There isn't anything to win: we have no valid objectives. This is just neocolonialism, and it's dumb.

The fools have been in there for eight years now, and it's entirely obvious they don't know what they're doing.
 

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Brian:

Michael Scheuer is an ex spook who sees likes to brag that he sees the world through bin Laden's eyes. Indeed, he appears to see the world through the enemy's eyes to such an extent that he routinely credits enemy propaganda.

The book "Imperial Hubris" made a few timely points, but Scheuer was so wedded to his thesis that bin Laden was destined to defeat the United States that he could not see how the Surge essentially destroyed al Qeada's operational military capability and won the Iraq War. Rather than another Vietnam, Iraq ended up being al Qaeda's graveyard.

The Soviet and NATO experiences in Afghanistan are not remotely comparable, nonwithstanding the whiny prediction by the defeated Red Army general. The differences between Afghanistan 1987 and 2009 are legion and substantive:

1987: The entire population opposed the USSR.
2009: The majority of the population supports NATO. The Taliban are loathed outside of certain Pushtun areas in the south.

1987: The USSR could not enter large swaths of Afghanistan and all of Pakistan.
2009: NATO can go where it wants in Afghanistan and the Paks and CIA are hunting the Taliban in Pakistan.

1987: The drafted Red Army was poorly trained and had even worse morale. The Muj could defeat the Red Army in a stand up fight with something close to even odds. See the Panjir Valley
2009: The US and Brit Armies are far better led, trained and equipped than the Russians. It took 150-200 Taliban to defeat a single 8 man squad in their only victory to date. Usually, the US military slaughters the enemy by the dozens.

1987: The Red Army lost 14,453 men.
2009: The US Army has lost 800 men.

1987: The US was supplying high tech weapons and intelligence to the Muj, giving them technical superiority over the Russians in certain areas including neutralizing Russian air power.
2009: The Taliban's version of high tech is the al Qeada supplied IED. Our airpower, especially the drones, hunts the Taliban at will.

The plan McChrystal and Petreus are proposing is the classic counter insurgency strategy of protecting the population from the guerillas until an indigenous security force can be formed. In short, the plan that won the Iraq War.

Rather than being "macho," these professional counter insurgency experts are being extremely conservative in their request for 40,000 troops. We should instead probably be moving over most of the 130,000 Iraq contingent because our useless EU NATO allies outside of Britain and now France are contributing no combat soldiers.
 

The Daily Show had a great bit on why we need to stay in Afghanistan.

We still have a chance at getting the high score for Afghan invaders.

High
Score
 

Bart,

The problem with your response is that it fails to understand the long view. Sure, another 200,000 troops would work, for a time, but then what? The resistance takes the long view, and will inflict much damage along the way.

Your comparisons between the Soviet effort and our effort are besides the point. Whatever superior advantages you think we might enjoy are still not enough to get the job done (and what is that job precisely?).

It's unrealistic to think that we can manage anything by a "surge" but delay the inevitable--and this delay will cost many lives and much money.

Brian
 

... the Surge essentially destroyed al Qeada's operational military capability ...

Seeing as there wasn't any "al Qeada" [sic] in Iraq to begin with, not a real accomplisment.

... and won the Iraq War ...
We won?!?!? Whoopee!!!! Must have been napping. Can the troops come home now then?

Cheers,
 

Not to mention:

"al Qeada's operational military capability"

... like al Qaeda is/has some actual army somewhere. <*sheesh*>

Anyone this dumb has no business criticising Mckey Scheuer.

Cheers,
 

Until all our troops are out of Iraq, leaving a stable, multi-ethnic, non-sectarian democracy, I will consider anybody stating that "we've won" to be massively delusional or egregiously dishonest.

Since a critical feature of the temporary stabilization of Iraq (long enough to avoid an even worse electoral disaster for the GOP) was the heavily subsidized "Sunni awakening", I wonder who we'll find in Afghanistan to take our dollars and arms for staying out of the fray.

It's an oddity that the same people today who tend to spout mindless macho militaristic BS also tend to think that other people can always be bought.

Here's a hint: people who take the name "Taliban" are probably not very susceptible to greed.

Propping up a corrupt regime while building an indigenous army to prop up that same corrupt regime is going to strengthen the Taliban -- and I think it's insane to expect it to work anyway.
 

The notion that we won the war in Iraq is idiotic.

Just what did we win Bart?

And if we won, why are we still there?

The argument that we're not the Soviets and the situation is completely different is irrelevant BS. WW2 wasn't WW1, and WW1 wasn't the Franco-Prussian War, etc. BFD -- NOW is the only thing that's real. What are the military objectives in Afghanistan or Iraq?

The reality is that we don't have any, and the results speak for themselves. We've been in in Afghanistan for EIGHT years, Iraq for SIX, and the situation of both countries is worse than it was when we started.
 

Brian Tamanaha said...

Bart, The problem with your response is that it fails to understand the long view. Sure, another 200,000 troops would work, for a time, but then what?

We hand the country over to a larger Afghan Army the way we are currently doing in Iraq. It would take 2-3 years.

The resistance takes the long view, and will inflict much damage along the way.

Scheuer made this same contention about Iraq. There is no long view for a guerilla force cut off from the people and being systematically hunted down, without weapons, sanctuary, food or hope.

Mao once aptly said that his communist guerillas moves among the people as fish swim through the sea. However, take away the sea and the guerillas are left flopping around and suffocate.

Your comparisons between the Soviet effort and our effort are besides the point. Whatever superior advantages you think we might enjoy are still not enough to get the job done (and what is that job precisely?).

Not enough in what way?

The counter insurgency strategy is to isolate the guerillas from the population and its coerced support support until a local army can take over. After Iraq, the US military is probably the pre-eminent counter insurgency practitioners in the world. CENTCOM is commanded by the man who literally wrote the book on counter-inurgency and then ran a victorious text book campaign in Iraq. McChrystal is a special operations officer who is a disciple of Petreus.

What we need to make this work is boots on the ground. - veteran counter insurgency boots from Iraq.
 

We don't have to stay in Af forever if we apply a little more "Perfidious Albion" and less Woodrow "We are going down in Mexico to teach the Mexicans how to elect good men!" Wilson utopian Dudley Do-Rite do-goodism. The local tribes and traditional Tribal Chieftans are natural enemies of the Taliban and are ACLU progressive by comparison. If we arm them to the teeth and ply them with bribes, they will love us and our arms and money from afar. They are the natural bulwark against the return of the Taliban and they "ain't goin' nowhere" either, so have the staying power we do not.

We probably DO need a temp surge now, however, as the Taliban are presently too well armed for any single tribe to resist a concentrated Taliban attack, so we will need to provide a protective bubble for a couple of years until we can arm the tribes of our choice to the teeth--and thus I support the McCrystal plan insofar it is seen as a holding action until we can engage the Tribes so that we do not have to forever maintain a significant military presence there.

As one British diplomat once replied in response to a compliment about how well Britian "ruled" Egypt:
"Oh, we don't actually *rule* anything, but we DO control those who do."
 

arne:

Seeing as there wasn't any "al Qeada" [sic] in Iraq to begin with, not a real accomplisment.

You are an example of the utter failure of the press to report the Iraq War news beyond casualty figures and Dem calls to surrender. In fact, captured al Qaeda and their documents indicate that this terror group fielded multiple brigades of largely Iraqi Sunni fighters led by foreign "Emirs." This force launched a Tet-like offensive in 2006 against Iraq and were eventually defeated when the Iraqi Sunni tribes allies with the additional Surge troops.

The al Qeada force in Iraq was the largest operational military force al Qeada ever possessed and it was almost entirely destroyed. The Taliban are hardly any better.
 

C2H50H said...

Until all our troops are out of Iraq, leaving a stable, multi-ethnic, non-sectarian democracy, I will consider anybody stating that "we've won" to be massively delusional or egregiously dishonest.

Read up on Iraqi politics. Malaki's ruling party has developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-religion Iraqi nationalist party over the past couple years.
 

Charles Gittings said...

The notion that we won the war in Iraq is idiotic. Just what did we win Bart?

We removed an enemy regime and replaced it with stable democratic friendly regime while destroying much of al Qaeda in the process. The war could have been executed better, but we had to relearn counter insurgency and enough Iraqis had to die in the terror campaign for them to decide that the Amriki were a better ally.

And if we won, why are we still there?

We are ahead of the redeployment timetable in the post war Iraq Status of Forces Agreement.

What are the military objectives in Afghanistan or Iraq?

The people. This is the basis of all counter insurgency doctrine.

Our national interests are the same as they were in 2001.

The reality is that we don't have any, and the results speak for themselves. We've been in in Afghanistan for EIGHT years, Iraq for SIX, and the situation of both countries is worse than it was when we started.

Well, Brian does have a legitimate point about the Taliban and al Qaeda having a long term view when compared to certain of our citizens.
 

"We hand the country over to a larger Afghan Army the way we are currently doing in Iraq. It would take 2-3 years."

If that's the case Bart, why didn't we leave in 2004?

PS:

David Petraeus is an incompetent 21st-century version of George McClellan.
 

Well that's exactly the point Bart:

People per se are NOT military objectives, and neither is "democracy" (whatever the term might mean to a neo-fascist bigot like you).

And this is NOT "counter-insurgency" it's an armed occupation. You people keep claiming the Taliban aren't popular, but if that's the case, how is it that they even exist after eight years of this nonsense?
 

PS:

I'd love to see an accurate report on how many innocent civilians have been killed by all parties to these idiotic phony "wars".

I'd bet the US is #1 by a huge margin.

Not that Bart actually cares or anything.
 

The al Qeada force in Iraq was the largest operational military force al Qeada ever possessed and it was almost entirely destroyed. The Taliban are hardly any better.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 7:02 PM


We bribed the Iraqi Al Qaeda to stop fighting, you imbecile. Good luck doing that to the Taliban!
 

Bart,

You appear, by your comment, "Malaki's (sic) ruling party has developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-religion Iraqi nationalist party over the past couple years", to be reaching for a ruling of "delusional".

The populace may have grown distrustful of religious parties, but Maliki's party remains affiliated with ultrareligious folks. Like many of the players in Iraq, he appears to be playing for field position in preparation for the free-for-all when US troops can no longer impose comity.

Again: until US forces are no longer in a position to impose an artificial peace, nobody really knows what Iraq is going to look like after we leave.
 

C2H50H said...

The populace may have grown distrustful of religious parties, but Maliki's party remains affiliated with ultrareligious folks.

A large segment of Iraqi society is religious. In order to have a broad based party in Iraq, you must include the religious.

Again: until US forces are no longer in a position to impose an artificial peace, nobody really knows what Iraq is going to look like after we leave.

You may have missed this in the near blackout of Iraq news by the Dem press, but the Iraqi Army took over all security duties weeks ago as part of the SOFA agreement. What you see now is pretty much what you will see after we leave - the occasional bomb, but general peace.
 

Charles Gittings said...

"We hand the country over to a larger Afghan Army the way we are currently doing in Iraq. It would take 2-3 years."

If that's the case Bart, why didn't we leave in 2004?

The Taliban did not reorganize in Pakistan and return to Afghanistan in force until 2008.

David Petraeus is an incompetent 21st-century version of George McClellan.

Right. And Robert E. Lee bin Laden is running Iraq today.

People per se are NOT military objectives, and neither is "democracy" (whatever the term might mean to a neo-fascist bigot like you).

What then was the point of the American Revolution?

And this is NOT "counter-insurgency" it's an armed occupation.

Conducting a counter insurgency without an armed occupation would be an neat trick indeed.

