, Robert Kagan, who with Kristol co-founded the Project for a New American Century, wrote for the Washington Post that Obama had made “a gutsy and correct decision.” Kagan called the new strategy “evidence that the president is pragmatic in the best sense of the word,” adding, “He and his key advisers, such as Richard Holbrooke, understand that better and more effective government in Afghanistan is a key to the successful defense of American security… President Obama recognizes in Afghanistan what the previous administration only belatedly recognized in Iraq: that the only way out is forward.”
Democrats in Congress, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, have also praised Obama’s decision. So did Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, though he added one caveat, saying, “I am concerned that the new strategy may still be overly Afghan-centric when it needs to be even more regional… [T]he proposed military escalation in Afghanistan, without an adequate strategy in Pakistan, could make the situation worse, not better.” (That statement may have been written a little early, as the plan does involve an increased focus on Pakistan, and much of Obama’s speech dealt with that country.)
Effective Afghan government?
Okay, sounds good. How do we do that? Really? With the human beings at hand in Afghanistan now?
With their tribal, bandit culture overlayed with the remnants of the technocrats trained by the Russians in the ’80′s intent on forming a centralized Socialist government (which is the antithesis of how the Afghans would govern themselves), how do we do that?
Last time I looked, Pakistan was a sovereign country. And though we do need an overall “strategy” for dealing with Pakistan, how far can we go inside Pakistan tactically, to implement our strategy? Who do we trust?
The fact that Kristol likes it is not the most ringing endorsement possible. He’s an intelligent man, but I think he still labors under the idea that “hard” and “soft” power implemented by the US Government can “change the world”. Maybe.
Maybe this much (holding thumb and forefinger very close together).
I respectfully disagree with the naysayers.
I do agree that change in the area will be difficult and, further, that both the current and all past approaches have been failures.
To be specific.
The first question is why? No one has ever really entered the area with a view to impact the folks. The reasons have been the same for generations, the land isn’t worth much, the people are insular with little commercial value. No one has adequately explored the mountains to determine what is there, and no one has evaluated the value of a stuborn people. I think there is plenty of value in both; the mountains and the folks.
More importantly, there is the value of a flanking position on both Russia and China. China wants to move west under the Russian belly. Russia wants what Russia always wants.
Second question, how?
Step one is alluded to at my 12 above. Exercise power. Open an overland route from the sea, paralell to the Iran/ Paki border. Own it. No need to ask permission. Open Afg to the world.
Deliberately propagandize against Islam. Even against great wailing and gnashing of teeth, continue to point out the errors and foilbles of Islam.
This effort will spill, and rile and foam and…lead to nothing but noise.
Will anyone agree, nah…oh well.
benj:
I’m surprised that the Obama administration hasn’t tried to claim that Glenn Beck is the present day leader of the opposition. In talk radio circles, Rush Limbaugh is a has been, or at least was before the Obama administration resurrected his career.
In reality, the opposition doesn’t have any strong leadership. But then, the opposition to the Bush administration in the past eight years didn’t have strong leadership in its opposition for most of its existence either.
Although it is important to be loyal and constructive in opposition, it is legitimate to not only disagree with some of the tactics used by the Obama campaign but also to point out that many of the difficulties the Obama administration will be facing are a direct result of the means Obama used to come into power in the first place.
Although I do not regard President Obama as a “Manchurian Candidate”, I do think his campaign advertising has cleverly promoted what could be called a “cult of personality”. The Obama campaign used artistic conventions usually reserved for religious iconography; whenever a political faction uses such iconography, it rarely fails to polarize the political landscape.
Remember, the slogan “Yes We Can” has multiple entendres, many of which are less than flattering to Barack Obama’s political movement.
21. michael hoskins
How blue is the sky, how swift the stream?
The ethereal nature of your queries.
“No one has adequately explored the mountains to determine what is there, and no one has evaluated the value of a stuborn people. I think there is plenty of value in both; the mountains and the folks.”
Well the place throughout history has been explored ad nauseum and found wanting by all who have gone before. As for your most poetic, ” I think there is plenty of value in both; the mountains and the folks.” Well so far in several thousand years no one has discovered any value in either the mountains or the people,unless contemplating your navel on a mountain top at sunrise is the worlds verdict and cheap.liilterate labor is your goal.
Your second, the “overland route” is to me at least, absolutely stupefying. Have you noticed the entire world economy at the moment? And who would administer such an undertaking? I’ll just stick with stpefying.
Finally, “Deliberately propagandize against Islam”
I believe the Islams have done an executive level job since their ideology was developed to show the world what a horribly psychotic ideology it is. They have been at the throats of every religion with Scim´i`ter
slashing the heads off of Infidels who would not convert. Now they are upping the ante attempting to wreck civilizations by flying airplanes into buildings, blowing up trains, and seeking in tose Afghan mountains someone who can make a spore so deadly that millions will die.
Islam delenda est.
michael @21…
A route to Kandahar has been proposed here at the Club some time back.
While it’s affordable, practical and would change the campaign — H is unlikely to go for it.
Until Afghanistan gets un-land-locked the situation there can’t get out of the fourteenth century.
Structuring such a deal could now be done under the pressure of the Pakistani elite’s crisis.
Of course islam will have to be destroyed: it’s little different than shintoism, nazism, communism — it’s anti-Constitutional to the core.
We were able to destroy both nazism and shintoism without destroying every German or Japanese citizen. Properly focused energies and policies can produce the same effect upon islam.
The key is to understand symbolic power and to perform jujitsu on islam’s trops and memes. Some blood must be spilt, but such martial conflict need never reach apocalyptic levels.
Shintoism was destroyed as a living creed when military reality overturned it’s core fantasy conceit: the emperor submitted to a foreigner!