You people keep claiming the Taliban aren't popular, but if that's the case, how is it that they even exist after eight years of this nonsense?

Because we did not destroy them in Pakistan where they reformed.

I'd love to see an accurate report on how many innocent civilians have been killed by all parties to these idiotic phony "wars". I'd bet the US is #1 by a huge margin.

On behalf of my brothers in arms you have just slandered, fell free to f___ yourself.
 

Bart,

I'm sure the Iraqi Air Force is providing close air support too, right?

What we see right now may be what Iraq will look like later. Or it may (and this has a not-insignificant probability) devolve into civil war.

The point is, we don't know. Neither do any of our Iraqi experts. Claiming that what we see now is what it will be is simply wishful thinking.

Therefore, claiming victory for the counter-insurgency tactics and strategy used in Iraq is delusional or dishonest.

To then insist that we apply these unproven tactics in Afghanistan, which is yet another society, yet another and even messier can of worms, is mindless wishful thinking.
 

On behalf of my brothers in arms you have just slandered, fell free to f___ yourself.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 9:48 PM


It looks like he'd rather come in here an humiliate you.
 

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Bart,

If we had been invaded by another country with superior force, what would you do? Fade to the Colorado hills and bide your time. Any government installed by the invaders would be seen by you as a puppet government.

Your faith in counter insurgency strategies--your infatuation with our military knowledge and tactics--fails to appreciate how Afghans see the situation.

It doesn't matter how awesome (tactically and technically) we are--or think we are--that doesn't change the fact that we are invaders.

You can dismiss Scheuer if you like, but there is no question that he knows the situation. More importantly, he quotes at length statements from a multitude of Afghans (including some of our "allies" of the moment) who vow that they will not cease to resist until we depart. Only a fool would not take these people at their word.

We should no not be so infatuated with our own power that we cannot recognize the determination of an opponent who will not give up--an opponent who we cannot defeat or pacify because they won't be defeated or pacified.

Brian
 

Conducting a counter insurgency without an armed occupation would be an neat trick indeed.

Not if it's being done by the Afghans. Does your tiny brain ever ponder why, after 8 years of training and support, our Afghan puppets still can't take on the Taliban?
 

I haven't slandered anyone -- I simply stated what appears to be a fact from the available information over the last eight years. Show me the numbers -- you can't. We don't do body counts for a reason, and it isn't because the stats would support your gangsterism.

The rest of your BS is just nonsense.

We'll have to stay in Afghanistan forever in order to prevent the Taliban from "re-organizing"?

How do you explain that fact that our continuous occupation from 2001 until now didn't stop them from "reorganizing"?

Your "counter-insurgency" is nothing but pure tyranny. You're falling all over yourself making up lame,lying,BS excuses for one of the most idiotic military failures in US history. You can cuss at me all you want, but it isn't going to change the facts:

You and every lying neo-fascist hypocrite like you are nothing but terrorists yourselves -- and you're lot more dangerous to the US than the Taliban are.
 

[Bart]: Mao once aptly said that his communist guerillas moves among the people as fish swim through the sea. However, take away the sea and the guerillas are left flopping around and suffocate.

Is Bart suggesting we just kill the indigenous population? Well, I guess we have enough nukes ... then what? Underpants Gnomes have difficulty with step 2....

Cheers,
 

virgil xenophon:

We probably DO need a temp surge now, however, as the Taliban are presently too well armed for any single tribe to resist a concentrated Taliban attack, so we will need to provide a protective bubble for a couple of years until we can arm the tribes of our choice to the teeth-- ...

Only fly in the ointment here is that, for those that choose to read history and not ignore it, the tribes themselves hate each others' guts at least half the time, and if we arm them to the teeth they'll fight it out amongst themselves. In fact that was the status quo ante before the Taliban came and united the country in the wake of the civil war that succeeded the Russian occupation (a civil war fought largely with arms we had given the tribes and warlords back then). Ask Mickey Scheuer. He'll explain it. Or read his book.

Cheers,
 

[Arne]: Seeing as there wasn't any "al Qeada" [sic] in Iraq to begin with, not a real accomplisment.

[Bart]: You are an example of the utter failure of the press to report the Iraq War news beyond casualty figures and Dem calls to surrender. In fact, captured al Qaeda and their documents indicate that this terror group fielded multiple brigades of largely Iraqi Sunni fighters led by foreign "Emirs." This force launched a Tet-like offensive in 2006 against Iraq and were eventually defeated when the Iraqi Sunni tribes allies with the additional Surge troops.

Oh, BS. The majority of the insurgency was domestic (and not "al Qaeda"). And there wasn't even any self-proclaimed "al Qaeda" in Iraq before we so stoopidly invaded. Suck on that, Bart.

Cheers,
 

C2H5OH:

You appear, by your comment, "Malaki's (sic) ruling party has developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-religion Iraqi nationalist party over the past couple years", to be reaching for a ruling of "delusional".

Judging by that and this:

[Bart]: ".... decide that the Amriki were a better ally."

(and the repeated "al Qeada")

I'd say that Bart's been reaching for your namesake instead. He's really in his cups tonight. If he wasn't such an azo, it might induce pity.

Cheers,
 

[Bart]: You may have missed this in the near blackout of Iraq news by the Dem press, but the Iraqi Army took over all security duties weeks ago as part of the SOFA agreement.

Must have been hidden deep in the articles about all the car bombings (and the mortar attacks while Biden visited)....

Cheers,
 

I am very pleased to know that President Obama's administration is reflecting long and hard about the US posture on Afghanistan as, no doubt, are the political leaders of the 27 other NATO countries contributing troops to the ISAF force and the 14 non-NATO countries who have contributed to what is a UN sanctioned mission. This is the ISAF page listing the ISAF Contributing Nations.

Military advice is an essential component of the political decisions governments must take, but it is only one component and wise leadership will seek counsel as widely as possible, especially since Afghanistan presents many problems. Among some factors which may be relevant:-

1. Afghanistan is not and never has been a nation state as the West understands that term. It is a multi-ethnic collection of tribes who generally only ever unite against foreign interference in their affairs. No foreign military power has ever been able to subdue Afghanistan since Alexander the Great. Even he had to marry the daughter (Roxane) of one of the principal warlords in order to get a measure of control and history tells us what that decision did to his empire.

2. Afghanistan affairs are inextricably linked with those of Pakistan, not only because the Pushtun tribes straddle the (theoretical) Afghan-Pak border first marked by a British colonial civil servant, but because the same historical movement in Islam underlies the actual secession of Pakistan from British India, the teaching of the many thousands of Madrassas in Pakistan and inter alia the belief that Afghanistan is a haven for true believers and ought not to be subject to other influences.

3. There is absolutely no prospect of "instant democracy". Funnily enough, the best chance of progress towards democracy was probably the coup of young officers who overthrew the monarchy and were introducing reforms which would have created a more modern and better educated country. Unfortunately, that coup ultimately led to the proxy war with the Soviet Union in which the Reagan Administration backed the forces of reaction and which ultimately fathered today's Al-Quaida and its allies.

4. Counter-insurgency only works if there is a government to protect. If there is no effective government, there is no insurgency but a failed state.

5. The use of air power and artillery is inimical to counter-insurgency, because it alienates the civil population. A massive boots on the ground operation can work over time, but only if accompanied by development and benefits to the local population.

6. Democracies are limited by public opinion on the amount of blood and treasure they can expend on what can only be described now as "nation building by brute force". That is especially true in a recession. I would put a realistic estimate of the time to transform Afghanistan into a functioning democracy at between 50 and 100 years. Truly imperial powers can think in terms of one or more generations - as the British Empire once did. But does anyone expect that level of commitment to pass muster with the voters and taxpayers today?

I do not think there is much point in debunking Bart's twaddle. Perhaps debate at the highest level, not just in the USA but in the international community as well, might see a consensus emerge as to what is the best way forward out of the barrel of ordure we have got our troops into. Whether the decisions taken will prove to be the right ones is quite another matter. I rather suspect the temptation will be simply to muddle on and try to minimise the cost in human life.

I certainly do not presume to have the answers to a very real dilemma for your Administration and its allies - including the UK.

What I do know is that Bart, for all his pretensions to military expertise based on a single tour of active duty at the lowest level of officer life coupled with his almost total ignorance of the geopolitical, historical and cultural matrix, has not got the answers either.
 

In Bart's heart of hearts he has a gun pointed at everyone and his fall-back position is "well, I can always kill you if it comes to that."

***

Having tried to understand the situation in Afghanistan as best I can by listening to the most credible sources I can find I have to say it seems we're in a terrible pickle. The arguments for getting out (quickly or slowly) are very persuasive and have been made by various very knowledgeable and judicious people. But it would be folly, I think, to ignore voices like Ahmed Rashid who make an equally substantial case for staying to hold off the Taliban which may otherwise expand their influence--emboldening local Taliban-like movements--beyond Afghanistan's borders.

It's a helluva situation.
 

Mattski says:

"But it would be folly, I think, to ignore voices like Ahmed Rashid who make an equally substantial case for staying to hold off the Taliban which may otherwise expand their influence--emboldening local Taliban-like movements--beyond Afghanistan's borders."

But just how and to what extent might the Taliban have the ability to expand their influence? This is not like the times of Genghis Kahn when he and the other Kahns were able to expand throughout Asia and part of Europe with relative small forces on horseback. The big fear is Pakistan's nuclear weaponry. This is primarily a problem for Asia, especially India, Russia and China, to get control of, as well as Iran and the rest of the Middle East. Yes, the US and NATO have interests (think gas and oil). But the burdens of a failed state should be addressed by its neighbors, with the assistance of the rest of the world community. The US (and NATO) cannot go it alone. Think of the former Yugoslavia and the failures of European nations to address the situation with the result that the US felt obliged to intervene until Europe came to its senses.

By the Bybee (not forgotten), there is an alternative to the fall-back position of our intrepid backpacker suggested by Mattski. Personally, I don't think our intrepid backpacker would fit the image of the last man standing.
 

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Brian Tamanaha said...

If we had been invaded by another country with superior force, what would you do Fade to the Colorado hills and bide your time. Any government installed by the invaders would be seen by you as a puppet government.

That depends upon the context.

If Obama ended up being a genuine Hitler (which always seemed to be a strange comparison given that he acts more like Chamberlain) and installed a Taliban like regime in America, I would probably follow the lead of the Afghan Northern Alliance and go to war with the fascist dictatorship, welcome the liberation of say the British and Canadians and be thankful to democratically elect a government again because of the liberation.

But that is just me.

If you were of the mind to fight in that alternate world, would you really be fighting the British and Canadians as invaders to reinstate the Taliban-like dictatorship?

Counter insurgency is actually primarily non-military. Not being seen as invaders bent on conquest is part of a sound counter insurgency strategy. In a nutshell, you allow the locals to run their own affairs and grant them greater freedom and autonomy by removing the guerilla military dictatorship. The local commander regularly consults with the local government on security and other local affairs. You bend over backwards to avoid civilian casualties even at the sacrifice of your own troops. Finally, you come bearing gifts of assistance, infrastructure and, yes, even bribes.

If you are perceived as liberators or at minimum as beneficent but overdue to leave house guests, then you win.
 

Mourad said...

Afghanistan is not and never has been a nation state as the West understands that term. It is a multi-ethnic collection of tribes who generally only ever unite against foreign interference in their affairs.

That is why a wise counter insurgency strategy does not interfere in local affairs and limits itself to providing security from the guerillas.

No foreign military power has ever been able to subdue Afghanistan since Alexander the Great.

Yet another bit of common wisdom which has no basis in actual history. Arghanistan has been repeatedly and successfully invaded by Persians, Turkik tribes, Indians, Mongols, Arabs and now the Americans.

Afghanistan affairs are inextricably linked with those of Pakistan, not only because the Pushtun tribes straddle the (theoretical) Afghan-Pak border...

This is the fly in the ointment. A counterinsurgency effort is predicated on separating the guerillas from the people and thus from their source of support. However, if the Taliban can simply derive support from the Afghan Pustun tribes then the CI effort is not fully achieving its goal.

However, the Taliban/al Qaeda may have thrown away that advantage by declaring war on Pakistan and goading the Pak Army into attacking the Taliban tribal sanctuaries. The key to victory in Afghanistan will depend on the CIA and the Paks finishing that job.

There is absolutely no prospect of "instant democracy".

Self government is more important for the success of the counter insurgency. A multi-party democracy had a far better chance to take root in Iraq than in Afghanistan.

Counter-insurgency only works if there is a government to protect. If there is no effective government, there is no insurgency but a failed state.

The fact that Afghanistan is a decentralized tribal society hardly means that it is an anarchy. When left alone, the local tribes appear to be able to govern themselves as they have done for centuries.

The use of air power and artillery is inimical to counter-insurgency, because it alienates the civil population. A massive boots on the ground operation can work over time, but only if accompanied by development and benefits to the local population.

Agreed completely. This is why it is vital to send in troops and perform a true CI and to reject General Biden's idea to high tail it out of Afghanistan and simply bomb it from a distance in an alleged anti-terror campiagn.

Democracies are limited by public opinion on the amount of blood and treasure they can expend on what can only be described now as "nation building by brute force". That is especially true in a recession.

Agreed. That is why Obama needs to act expeditiously to win this before we lose public support.

What I do know is that Bart, for all his pretensions to military expertise based on a single tour of active duty at the lowest level of officer life coupled with his almost total ignorance of the geopolitical, historical and cultural matrix, has not got the answers either.

My expertise in military strategy comes from almost 35 years of reading and writing about the subject. My blog is filled with posts on Iraq and Afghanistan largely based upon first person reporting from the war zone. Miliblogs are a truly wonderful resource given the shortcomings of our press. While in the service, I wrote the unit history of the 7th Infantry from the archives we uncovered in preparation to move the unit from Germany back to the states.

I have no idea whether you have a background in military history, so I will not respond in kind with insults out of ignorance concerning your expertise or lack thereof.
 

On another note, I understand that some are advocating up to 40K(!) more troops in addition to teh 68K we have in Afghanistan already ... pushing the total up to Iraqesque 100K levels. Eight years after the initial invasion. Endless war, anyone?

Cheers,
 

"That is why a wise counter insurgency strategy does not interfere in local affairs and limits itself to providing security from the guerillas."

There's nothing wise about your clueless linguistic confusion and dishonesty:

Providing security from the guerillas **IS** interfering with "local affairs" -- and it's a type of interference that's always detrimental to the locals in a number of ways.

The fundamental problem here is very simple Bart: like all bigots, you view other people as things. You talk about the Afghans as if they were plants in a garden or dogs that need to be trained or put down.

The Nazi's used to say the same sort of crap about the Jews and Slavs etc.
 

Charles Gittings [to Bart]: The fundamental problem here is very simple Bart: like all bigots, you view other people as things. You talk about the Afghans as if they were plants in a garden or dogs that need to be trained or put down.

This sentiment already snuck through in the comment I pointed out earlier, where he said to just "take away the sea" [people] to leave the guerrillas exposed.

His problem (outside of the genocidal "Let God sort 'em out" crapola inherent in that above sentiment) is that, in Afghanistan, the Taliban are indigenous, about as home-grown as you can get, and a fairly significant chunk of the people. To address the Taliban, we can either try to work with the more moderate elements within the Taliban, or we will have to provide an alternative to the Taliban that commends much more universal approval. But as it is, the Taliban offer much of what made them so successful in taking over Afghanistan in the mid-'90s (when the U.S., having bloodied the Soviet nose, then abandoned Afghanistan to warring tribes and warlords, an event that enabled the Taliban to rise to power to stop the civil war). Unless we can come up with a "unity" government that is not chock-full of corrupt (and infighting) warlords, the Taliban will remain popular.

Cheers,
 

Charles:

Stopping the Taliban militia from oppressing the locals, murdering dissidents and treating the women worse than dogs is interfering with Afghan local affairs?

Do you really believe the twisted things you post here?

Which one of us again argues on behalf of fascists and views the Afghan people as objects?
 

When we were having trouble in Iraq, the left said, Afghanistan was the real war. Now that we essentially won in Iraq, Afghanistan is the problem. I don't doubt the sincerity, but if you are always opposed to whatever war we happen to be fighting, don't you begin to lose credibility at some point?
 

Bart,

The only one advocating fascism around here is YOU.

The Taliban are mostly Afghan citizens who draw their political support from the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Only a lying hypocrite like you would try to pretend that we aren't interfering in Afghan affairs.

Fascism is it's own reward: people always get fed up with it in the end, and that goes for you Republicans just as much as the Taliban.

More even: at least the Taliban actually believe in something. They are analogous to the folks who fought the religious wars of the 16th century or the Crusades. You demented fools are just new-age Nazis: uncomplicated gangsters.

I oppose tyranny in any form, and needless warfare is the worst form of tyranny there is.


PS to Michael:

As a matter of fact, I supported the Afghan war initially, but the incompetence and criminality of the Bush administration made it obvious that it was a pointless waste of time to whatever extent it was not a crime against humanity and peace by mid-2002.

Iraq I opposed from the start because I Iraq is one of the most despicable crimes in US history. We didn't win anything in Iraq, there was nothibg to win -- it was just a crime. A rape.

The US military has performed miserably over the last eight years. We would be better off today if we had done nothing at all -- and so would Iraq and Afghanistan.
 

Arne Langsetmo points out that the tribes I would have armed to the teeth to fight the Taliban would fight each other as well. So what? THIS is a problem? As long as they also keep the Taliban at bay, then we should pick the most likely winning tribe or tribes and back them to the hilt against the others.

I would remind Arne that it is not the portfolio of the POTUS to make sure that all is well with the people of Af--his writ is for the concern of Americans. His only allegiance, is to American citizens. The ambit of his power does not extend to concern for other nationals except insofar as such attentive concern furthers the betterment of the prospects of Americans. As long as the warring tribes also insure that AQ cannot use the area as a training and staging grounds that is as far as the President's writ goes. Some things in life ARE zero-sum games. Yes, it would be nice if everything were hunky-dory for the avg. Af tribsman, and indeed in the "long run," *en grosso mondo* improvements in the lot of the lives of the Afghans undoubtedly will add to the over-all welfare of all on the planet. But as one famous scholar/philosopher of the "left" once said: "In the long run we are all dead." I'll take bribing and arming the tribesmen as enough good works for the day and leave well enough alone as long as they do our bidding--even if only tangentially.
 

vx,

Having taken the name of a notable historian, you should at least be able to follow this: what was the result the last time we armed the Afghan tribes to the teeth and walked away?

If we do not care to repeat the mistakes of the past, we at least have to try and learn from them rather than engage in wishful thinking.

We tried divide and not conquer -- result: power vacuum, exploited by Pakistan power brokers, who created the Taliban.

We aren't going to conquer -- we, as a society, are far to egalitarian and humane to stomach that (and, be it hereby noted, I'm not sorry about that. To carry the mantle of civilized means we can't just stoop to barbarism whenever it's convenient.)

Therefore, we shouldn't arm the tribes, or pay them off, as they'll use the money to buy weaponry. Feel free to propose solutions which do not run counter to recent history.

Michael Livingston, please read my comments above with respect to people who claim we've won in Iraq.
 

don't you begin to lose credibility at some point?

# posted by michael a. livingston : 12:41 PM


I'm pretty sure that's why America kicked you rightwingnuts to the curb. 9/11. Katrina. Iraq Disaster. Afghanistan. Trying to pretend that Iraq isn't a disaster.

You clowns have no credibility.
 

Virgil,

You display a profound misunderstanding of the US Constitution. The Presidents ONLY job is to faithfully execute the laws. Looking out for the people is our job as citizens of aself-governing republic, and one of the most basic assumptions in the Constitution was that the greatest threat to the safety of any nation was its own government.

The Declaration of Independence speaks of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The Constitution makes our international treaties "the supreme law of the land". The notion that we have any right to force the Afghans to do our bidding is both hypocritical and un-American.

And the like the Bible says...

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Your attitude, like most Republicans, is that of a criminal.
 

Brian:

It appears that my comparison of Obama to Chamberlain was apt:

President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and appears inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops as needed to keep al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The sharpened focus by Obama's team on fighting al-Qaida above all other goals, while downgrading the emphasis on the Taliban, comes in the midst of an intensely debated administration review of the increasingly unpopular eight-year-old war.

Though aides stress that the president's final decision on any changes is still at least two weeks away, the emerging thinking suggests that he would be very unlikely to favor a large military increase of the kind being advocated by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal's troop request is said to include a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 combat troops to - the general's strong preference - as many as 40,000.

Obama's developing strategy on the Taliban will "not tolerate their return to power," the senior official said in an interview with The Associated Press. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government - something it is now far from being capable of - and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to al-Qaida, the official said.

Obama's consideration of ceding parts, but not all of Afghanistan to the Taliban fascists does bring to mind PrimeMinister Chamberlain's speech after arriving from Munich to promise "peace in our time:"

Really I have no need to defend my visits to Germany last autumn, for what was the alternative? Nothing that we could have done, nothing that France could have done, or Russia could have done could possibly have saved Czecho-Slovakia from invasion and destruction. Even if we had subsequently gone to war to punish Germany for her actions, and if after the frightful losses which would have been inflicted upon all partakers in the war we had been victorious in the end, never could we have reconstructed Czecho-Slovakia as she was framed by the Treaty of Versailles...

When I came back after my second visit I told the House of Commons of a conversation I had had with Herr Hitler, of which I said that, speaking with great earnestness, he repeated what he had already said at Berchtesgaden - namely, that this was the last of his territorial ambitions in Europe, and that he had no wish to include in the Reich people of other races than German. Herr Hitler himself confirmed this account of the conversation in the speech which he made at the Sportpalast in Berlin, when he said: "This is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe." And a little later in the same speech he said: "I have assured Mr Chamberlain, and I emphasise it now, that when this problem is solved Germany has no more territorial problems in Europe." And he added: "I shall not be interested in the Czech State any more, and I can guarantee it. We don't want any Czechs any more."

Mr. Obama is apparently choosing the worst possible option - slow motion surrender - where our troops will die until the war becomes unpopular enough for the President to cut and run with minimal political damage.

Reprehensible.
 

Reprehensible.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 5:57 PM


Indeed, you are the most despicable piece of shit I have ever encountered.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Well I wouldn't go quite that far Bartbuster, but he is definitely a piece of work.

And a fool.

If I were President, we wouldn't wouldn't be having this discussion because I'd have evacuated our forces long before now. Far from surrendering, I'd be after Al Qaeda with a will -- I'd just be doing it a lot better and smarter than thugs like Bart or Cheney etc. The worst thing about these gangsters isn't their murderous criminality, but their sheer incompetence and ignorance.
 

Well I wouldn't go quite that far Bartbuster

I would. He doesn't care that a bunch of people will be killed for nothing. He only cares that the political damage for Obama could be minimal.
 