Islam has so many fantasy conceits that it is ripe for psychological jujitsu. It just takes imagination and will. This is where W went completely off the rails. He did not correctly frame the nature of the conflict and the nature of the enemy. Hence all subsequent strategy has been flawed. H is about to make W into a ‘genius’ by showing us the Harvard Way.
As an American, I like my ‘crash & burn’ to stay on the movie screen. H seems bound and determined to make the disaster flick leave the screen: life will imitate art.
Maybe we could just have the Kaaba mysteriously blown up. Say, by a severally retarded Muslim Arab with a small Soviet nuclear artillery shell strapped under his Hajj robes…
Alexis – I recall your worries re O’s iconagraphy during the campaign and I thought you were getting perilously close to those 60s conspiracy-mongers who imagined American consumers were at the mercy of evil geniuses adding sublimable (where’s W? or Michael Steele?) messages in ads. I think you’ll get a better sense of how O won from this short piece by Larry Goodwyn -you’re read stuff of us his in the past – takes you through the N.C. campaign -need similar accounts from all the states… http://www.firstofthemonth.org/
The sharpest critiques of O will almost certainly come from the left – Sullivan has a link to a piece by an IMF economist re folly of failure to nationalize banks a la Krugman. Though K. is not truly to the Left. Hitch may provide on that front. He trumpeting grandeur of Marx’s prophecies in the Atlantic this month…Hope they’re all wrong – but can’t say I m sure…
PS – Alexis – Think for a sec on your notion that OBAMA was responsible for polarizing things. You’re sense of history here is manifestly off…the 04 campgina was pitched to the bases of both parties, right? O made his name as a uniter not a divider – re the famouis red state/blue state. He’s still rolling down that road – That’s why 60% are still with him…
unless contemplating your navel on a mountain top at sunrise is the worlds verdict
If those folks would actually do that they might get somewhere. Instead, it’s bugger thy nephew, beat the wives, fire the AK, grow opium and burn books.
Is it just me, or did GEN Petraeus come across as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs on Fox News a few minutes ago?
Somebody bad is fixing to happen.
Good gravy, Benj –you better wake up and smell the coffee. Things are NOT going well –your man blew it sky high with that stimulus whoop-thru. I betcha he lost half his independants right there. Take a look at Rasmussen lately?
missed in, cannoneer –what was the topic?
Is Obama’s plan a Surge or the “same thing done better” approach?
Pock-a-stahn, buddy. He did not appear to me to be comfortable with what he was saying.
Which is disquieting as hell.
uh oh –toeing the line, and the line is wrong –cripes –the O team is moving in –
Petraeus: Military Reserves ‘Right of Last Resort’ for Threats Inside Pakistan
28. Cannoneer No. 4:
I noticed the same body language. How to read it I don’t know . If I was bputting my chips on the table I’d say he’s uncomfortable working for obama and would liked to have said stuff like
“Hell yes Pakistan is NOT to be trusted” but he knows he can’t…well actually he can but ususally only once.
I like the General but Cannoneer did it look to you like he has been the victim of ribbon inflation? I mean you could add Audie Murphy and Doug McArthur together and not come up with that much salad. Gads
I have no doubt he earned every last one of them, Habu.
At his level he could choose to wear fewer. I choose to think he wears them all to set an example to the troops to wear theirs. That rack is a pain in the butt. I doubt he puts up with it for his own ego’s sake.
There are a bunch of new ribbons they didn’t have when we were in, and he has been at war pretty much continuously the last six years. Audi Murphy was only at it 27 months.
that’s a helluva story, how a recruit put a round through his chest, out on the range somewhere i guess. maybe he used up his bad luck right there –as in how many officers get shot accidentally on a training exercize, and then make four star General?
“To Hell and Back” –good movie, and realistic in a whole new way, as the hero was played by himself, the actual hero.
Audie Murphy, if anyone is reading this –not Gen Petraeus. The ‘most-decorated American soldier of WWII’ as a civilian Hollywood actor about ten years later starred in the movie about the most decorated soldier of WWII, Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy played the lead. pretty durn well, too, for a country boy.
When a man presents himself with a halo painted around his head, he sets the emotional and political expectations of himself sky high. I suppose that is what “hope” is supposed to be about. Well, the problem with setting high expectations for one’s self is that one is expected to meet them. If Barack Obama is truly a superman, he certainly has an opportunity now to prove it.
George W. Bush called himself a “uniter, not a divider”. If Obama claims to be uniting Americans, then he is truly more of the same.
And by the way, I didn’t approve when Republicans used “RATS” in a commercial in 2000…
Pakistan is a failed state. It was never more than an undergraduate’s idea. The name Pakistan is neither the name of a place nor a people, it is an acronym (Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir). It was held together by the corps of British trained Muslim officers of the Colonial Army. It balanced the US and China* against India and, its main ally, Russia during the Cold War. It now has no further reason to exist.
The parties most concerned are 1) our ourselves, because we need to ensure that Pakistan and its nuclear weapons do not become a play ground for Al-Qaeda and Iran, and 2) India, which wants to re-assert its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to end terror attacks on its territory.
We need to work with India to manage the dissolution of Pakistan. India could annex Punjab, Kashmir, and Sind (the mouth of the Indus). The Northwest territories of Pakistan could be merged with the Pashtun parts of Afghanistan as a Pashtunistan which would be an Indian protectorate. The same could be done for Baluchistan. The Iranians would hate that, but so what.
*I have long posited a pipeline between Pakistan ISI and Chinese intelligence.
fat man, Pakistan and China have oodles of formal military cooperation treaties. Look it up –it’ll blow your mind (well, it did mine) that this is so little known in the west.