Charles:

Far from surrendering, I'd be after Al Qaeda with a will -- I'd just be doing it a lot better and smarter than thugs like Bart or Cheney etc.

This should be instructive.

After you left Afghanistan to the Taliban and their allies al Qaeda set up shop again among civilian human shields, precisely how do you propose to "be after Al Qaeda with a will?"
 

I would ask the good Mr. Gittings where in this discussion I have advocated breaking any treaty obligations? Treaty obligations do not preclude the executive from attempting to accomplish the security aims of the nation within the ambit of executive power as granted by the Constitution, statute law, and tradition/precedent. Numerous "Executive Agreements" have been entered into with foreign powers by dint of Presidential action alone, unauthorized by Congress and unapproved after the fact--either formally or informally--and which have withstood the test of time, the courts and Congress.

And whatever one thinks about it, the Presidential Directive that interned the Japanese in WII and subsequently ratified by the Supremes is still good law, so it would seem that absent specific treaty or statute to the contrary, the inherent powers of the President as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief are expansive indeed. The statement that "The Presidents ONLY job is to execute the laws" is absurd on its face and a charge beneath one who holds himself out to be a learned academic to make.

What of those problems/situations/confrontation /emergencies for which no law exists to give guidance? Such situations are THE VERY REASON the Executive was placed in the Constitution in the first place. Elected officials are not mere delegates, reflecting the specific desires of their constituents and/or those self-same desires as reflected in the laws as enacted by their legislators. Rather they act also as trustees, using their judgment and experience to act in those instances where the laws are silent and fail to give direction--especially in novel and unique circumstances. Your view of executive power is so restrictive as to be a caricature of even a HS civics text.

And by the by, is it your view that we should refrain from trying to force Iran and N. Korea "to do our bidding" in halting development of an atomic bomb? And that attempts do so are "un-American? And display a "criminal attitude?" Is not Obama attempting to do just that--to have Iran, N. Korea (and the Taliban, for that matter) "do our bidding? Are Obama and his minions in the State Dept and the Pentagon "un-American" for attempting to do so? Are they "criminals" for assassinating Taliban leaders via UAVs?

I also note that you feel that Iraq and Afghanistan would be better of if we had done nothing at all. I surmise by this (correct me if I'm wrong) that you feel that good done by saving young women from the tender mercies of Saadams sons and their rape rooms is oughtweiged by the ensuing civilian casualties. By this metric Nazi Germany and the Jews would have been better off left alone because WWII caused 50 million civilian casualties.

You challenge Bart about the popularity of the Taliban and ask if they are not popular how could they even exist after eight years? I would answer that guns, fear and assassination buy lots of loyalty.

You also tell Bart that providing security to locals from the guerillas IS interference and ALWAYS detrimental to the locals in a "number of ways." I would ask: How do you know? Sources and authorities please. And just what ARE those "number of ways?"

Inquiring minds want to know.
 

I would answer that guns, fear and assassination buy lots of loyalty.


# posted by virgil xenophon : 9:27 PM


It isn't working for us. We have lots of guns. We have killed a lot of Afghans. We don't appear to be getting a lot of loyalty.
 

8 years into this mess our Afghan puppets should be able to defend the country from the Taliban. The fact that they can't should tell you all you need to know about how this is going to end. The only thing left in doubt is how long it will take.
 

Why do you assume the Taliban would overrun all of Afghanistan Bart?

Is it because you think your phony puppet-government is completely helpless?

It might actually be a lot easier to deal with them if they were all the way back in power -- they'd have a lot more to lose then.
But I don't think that's likely. What's likely is that the various factions will make a deal.

And I really don't care what they do: they are NOT a military threat to the US, we don't need a colony in Afghanistan, and they have just as much right to self-determination as we do.

Our problem is Al Qaeda, not the Taliban, and that's a law enforcement problem, not a military one.
 

Virgil,

Your ignorance of the treaties is obvious. See the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (London, 1945), arts. 6-8.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp#art6

See also the UN Charter and Geneva IV Civilians (1949).

All of those are US law by acts of the President and Senate under a basic grant of Constitutional authority.
 

Virgil,

Addressing some of your other points:

Hitler declared war on us.

Iraq was no threat to us at all.

The customs of other nations or religions are not a legitimate reason to wage war.

As for Iran and N. Korea, I'm a lot more worried about Israel and Pakistan. What makes you think that Iran or N. Korea would use a nuke? Do you have any idea how vulnerable both are to a counter-strike?

Sometimes I think it might be a good idea to issue personal nukes to every citizen just so the Republicans would shut up and behave like human beings.

Finally, are you really incapable of understanding that democracy cannot be imposed at gun-point?

I'd suggest you study some history, starting with the American Revolution and the English Civil War. Nobody likes a tyrant. Not for long anyway.
 

Bart responds to a previous post of mine:-

"My expertise in military strategy comes from almost 35 years of reading and writing about the subject. My blog is filled with posts on Iraq and Afghanistan largely based upon first person reporting from the war zone....I have no idea whether you have a background in military history, so I will not respond in kind with insults out of ignorance concerning your expertise or lack thereof."

I have no pretensions to being a military historian, but like Bart, I have a special interest in history, particularly (as my name may suggest) in the interface between Islam and the West.

As Bart may recall from posts in previous years, when I speak of matters military it is informed by what I learned in 7 years' service (admittedly many years ago) in which I ended up as a senior NCO training young officers in the skills required for precisely the kind of deployments now in issue.

Speaking of history, it is my contention that an understanding of the historical and cultural background is vital to an understanding of the present, so at risk of boring you all rigid - here goes:-

Part 1
It is as well to recall that Afghanistan entered the 20th Century as the buffer state in the "Great Game" in which the British and Russian Empires competed for pre-eminence in Central Asia. Russian foreign policy since the time of the Tsars has been to obtain control of Afghanistan and push on south to obtain access to a warm-water port. All of Afghanistan’s neighbours have long been deeply involved in manipulating its internal affairs, Pakistan and to a lesser extent Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan: all have significant interests in Afghanistan and most have supported at least one of the many tribal factions competing for power in the interminable civil wars which have ravaged the country over recent decades.
 

Part 2 - Ancient History

Like in the FATA of Pakistan, on the other side of the nominal border, the dominant groups in Afghanistan are Pushtun tribes whose reputation for ferocity is of some antiquity. As I pointed out earlier, no less a general than Alexander the Great encountered the Pushtuns in 329-326 BC. Although Alexander managed to subdue the tribes, he encountered such fierce resistance that it took him three years. In Afghanistan, he founded Alexandria Herat (330 BC), Prophthasia Afghanistan (also 330 BC) Alexandria-in-Arachosia at or near modern Kandahar (329 BC ), Alexandria Afghanistan near modern Ghazni (also 329 BC), Alexandria-ad-Caucasum, possibly present-day Jebal Seraj (also 329 BC), Alexandria Oxiana, modern Aï Khanoum (328 BC) and Nikaia, at or near Jalalabad (327 BC) to name a few.

When Alexander died in Babylon in 323BC, his empire broke apart and his cavalry commander Seleucus took control of the eastern lands and founded the Selucid dynasty which lasted for several hundred years more.

Whatever Bart may think, no other foreign influence has ever achieved the dominion over Afghanistan and the North West Frontier which Alexander and the Selucids had, although many, including the British Raj and the Russians (both under the Tsars and the Soviets), have tried and eventually failed.

In these areas, Alexander has a rather different reputation and memory to that he enjoys in the west. In their oral tradition he is demonised. Mothers warn their naughty children: "If you don't be quiet, Iskander's troops will come and take you away!

I think it may be the case that the Afghans' resentment of foreign influence goes all the way back to this time. That resentment certainly runs very deep. The mere presence of foreign troops is an affront of the gravest kind.
 

Part 3 - Pushtuns

Pushtuns are the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan and the largest remaining tribal society in the world. About 17 million Pushtuns straddle the Afghan-Pak border, living primarily in the south, southwest, center, and east of Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, North-West Frontier Province, and northern districts of the Baluchistan Province of Pakistan.

Pushtuns comprise about 45 percent of Afghanistan’s population (now estimated at around 22 million), speak Pushtu, and are generally Hanafi Sunni Muslims.

Pushtun tribes have provided Afghanistan with its traditional leaders of the country. They are divided into three major groups: the Durrani tribe, which ruled Afghanistan from 1749 to 1978 - they are primarily from north and west of Kandahar; the Ghilzai tribe, located mainly in the east and in parts of the north, especially in the Zabul and Ghazni provinces; the remaining tribes, the “true” Pukhtuns, live to the north and east of the Durranis and Ghilzai in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and include prominent tribes such as the Afridi, Wazir, Mohmand, Mahsud, Jaji, Mangal, Zadran, Kakar, Khatak, Orakzai, and Shinwari.

These tribes are the largest permanent political and social units in Afghanistan, but they are further divided into lineages or subtribes, known as khels, and still further subdivided into extended family groups or clans, called khol or kor.

The allegiance of the individual Afghan tribesman almost never goes beyond the tribal unit.

This is one of the basic problems with the concept of "instant democracy" when it comes to finding a political solution for Afghanistan.
 

virgil xenophon:

Arne Langsetmo points out that the tribes I would have armed to the teeth to fight the Taliban would fight each other as well. So what? THIS is a problem? As long as they also keep the Taliban at bay, then we should pick the most likely winning tribe or tribes and back them to the hilt against the others....

As I pointed out, and as I hoped others might have read, the last time the tribes fought it out, it provided the opportunity for the rise of the Taliban.

I would remind Arne that it is not the portfolio of the POTUS to make sure that all is well with the people of Af--his writ is for the concern of Americans. His only allegiance, is to American citizens....

I disagree on both moral and pragmatic grounds, of course. But is it really in the U.S. interest to give arms all around, and hope they all kill each other? Why not just nuke the lot? A whole lot faster and more efficient ... and consistent with Virgil's 'prime directive' here.

... The ambit of his power does not extend to concern for other nationals except insofar as such attentive concern furthers the betterment of the prospects of Americans. As long as the warring tribes also insure that AQ cannot use the area as a training and staging grounds that is as far as the President's writ goes....

See above. Do I really need to repeat myself?

Some things in life ARE zero-sum games. Yes, it would be nice if everything were hunky-dory for the avg. Af tribsman, and indeed in the "long run," *en grosso mondo* improvements in the lot of the lives of the Afghans undoubtedly will add to the over-all welfare of all on the planet. But as one famous scholar/philosopher of the "left" once said: "In the long run we are all dead." I'll take bribing and arming the tribesmen as enough good works for the day and leave well enough alone as long as they do our bidding--even if only tangentially.

Wow. That's a winning strategery. Virgil ought to read Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow" ... and just a tad more history.

Cheers,
 

Part 4 - Pushtunwali

It is impossible to understand the nature of the Afghanistan problem today without at least some understanding of Pushtunwali which embodies the ancient traditional, spiritual and communal identity of the Pushtuns developed over the course of some five thousand years.

Pustunwali can be called a set of moral codes and rules of behavior binding on all Pushtuns, wherever they are in the world. There is a fairly good exposition of the concepts here: Wikipedia - Pashtunwali.

In the Wikipedia article there is a reference to the concept of Nanawateh (Asylum) with this account:-

"derived from the verb meaning 'to go in', this is used for protection given to a person who requests protection against his/her enemies. The person is protected at all costs. It can also be used when the vanquished party is prepared to go in to the house of the victors and ask for their forgiveness. (It is a peculiar form of "chivalrous" surrender, in which an enemy seeks "sanctuary" at his enemies' house).

A more famous example of this code is of Navy Petty Officer First Class (PO1) Mark Luttrell, the sole surviving member of a US Navy SEAL team that was ambushed by Taliban fighters. PO1 Luttrell evaded the enemy for days before stumbling upon members of the Sabray tribe who realized the wounded SEAL needed assistance. He was taken to the village and protected by the tribal chief, who even sent word to nearby US forces of PO1 Luttrell's location."

But now think of the concepts of Pushtunwali as applied to the foreign fighters who had come to assist in the resistance against the Soviets (with US encouragement)- the people now collectively defined (conveniently if inaccurately) as Al Quaida.

After 9-11, the USA considered itself entitled (rightly in terms of our understanding of international law obligations) to call for the surrender to its authority and judgment of all those who were involved as prinicpals or accessories or conspirators in that atrocity (aut dedere aut punire).

But here, our Western concepts ran smack bang up against the concepts of Pushtunwali. The foreign fighters were people who had come to the aid of the Afghan people. They had been both allies and guests. Pushtunwali obliges the Afghan Pushtun to fight to the death to protect a person who has taken refuge in his house/compound/village.

Look also at what is said about "Hewad" (Nation):-

" Love for one's nation in Pashtun culture isn't just important, it's essential. A Pashtun is always indebted to their nation and must strive to perfect and improve it. A Pushtun considers it his obligation to defend his country Pakhtara ("Pakhtun-khwa" in modern colloquial Pashto) against any type of foreign incursion. Defence of nation means defence of honor, values, culture, tradition, countrymen and self."

Consider that in the context of tan invasion of of foreign military forces.

Or take the concept of "Badal" which embraces the concept of avenging a wrong no matter how long it takes. This is the concept which gives rise to the "blood feud" (as in vendetta). Apply that concept to the idea of an artillery shell or a missiles landing on a wedding party resulting in al the male relatives taking up arms against those they hold responsible. That is one of the primary reasons for my objections to the use of artillery or air power in this kind of peace enforcement.

Pushtunwali and its tenets do modify over time - but the time is measured in generations. Many of the concepts are in themselves unobjectionable by any standards. But what one is looking at is an application of those mores in a manner more akin to Feudal England than to the 21st Century.
 

For anyone interested, Terry Gross's interview with Ahmed Rashid. A credible argument for staying in Afghanistan.
 

For those who are unhappy with President Obama's approach to foreign affairs, it is worth noting that he has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".

BBC Report here.
 

Three sitting US Presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Theodore Roosevelt won the prize in 1905 for personally mediating the peace treaty to end the Russo-Japanese war.

Woodrow Wilson won the prize in 1919 for helping create the League of Nations.

Barack Obama just won the prize in 2009 for... Hmmm. No peace treaties, no peace negotiations, no creation of world bodies dedicated to peace. Well, the award citation says: "Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

Oh, I get it now! Obama is being recognized for his hope and change campaign commercials.

I see a Saturday Night Live skit writing itself.
 

Part 5 - 20th Century Afghanistan to 1945

For those who would like a potted history of Afghanistan a good place to start is All Refer Country & Study Guide - Afghanistan

Note in passing that at the turn of the century there are no fewer than 3 Anglo-Afghan Wars. British involvement with Afghanistan goes back to the Raj and the Great Game. The India Office library has great masses of material from the period.

At the outset of WW2, Afghanistan had established a very weak central government under a Monarchy. Its watchword was to resist the embrace of either the Soviet Union or the British raj in India and to preserve its independence. The small feudal elite in the country wished to modernise, but the bulk of the population was still illiterate, tribal and had hardly progressed since the Middle Ages.

Mohammed Zahir Shah (1933-73)
Zahir Shah was the last king of Afghanistan. For his first thirty years on the throne, he accepted the tutelage of powerful advisers in the royal family, first his uncles, later his cousin, Mohammad Daoud Khan. And only in the last decade of his sovereignty did Zahir Shah rule as well as reign. Three of the four Musahiban brothers survived Nadir Shah's death, and went on to exercise decisive influence over decision making during Zahir Shah's first twenty years of reign. The eldest, Muhammad Hashim, who had been prime minister under the previous king, retained that post until replaced by his youngest brother, Shah Mahmud in 1946.

Hashim put into effect the policies already orchestrated by his brothers. Internal objectives of the new Afghan government focused on strengthening the army and shoring up the economy, including transport and communications. Both goals required foreign assistance. Preferring not to involve the Soviet Union or Britain, Hashim turned to Germany. By 1935 German experts and businessmen had set up factories and hydroelectric projects at the invitation of the Afghan government. Smaller amounts of aid were also forthcoming from Japan and Italy. Afghanistan joined the League of Nations in 1934, the same year the United States officially recognized Afghanistan. The conclusion of the Treaty of Saadabad with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey in 1937 reinforced Afghanistan's regional ties to neighboring Islamic States.

After the outbreak of World War II, the king proclaimed Afghan neutrality on August 17, 1940, but the Allies were unhappy with the presence of a large group of German non-diplomatic personnel. In October British and Soviet governments demanded that Afghanistan expel all non-diplomatic personnel from the Axis nations. Although the Afghan government considered this demand insulting and illegitimate, it appeared to heed the example of Iran; Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran in August 1941 after the government ignored a similar demand. Afghanistan ordered non-diplomatic personnel from all belligerents to leave, and a loya jirgah called by the king supported his policy of absolute neutrality. As the war progressed, it provided larger markets for Afghan agricultural produce (especially in India).

Shortly before the end of the war, Shah Mahmud replaced his older brother as prime minister, ushering in a period of great change in both internal and external policies. Among other things, he presided over the inauguration of the Helmand Valley Project, a cooperative irrigation venture drawing Afghanistan into a closer relationship with the United States, which financed much of the work, He also oversaw the opening of relations with the newly created state of Pakistan, which inherited the Pashtuns from the formerly British-ruled side of the Durand Line.

The Pushtuns (or Pakhtuns) sought an independent or semi-independent statehood, that would include the Pushto (or Pakhtu) speakers within Pakistan. This issue would have a resounding impact on Afghan politics, as would Shah Mahmud's political liberalisation of the country.
 

Part 6 - The Pashtunistan Issue

In an earlier post I spoke about the fact that the Pushtuns treat the Indo-Pak Border as if it didn't exist. The border aka "the Durand Line" was imposed on Afghanistan by the British Raj.

Amir Abdur Rahman had bitterly resented the Durand Line and none of his successors relinquished the notion of Pashtun unity even as they cooperated with the British government on other matters. Eventually, the line dividing the Pashtun people became extremely contentious to the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although the issue became most vexing during partition, British policy in the area before 1947 also aggravated the Pashtunistan problem. In 1901 the British had created a new administrative area, the North-West Frontier Province, which they detached from the Punjab. This new province was divided into Settled Districts and Tribal Agencies, with the latter ruled by a British political agent who reported directly to Delhi.

In 1934 Britain extended self-government to the North-West Frontier Province. By this time, the Indian National Congress (Congress Party), which many Muslims saw as a predominately Hindu organization, had expanded its political activities to include the province. The links between the political leaders of the North-West Frontier Province and the Hindu leaders of Congress were such that a majority in the North-West Frontier Province assembly originally voted to go with India in the partition, a decision which probably would have been rejected by the voting majority in the province. In July 1947, the British held a referendum in the Settled Districts of the province offering the population the choice of either joining an independent India or a now-inevitable Pakistan. An estimated 56 percent of the eligible voters participated and over 90 percent elected to join Pakistan. A loya jirgah was held in the Tribal Agencies. Offered a choice between joining India or Pakistan, the tribes declared their preference for the latter.

Although both Afghanistan and Pakistan made conciliatory gestures, the matter remained unresolved. In one of the government's attempts to suppress tribal uprisings in 1949, a Pakistani air force plane bombed a village just across the frontier. In response, the Afghan government called a loya jirgah, which promptly declared that it recognized "neither the imaginary Durand nor any similar line" and that all agreements--from the 1893 Durand agreement onward--pertaining to the issue were void. Irregular forces led by a local Pashtun leader crossed the border in 1950 and 1951 to back Afghan claims. Pakistan's government refused to accept the Afghan assertion that it had no control over these men, and both nations' ambassadors were withdrawn, but were exchanged again a few months later.

The issue of an international boundary through Pashtun areas was of great importance to policymakers in Kabul.

Pakistan halted vital transshipments of petroleum to Afghanistan for about three months in 1950, presumably in retaliation for Afghan tribal attacks across the border.

At this time, Afghan government interest shifted to offers of aid from the Soviet Union and in July 1950 it signed a major agreement with the Soviet Union.

Thus began a period of renewed soviet involvement with Afghanistan
 

From the Washington Post:-
"..In choosing Obama from among 205 nominees, the committee appeared to be continuing its rebuke of the Bush administration's go-it-alone approach to world bodies and alliances, including its decision to go to war in Iraq without U.N. approval....".
WAPO Story

A perceptive observation methinks.
 

I would really be happy if Bart were president.
He would dispense with all this indecision and
doubt. And we could be sure there would be no
prosecution of Blackwater operatives for murder
of prisoners.
 

Farris,

I'm going to have to register disagreement with any effort to dispense with uncertainty and doubt. Count me with the working thinkers in this respect (although I make no claim to deserve the "working" part).

Speaking of respect, if one has written material on a subject for many years, material which, so far as can be ascertained, nobody reads, does that make that person's supposed expertise worthy of respect?

We can agree with the assertion that a million monkeys on typewriters may produce Macbeth, but does that mean the monkeys should get the Nobel prize in literature?

On the other hand, it appears to me that Obama might now have a PR problem if he were to decide to put a large additional contingent of troops in Afghanistan.
 

Bart's bona fides as an historian are outstripped only by his vast experience as a military officer.
 

Mourad:

Thank you for your series of posts in this thread. I'd like to ask you to what extent the notions of pashtunwali, nanawateh, etc. apply to the approaches available to the NATO forces in the country.

That is, do these indigenous concepts of justice create a case that would not only justify, but perhaps require, an extension of American presence, lest we offend our friends by removing said protection? Or is such friendship only present when, as in the case of the Navy SEAL you mentioned, the US forces themselves are the ones seeking sanctuary from a dangerous element?

If one is supposed to fight the long fight, what does it say about us in local cultural terms if we do not fight it? Note that I don't mean that as a loaded question--I seriously would like an answer.

It strikes me that there may be a bit of a catch 22 here. On the one hand, we should be trying to adapt ourselves to the local situation and the cultural factors on the ground--some of which, as you point out, suggest that we have gone about our approach all wrong from the beginning.

On the other hand, the implications of those cultural factors may require us to prepare for a longer stay in order to show cultural respect and prove our friendship. Are the Pashtun people worth befriending? I assume so, but if giving up a fight is anathema to the cultural values of pashtunwali, how then are we to achieve some sort of mutual respect?

If we set aside a cynical view of all American intentions being neocolonialist and accept arguendo that the intent is something akin to improving both regional stability and the relation between the region and the US, is it better in local eyes to abandon our duty to protect our new friends or to stay and incur the wrath of those who find us to be foreign invaders?
 

"If we set aside a cynical view of all American intentions being neocolonialist and accept arguendo that the intent is something akin to improving both regional stability and the relation between the region and the US, is it better in local eyes to abandon our duty to protect our new friends or to stay and incur the wrath of those who find us to be foreign invaders?"

PMS,

The problem with that is there's no distinction: using militarty force to impose a US view of "regional stability and the relation between the region and the US" is fundamentally a form of colonialism.

There are aspects of the concept "self-determination" that aren't always clear-cut, but this isn't one of them. This is just the same old BS of a superpower trying to impose it's will by force.

Why did Al Qaeda attack us in the first place?
 

Why did Al Qaeda attack us in the first place?

# posted by Charles Gittings : 2:34 PM

That hate our freedom.
 

Charles:

IYHO, is there any level of barbarity in internal affairs of a nation that would merit the use of US military force to stop?

If your neighbor was stoning his wife to death in is front yard, would you lift a finger to help her or simply write it off to cultural differences?
 

If your neighbor was stoning his wife to death in is front yard, would you lift a finger to help her or simply write it off to cultural differences?

Baghdad, I was not aware that you were in favor of invading Israel.
 

Bart,

Oh sure: but making things worse than when you started isn't a solution, and neither Iraq nor Afghanistan presented a case that would justify such intervention in any case.

I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan: my problem there isn't the fact that we acted in response to 911, but the way we went about it. As far as I'm concerned, there hasn't been a valid reason to be in Afghanistan since 2002. It's just a waste of time, money, and lives.
 

Charles Gittings thinks that democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint. History proves otherwise.I would direct him to the nearest Globe, Atlas or Gazetteer and locate a certain island-nation in the Far East whose name begins with J.
 

Boy I get I tired of the endless nonsense you right-wingers spout...

1) Germany and Japan both had democratic governments before WW2.

2) Democracy is the rule of the people. It's entirely obvious that people who are being told what to do at gun point by an invader can't have a democracy in any real sense of the term. It's akin to jury tampering through bribery or extortion -- it corrupts the process by definition.

3) Accepting your false assumption arguendo, the fact remains that we WON WW2... in three years and eight months. We've been dicking around in Afghanistan for eight years now and the situation is worse than when we started -- a lot worse. This is not an accident or bad luck, it's a direct result of the policies that folks like you and Bart advocate. The proof's in the pudding.

And I don't believe that folks like you or Bart have any real interest in the welfare of the Afghans in any case -- that's just one more dishonest excuse.
 

PMS,

We have friends in Afghanistan? Really? Who?

The Pakistani government, or at least that part of it that gets on TV, seems to want weapons, ostensibly for the purpose of opposing the Taliban in the tribal areas. Since every weapon they've received or built on their own, plus whatever support, monetary or diplomatic, from the West has been used to further their apparently endless struggle with India, I would recommend skepticism and caution in giving them any.

I think that they would continue supporting the Taliban under the table while building up their arsenal for the next war with India.

Or perhaps someone thinks the corrupt, oligarchic Afghan government, or the warlords that make up a large part of it, are our friends. Here's some news: they'll use us and appear to support us (while probably secretly dealing with our enemies) exactly as long as it suits their goals. If, by some miracle, we were actually able to bring a significant measure of democracy and enlightenment to their areas, they'd turn into an insurgency in a second, and probably form an alliance with the Taliban a second after that.

Of course, it could be argued that, by making life better for the populace, we'll be making friends of them, and that's certainly true, to a degree, if the US forces hadn't been dropping bombs and firing hellfire missiles into wedding parties and the like for the last 8 years (I understand that these were accidents, and that those responsible have been cleared of any wrongdoing, and that our military are, in fact, paragons of restraint -- I'm talking not about how they are, but how they are perceived by a large percentage of the Afghan population.)
 

PMS:-

Thank you for your enquiry. As it happens, I am not an advocate of instant withdrawal from Afghanistan, either by those US forces operating solo as "Enduring Freedom" or those with the ISAF force of NATO and others.

The UN Security Council held that a situation had arisen in Afghanistan which was a threat to international peace and security. I belive that decision was right and remains right. In fact, a UN Chapter 7 Mandate was available to provide a legal framework for the initial invasion, but the Bush Administration did not want to operate under a UN Mandate or ask for one. Both the UN and NATO are asking for an upgrading of the operation in Afghanistan and my view, for what it is worth, is that this is the correct approach.

I believe that Bush Administration's decision to go in alone was a mistake, that the rules of engagement were misconceived, that both the senior officers and the troops initially deployed were insufficient in number and inadequately prepared or trained. When time permits, I shall get round to saying why.

Ideally, I would like the Administration to give serious consideration to reconfiguring the command structure altogether. I would prefer the forces to be a UN force wearing blue berets and preferably under the command of a Non US and Non NATO General who should, if possible, be from a Muslim Country.

I would move heaven and earth diplomatically to get far larger contingents with about 25% police from Muslim states, if necessary doing a Bush Senior and offering via the UN to reimburse the costs.

I would want to saturate every town and village with boots on the ground and that would necessitate far larger numbers and I would want to see at least 50% of them from muslim states. I would want every possible member of the force to live with the Afghans in their conditions, patrol with Afghans, eat what they eat and be indoctrinated as to local customs before arriving.

I would seek to have substantial numbers of Engineers, Medical personnel, Agricultural experts and the like because I would want about 50% of the budget for the operation go on construction, development, rural electrification, provision of medical care etc.

I would want to create local employment - the devil finds work for idle men.

I would ban the routine use of artillery or air power - but with increased rotary for transport, rescue and medevac for injured (military, civilian or insurgent).

In other words, what I would want to see is not an invading army now in occupation, but a genuine peace enforcement plus aid operation. This has to be an operation to give the population improved security and material development in about equal measure to have any chance of success.

I would want to see serious consideration given to replacing the Karzai Government. Perhaps this could be the means of asking the UN to reconfigure the mission without losing face. The Afghan leadership resigns and itself asks for the new dispensation. It might be worth thinking about restoring the monarchy to rule with a council of ministers until fresh elections can be arranged - later rather than sooner.

My fear is that there will be no thinking out of the box and that the occupation will continue as what it now is - what some erstwhile comrades of yore would have described as "a right buggers' muddle". Support from many countries will then fade away and the USA and other nations remaining in ISAF will muddle on with insufficient resources until it becomes politically impossible for the democracies to keep them there at which point they will declare satisfaction and leave an impoverished Afghanistan to its own devices. Not my idea of a solution.
 

Charles Gittings said...

2) Democracy is the rule of the people. It's entirely obvious that people who are being told what to do at gun point by an invader can't have a democracy in any real sense of the term. It's akin to jury tampering through bribery or extortion -- it corrupts the process by definition.

Agreed. However, where is NATO telling the people of Afghanistan what to do at the point of a gun? You appear to be confusing the NATO with the Taliban.

Protecting the People from enemies foreign or domestic who seek to tell them what to do at the point of a gun is a basic prerequisite for democracy.
 

Mourad said...

Ideally, I would like the Administration to give serious consideration to reconfiguring the command structure altogether. I would prefer the forces to be a UN force wearing blue berets and preferably under the command of a Non US and Non NATO General who should, if possible, be from a Muslim Country.

I would move heaven and earth diplomatically to get far larger contingents with about 25% police from Muslim states, if necessary doing a Bush Senior and offering via the UN to reimburse the costs.

Let us explore this idea for a few moments.

1) What Muslim general from anywhere in the world possesses the qualifications and experience to run a counter insurgency campaign, nevertheless command US/UK/CD troops?

UN forces have an awful and well earned reputation for incompetence, failing to defend the people they are tasked with protecting and, in the worst cases like the Congo, preying on the people. The US military and a lesser extent NATO (see Srebrenica) have a far better international reputation.

Why would the United States want to place itself under the UN command of a unqualified non-NATO general?

2) Where would we find non-Afghan Muslim policemen who the Afghans would trust? al Qaeda destroyed any trust in Arabs the Afghans ever had. Any Arab the Afghans captured in 2002 and not turned over to the US was slaughtered.

Would the Afghans accept Pakistanis? Would the Pakistanis have any troops to spare that are not committed to the Indian border or the war with the Taliban in the tribal regions?

The Bangladeshi troops are incompetent.

Would African or Indonesian Muslim troops be competent or better accepted?

Wouldn't it be better to train a larger and more professional Afghan Army ala the 2006-2008 buildup of the Iraqi Army, who are now in complete control of their own security?
 

You've got to be kidding me. The Taliban have more right to be in Afghanistan than NATO does. It's their country.

I repeat: the US occupation -- NATO included -- has only made things WORSE.
 

Charles Gittings: pre-war Japan was a democracy in the same way that the German Democratic Republic (GDR-East Germany) was a true democracy, i.e., NOT. It was a hybrid of state socialism, Asian nationalism and corporatism much akin to European Fascism. So don't try and kid the troops, ok?

As for the Afghans as a people? Everything I've read about them seems to portray them as a quite likable people. And I probably (although I could be wrong) have spent more time in the Middle East and around Muslims than yourself, fwiw, so am not unfamiliar with the culture in general. Plus I know how to read. That said I hold no personal animus towards either Muslims or Arabs in general. OTOH, I must ask why I should exhibit overweening care about the welfare of Afghans if it comes at the expense of my fellow Americans.

I should also point out that with the advent of precision-guided munitions, long-range night vision equipment, and better communications etc.,
greater care has been taken by Allied forces to prevent needless civilian damage/casualties than in any modern war in history--especially given the fact that the "enemy" (however defined) uses civilians and their homes as human shields, stores munitions in Mosques and schools, hospitals, etc., and uses them as hardened fighting places to boot--thus consciously putting the entire civilian population needlessly, cynically, callously, murderously at
risk of their lives in depraved direct violation of all known rules, conventions and norms of war now extant.
 

What a load of BS. You make them sound like Republicans. The fact remains: they had a democracy before WW2. Your opinion of is irrelevent, and our so-called democracy has it's share flaws too -- like the fact that it's possible to "win" a Presidential election without getting the most votes, or the equal fact that it would be possible to have a gang of war criminals running the White House for eight years.

And I'm really tired of all the endless quibbling. You people are such hypocrites. Afghanistan is a preposterous mess, and it got that way because dishonest fools like you made it that way.
 

Wouldn't it be better to train a larger and more professional Afghan Army
# posted by Bart DePalma : 6:44 PM


We spent the last 8 years training a larger and more professional army. It does not appear to be working.
 

PS:

I don't but you fantasy description of how "careful" we are not to attack civilians. The reality is that we've been killing afghans civilians all along, and we've killed a lot more of them than the Taliban have.

I am not a fan of drone attacks. The use of drones should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned, for precisely the reason that they are used indiscriminately.

Buy that's all beside the point: how much failure does it take before you will admit you're wrong?

What the evidence says is thgat folks like you and Bart are absolutely incapable rational judgments. It's all just a big fantasy video game to you.
 

Charles, just a question: if Bush had refrained from invading Iraq and instead put more resources into Afghanistan would you have supported that?

(Not that I believe Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney were capable of doing so, but what if?)
 

Mattski,

NO, I would no have supported that. The problem isn't troops, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation that has persisted under Obama because he made the mistake of retaining the Bush defense department. This is not a military problem. That isn't to say that the military doesn't have a role to play, but the notion this is a war is dumb -- this is a law enforcement problem.

In more ways than one even -- some of the mistakes could have been avoided if our own government had simply obeyed our own laws instead of behaving like the Mafia.
 

Charles Gittings said...

You've got to be kidding me. The Taliban have more right to be in Afghanistan than NATO does. It's their country.

I repeat: the US occupation -- NATO included -- has only made things WORSE.

This is getting really tiresome.

The fact that some number of the Taliban may have been born in Afghanistan as opposed to Pakistan hardly gives them the right to prey on the Afghan people.

The fact that US troops were born outside of Afghanistan hardly precludes them from protecting the Afghan population from the predations of the Taliban

You have made it very clear that you consider our troops to be war criminals worse than the Taliban or al Qaeda.

This is the real reason that you claim that the US liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban fascists "has only made things WORSE."

Indeed, you hate your own soldiers so much that you would rather hand over the Afghan population to Taliban fascist hell and the women into less than chattel bondage rather than seeing your country win.

If there is reincarnation and justice, in the next life you will find yourself a woman in some hellhole of a country at the mercy of local fascists without the protection of the soldiers who you despise.
 

Bart, you'll have to show me where I've said any such thing you liar. Slandering me isn't going to change the facts:

You neo-fascist idiots have an absolutely consistent record of incompetence, dishonesty, failure and war crimes over the last eight years -- against some of the weakest opposition we've ever fought a war against. It's not the troops fault, it's the fault of demented goons like YOU.

Now get lost you lying prick.
 

If there is reincarnation and justice, in the next life you will find yourself
# posted by Bart DePalma : 10:56 PM


And you will find yourself in Iraq. Hopefully that day comes soon.
 

This is getting really tiresome.

I agree. Every time one of us moderate-to-liberal sorts points to the abject foolishness and criminality of the Bush invasion of Iraq, people like Bart De Palma accuse us of "hating our own soldiers."

It takes demons of considerable virulence to render an apparently sharp mind into such a useless condition. And that's a pity.
 

The answer to Bart's question of where to get the motivated and culturally acceptable personnel for police and soldiers to maintain order in Afghanistan may be staring us in the face.

I suggest the Taliban. The problem will be to get them to tone down their motivation, which is, I also suggest, a significantly less difficult task than first building a real concept of nationhood among the Afghan population and then creating a government and all the trimmings to protect it.

Sure, there's the problem that they have not, in the past, been trustworthy. And in that they differ in what significant way from the warlords and other powers in Afghanistan?
 

There are various types of goons out there, C2, but just because they all are goons doesn't make them of equal value. The Taliban are true believer sorts that I find more dangerous than the garden variety sort that the other bunch seem to be.

Of course, once upon a time, we seemed a bit more accepting of the Taliban class of people. And, we can readily see why the locals thought their sort of tough love was a way out of the morass left there when the Soviets left. See also, Iraq and Saddam.

But, some sort of Taliban-lite is probably what will happen, at least in some areas. Anyway, Richard Engel on Rachel Maddow last night had some sane things to say, though I think he was too lenient respecting the Iraq situation.
 

Joe,

Every police force and military will have some undesirable elements. Heck, we just had to can a few of our local force, and they're a very good bunch. Remember the religious nut-job general who was openly portraying the Iraq mission as a holy war?

The question that needs to be asked and answered is: do the Taliban want to share power in Afghanistan and have a say in more than just the remote villages, or do they want to keep fighting in the hope of gaining total power? Obviously, there will be subgroups and factions that will answer either way -- with a chance of fragmenting them as a bonus.
 

Much of this discussion is winds down to a "he said-he said" nature, but there IS one area where objective reality trumps educated opinion Mr. Gittings, and that is the matter of "indiscriminate" killing and drones. There is a plethora of video on You Tube taken from both the Iraqi and Afghan war involving aerial camera-work (much of it night-vision) taken from Apache helicopter gunship and USAF AC-130 gunship
attacks on the enemy. I would suggest you spend some time watching in detail such footage as a substitute for analysis of the use of UAVs as the cameras that they all use are the same and the command and control conversations one hears is representative of the same language and procedures used by the fire-control clearance protocols the UAV community uses. As such, you will 1) see exaxtly how good the optics actually are and how easy it is to identify and track the "bad guys"--especially at night., and 2) you will be able to heaar the radio transmissions between the aircrews, troops on the ground and senior controllers at higher HQ which will clearly demonstrate the exquisite care and attention taken to insure absolute minimum chance of civilian casualties, with clearence to fire given only after absolute positive ID is made even at the risk of the enemy escaping. Treat yourself to an educational experience. Seeing and hearing is believing. Don't take my word for it, go see for yourself--then get back to me and tell me if you still think the use of air-power on our part has been casually indiscriminate--let alone criminal.
 

Much of this discussion winds down to a "he said-he said" difference of opinion/interpretation nature, but there IS one area where objective reality trumps educated opinion Mr. Gittings, and that is the matter of "indiscriminate" killing and use drones. There is a plethora of video on You Tube taken from both the Iraqi and Afghan war involving aerial camera-work (much of it night-vision) taken from Apache helicopter gunship and USAF AC-130 gunship
attacks on the enemy. I would suggest you spend some time watching in detail such footage as a substitute for analysis of the use of UAVs--as the optics that they all use are the same and the command and control conversations one hears is representative of the same language and procedures used by the fire-control clearance protocols the UAV community uses.

As such, you will 1) see with your own eyes exactly how good the optics actually are and how easy it is to identify and track the "bad guys"--especially at night., and 2) you will be able to hear with your own ears the radio transmissions between the aircrews, troops on the ground and senior controllers at higher HQ which will clearly demonstrate the exquisite care and attention taken to insure absolute minimum chance of civilian casualties, with clearance to fire given only after absolute positive ID is made even at the risk of the enemy escaping. Treat yourself to an educational experience. Seeing and hearing is believing. Don't take my word for it, go see for yourself--then get back to me and tell me if you still think the use of air-power on our part has been casually indiscriminate--let alone criminal.
 

Sorry about double post--don't know how that happened--was trying to edit.
 

Virgil the "delete" function is helpful here. The new comment function at Volokh Conspiracy is ideal with its short time edit after posting function. I say this as someone who knows the value of editing.

OTOH, 'he said/she said' is not really fair. Each person here has something (wrong or not; deluded or not) to back up their opinions. And, the fact that something is less bad doesn't rob it of its problems. It does boil down to the level we determine as legit, a value judgment.

---

Again, C2, there are different degrees of "undesirable" elements. To take an extreme, I rather not have a Dexter (to cite the cable show) among them. Or, a class of Dexters. They are different from your garden variety violent prone officer.

Your bottom line as to power sharing is correct.
 

Bart asks questions about my recent post on alternatives to the present set up.

I start from the premise that to win hearts and minds (a) the intervention force should be reconfigured as a UN force; (b) it should in some way be "invited in" by the Afghan government so as to make the forces guests of the country rather than invaders who have stayed on as occupiers; (c) for the same reason, neither the USA nor the UK should have lead roles in the command structure; (d) there should be a police presence and the overall mission should be in aid of the civil power; (d) aid and reconstruction should be integrated into peace enforcement.

Bart's Question 1) "What Muslim general from anywhere in the world possesses the qualifications and experience to run a counter insurgency campaign, nevertheless command US/UK/CD troops?"

It is necessary first of all to record that there is no US General in service who has ever run a major peace enforcement operation through to a successful conclusion.

As to the choice of general, I would suggest the search include Generals from both Turkey and Algeria and the latter country could have some strong candidates. I am sure that, General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the Algerian Chief of Staff, could suggest a name. Why?

1. The ALN (National Liberation Army) of Algeria has its roots in an insurgency against France which succeeded.

2. Very many of the young men who were encouraged during the Reagan Administration to "join the caravan" and travel from their homelands to join the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan and who survived were Algerians. A a consequence of their indoctrination, when they returned to Algeria, they set up salafist movements such as the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armée), the GSPC (Groupe Salafiste de Preche et Combat) now renamed "Al Quaida in Algeria". These groups had the aim of taking over the Algerian state and installing a Taliban style governmement under the title FIS (Front Islamique du Salut). They very nearly succeeded and are not yet completely eradicated. The ALN has therefore had the experience of operating against salafist insurgents in terrain not dissimilar to that of Afghanistan - and winning - in particular with a strategy of encouraging remote villages to form self-defence groups. There is nothing the ALN Generals do not know about this kind of operation.

3. Algeria is officially a non-aligned nation and a player in Islamic conferences.

4. The first treaty of amity between Algeria and the USA goes back to 1795. Ever since JFK supported Algeria in its struggle for independence, there has been the potential for good relations with the USA. It may not be well known, but Algeria played a key role in obtaining the release of the Iranian hostages - indeed, it was the current Algerian President, Bouteflika, who was the key negotiator. Algeria and the USA have co-operated greatly on anti-terrorism issues.

Bart's Question 2) "Where would we find non-Afghan Muslim policemen who the Afghans would trust?"

The Afghans are now conditioned to regard all foreign forces with mistrust and that would include police. Trust has to be earned.

But, for example, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, to name but a few states out of many, have good police services including females - and I would want to see a fair number of women involved who could go into homes and achieve something no foreign man could possibly do - get the women on side and earn their trust. Then, there are a number of Muslims (male and female) in the UK, French and other police forces around the world, perhaps even in the USA and I think a number might volunteer. We might even find some speakers of Pushtu or Dari.

Pakistan might also be able to help and the fact that the Durand line is theoretical as a border, I do not think it would make much difference to the overall problem which particular side of the border they happened to be provided that a special effort were made to select people with a command of Pushtu or Dari.
 

mattski said...

Every time one of us moderate-to-liberal sorts points to the abject foolishness and criminality of the Bush invasion of Iraq, people like Bart De Palma accuse us of "hating our own soldiers."

What do you call this?

Charles Gittings said...

I'd love to see an accurate report on how many innocent civilians have been killed by all parties to these idiotic phony "wars". I'd bet the US is #1 by a huge margin.

I repeat: the US occupation -- NATO included -- has only made things WORSE.

You neo-fascist idiots have an absolutely consistent record of incompetence, dishonesty, failure and war crimes over the last eight years.

I have only indicted Mr. Gittings of loathing our troops, with more than ample reason. However, it you or any other "moderate-to-liberal sorts" share these views, then my indictment applies to you as well.

My question is why no one here apart from myself has taken Mr. Gittings to task for this hateful bile and slander of our troops as mass murdering war criminals? Instead, you defend him.
 

Virgil,

I'm well acquainted with the capabilities of our drones. The problem is how they are being used.

Indeed, I'd say we use air-power way too much, and that its primary use is as a substitute for thinking. Eight years of failure is enough to figure out that what you're doing is ineffective.
 

Mourad:

Thanks for the thoughtful reply to my serious questions.

I had not considered the Algerians. They do present an interesting option. How many troops could they realistically provide, though, given their ongoing problems with al Qaeda? Also, Algerian methods do not exactly comport with our new delicate human rights sensibilities.

The Turks are great troops, but they have their hands full with the Kurds.

The Indonesian military are thugs and would make things worse.

BTW, the Iraq counter insurgency operation has been decisively won. There is no enemy left with a credible capability to take and hold any part of Iraq. Thus, Generals Petreaus and McChrystal have both successfully completed the type of counter insurgency operation needed in Afghanistan. Very likely, their subordinates in Afghanistan had tours in Iraq during the Surge and also are experienced.
 

Bart,

I repeat: I don't blame our soldiers, I blame the neo-fascist goons like YOU, Bush, and Cheney who are responsible for these idiotic fiascoes.

And show me the numbers you liar: it's entirely obvious that the US military has killed thousands of civilians. It's equally obvious that the utterly needless invasion of Iraq set off a killing spree on both sides, and drove millions out of their homes.

And for what?

Eight years of abject failure and criminality to feed your demented fantasies. I don't call throwing the lives and well-being of our soldiers away for nothing "support".
 

My question is why no one here apart from myself has taken Mr. Gittings to task for this hateful bile and slander of our troops as mass murdering war criminals? Instead, you defend him.

I have in the past criticized Charles Gittings for what I consider to be overheated rhetoric. I wish he would turn it down a notch, but that's his call, not mine.

The problem is, Bart, you consistently misstate the facts. Charles did not "libel" our troops. He strongly criticized the architects and principals behind the policy/war. Our soldiers don't set policy, they don't declare war, they don't deploy themselves.

Also, one natural consequence of warfare is war crimes and other misconduct. Some of our troops did commit war crimes. Saying so is not issuing a blanket condemnation of our fighting men & women. Me, I'm a proud liberal, I'm proud of my country, I'm proud of our military, especially when they do their jobs with honor. When some minority of soldiers, for whatever reasons, resort to barbaric behavior then it is our duty as citizens to protest such behavior and seek to put a stop to it. This is not "libeling" or "hating" our troops. It is loving our country enough to hold it to admirable standards.
 

Bart,

While Charles' assertions may be a bit in advance of the data, your replies consist entirely of a mindless, fact-free belief in the military.

The US military is a fine instrument, and its training and equipment are, mostly, far ahead of any competition. It is a statistical truism, however, that you cannot sample a large population with a sample size of significant magnitude and expect to get a sample mean greatly different from the population mean.

Translated into simple terms, this means that our military is not that much better than the population as a whole, and -- I don't know if you've noticed this -- half our population is below average in honesty, integrity, or intelligence (and, sadly, often all three). This means that they will make mistakes, commit bad acts, and in general suffer from the same sorts of problems the rest of us do.

Pretending that the act of enlistment and getting through training makes them angels is neither honest nor convincing.

Frankly, contrary to your opinion of yourself, I, for one, do not find your expertise in military matters to be either wide or deep.

It's been pointed out to you that Iraq has not been "won" as long as the US military is still involved in close support on a day to day basis of the Iraqi army, yet you still are making the risible claim, as if we didn't have a hundred thousand troops in that country.

If you want support in your arguments, I'd suggest you bring a little more honesty, and a lot more humility, to the table.
 

In advance of the data???

We have EIGHT YEARS of data, and I've been on top of this stuff from day one.

It's completely obvious that Iraq was a crime against peace in the sense of IMT Charter art. 6. They lied about their reasons for invading, they lied about the evidence, and every time one of their lies was exposed they invented a new lie. Some of the key evidence they used to persuade Congress was false information they obtained by torture in violation of our own laws.

George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals and mass murderers in exactly the same sense that Hitler and Goering were, and that's just a cold fact -- one that has been obvious on the public record since mid-2002. They didn't commit genocide, but they did just about everything else, medical experiments on prisoners even.

And I'm sorry, but your reluctance to do the math or Bart's insistence that 1 + 1 = 0 or 3 or anything else just as long as it isn't 2 doesn't change the facts. The problem here isn't that I'm ahead of the evidence, it's that so many people have lied about it or ignored it, the Obama administration included.

John Yoo filed an OLC memo on 2001.09.25 that claimed the President could ignore literally ANY law enacted by Congress and do anything he wanted to. The AUMF literally authorizes the President to use military force to kill anyone on the planet, US citizens included, at his sole discretion. Read it. The thing is facially unconstitutional, but no one, not even the Supreme Court apparently, can be bothered to just read what the damn thing says at face value.

And I'm sorry, it's been EIGHT freaking years now, and I've studied too much history to be patient with this nonsense. How long does it take to find half a faint clue?

Bart's bullet proof: the man is so addled and dishonest that he's literally incapable of rational thought -- evidence and logic don't even matter, it's all propaganda all the time. What's your excuse?

This kind of stupidity and hubris will not go unpunished forever.
 

Part .7 - Soviet Interest and Involvement 1950 -1963

We saw that the Pustunistan issue with Pakistan pushed the Afghan government into the embrace of the Russian bear in 1950. In September 1953 the king's cousin and brother-in-law, Mohammad Daoud, became prime minister.

Daoud was the first of the young, Western-educated generation of the royal family to wield power in Kabul. His keen interest in modernisation manifested itself in continued support of the Helmand Valley Project and the question of the emancipation of women. At the fortieth celebration of national independence in 1959, the wives of his ministers appeared unveiled in public at his behest. When religious leaders protested, he challenged them to cite a single verse of the Quran specifically mandating veiling. When they continued to resist, he jailed them for a week.

Daoud's social and economic policies were cautiously reformist and relatively successful. His foreign policy was guided by two principles: balancing what he saw as pro-Western orientation on the part of previous governments by improving relations with the Soviet Union (without sacrificing U.S. economic aid), and pursuing the Pushtunistan issue by every possible means.

Daoud's desire for improved bilateral relations with the Soviet Union stepped up to a necessity when the Pakistan-Afghan border was closed for five months in 1955. The Afghans had no choice but to request a renewal of their 1950 transit agreement with the Soviet Union. Ratified in June 1955, it was followed by a new bilateral barter agreement. After the Soviet leaders Nikolay Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev visited Kabul in 1955, they announced a US$100 million development loan for projects to be mutually agreed upon.

Daoud also sought to strengthen ties with the United States, but, maintaining its nonaligned position, Afghanistan refused to join the United States-sponsored Baghdad Pact. This rebuff did not stop the United States from continuing its low-level aid program, but it became reluctant to provide Afghanistan with military assistance, so Daoud turned to the Soviet Union and its allies for military aid, and in 1955 he received approximately US$25 million of military matériel. In addition, the Soviet bloc also began construction of military airfields in Bagram, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Shindand.

Although the Afghans remained unresigned to accepting the status quo on the Pushtunistan issue, the conflict remained dormant for several years but in 1960 Daoud sent troops across the border into Bajaur in a foolhardy attempt to to press the Pushtunistan issue, but Afghan military forces were routed by the Pakistan military. Afghanistan and Pakistan severed relations on September 6, 1961. Traffic between the two countries came to a halt, just as two of Afghanistan's major export crops, grapes and pomegranates, were ready to be shipped to India.

The Soviet Union offered to buy the crops and airlift them from Afghanistan. What the Soviets did not ship, Ariana Afghan Airlines flew to India in 1961 and 1962. At the same time, the United States attempted to mediate the dispute, although its ties with Pakistan were a stumbling block.

Afghanistan's economic situation continued to deteriorate. By 1963 it became clear that neither Daoud of Afghanistan nor Ayub Khan of Pakistan would yield; to settle the issue one of them would have to be removed from power. Daoud was weaker because Afghanistan's economy was suffering. In March 1963 King Zahir Shah sought Daoud's resignation. Daoud resigned, and Muhammad Yousuf, a non-Pushtun, German-educated technocrat who had been minister of mines and industries became prime minister.
 

Charles:

You have repeatedly branded our troops as mass murdering war criminals.

You cannot spin out of that slander by with a reverse Nuremberg spin that you really loathe Mr. Bush and the troops were only following orders. Mr. Bush never ordered the your alleged slaughter of civilians.

You also offer no evidence to support your slander that our troops actually committed mass murder of innocent civilians. Show us the actual physical evidence. When a military murders hundreds of thousands of civilians, it is not difficult at all to find the graves. Al Qeada and the Mahdi Army would have had a propaganda field day showing these graves if they existed.

Just as reprehensibly, you blame America for the slaughter committed by al Qaeda and the Iraqi terrorists during the Iraq War. That is like blaming America for the millions of civilians the Nazis murdered after we entered the war in 1942.

mattski:

Mr. Gittings is not engaged in "overheated rhetoric," but instead the worst kind of slanders. He is not merely noting that particular solders committed proven ware crimes. He is issuing a blanket indictment without evidence of our entire military. There is no excuse for this.

C2H50H said...

The US military is far, far better disciplined and less prone to criminal acts than the population in general. The population in general is not the beneficiaries of military training and discipline nor are they subject to anything like the close supervision of a solider in combat.
 

Bart,

Your assertions here are, no doubt, like all your other assertions, based on your vast experience of a few years duration twenty years ago?

I was in the Army, and I know the attitudes, the supervision, and the way things work. I call bullshit.
 

He is not merely noting that particular solders committed proven ware crimes. He is issuing a blanket indictment without evidence of our entire military.

You're wrong, Bart. And to be so consistent and persistent in believing and promulgating falsehood is difficult to explain without resort to pathology.
 

The US military is far, far better disciplined and less prone to criminal acts than the population in general. The population in general is not the beneficiaries of military training and discipline nor are they subject to anything like the close supervision of a solider in combat.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 4:49 PM


Baghdad, your blind devotion to the military is more than a little odd for someone who claims to have no faith in government.
 

"You have repeatedly branded our troops as mass murdering war criminals."

The slander is all yours Bart: I haven't said any such thing, nor do I hold any such belief.


"Mr. Bush never ordered the your alleged slaughter of civilians."

Oh, I think you know enough about the chain of command to know it doesn't work like that. What Mr. Bush did was order the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses and authorize polices in proscribed by the the laws of war.

As for the numbers Bart, you tell me: how many civilians have we killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many have been driven from the homes, been injured, or died from otherwise preventable injuries or illness?

How many detainees have we abused?

The answer to that last one is virtually all of them from 2001-2008. The Obama administration has improved some things, but they're STILL abusing detainees to some extent.


"That is like blaming America for the millions of civilians the Nazis murdered after we entered the war in 1942"

OH BS -- it's exactly like blaming the Nazis for the 40 million people who died after they invaded Poland in 1939.
 

I hadn't done so previously, but want to thank Mourad for his excellent historical tutorial on AfPAK affairs--Lord Curzon would be proud--even if not in total philosophical agreement with Mr. Mourad.
 

Charles Gittings@1:26pm

While I readily admit we really don't know exactly what the hell we want to accomplish along the AfPk border (either this or the previous admin) I wonder what you think of the fact that it appears from published comments (both written and spoken) that the Obama administration is considering a policy that would depend even more heavily on UAVs than previously--in fact make such use the centerpiece of its tactics/strategy.
 

I don't like how they've been using UAV's. Murdering civilians by remote control isn't an approach we should be promoting, and that's exactly what they are doing outside the feverish confines of the right-wing delusion that this is a war. How would you feel about your local police department using them?

That's how I feel about UAV's. I think we should just get out. It's really a Pakistani / law enforcement problem at this point. Or would you prefer to invade Pakistan?

Continuing / expanding the video game of the last eight years is dumb. We don't need a colony in Afghanistan, we don't need to be wasting more money and lives there, and we don't need to be manufacturing new terrorists.

What we need is to get the FBI / CIA in there and find Bin Ladin. I couldn't care less how the Afghan Civil War turns out; I mostly just wish they'd all wise up and stop.
 

Before going further, might I ask those who naturally disagree on what are very serious subjects to dial back some of the rhetoric on a number of issues:-

1. The US troops in Afghanistan under operation Enduring Freedom are not technically part of the UN authorised ISAF mission, and it would be as well if that abnormality were ended, but that factor apart, whatever errors were made in the past, Afghanistan does need help and assistance, the absence of law and order is inimical to international peace and security and, importantly, to development and Afghanistan is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Further, by reason of absolute poverty and inability to grow any crop other than the opium poppy economically, the narcotics trade is fuelling criminal activity through the region, and throughout Europe, and that alone is a good reason to intervene.

2. While, I accept that the initial invasion of Afghanistan was unlawful as a matter of international law, the intervention is now lawful. The pity is that that the initial illegality has poisoned the subsequent operation. It is rather reminiscent of a certain US retired general, whose appointment lasted only a few weeks, going on TV to say to the Iraqi people who had just suffered "shock and awe" bombing in the name of the USA: "We are here to help". Should we have been surprised that many of the Iraqi people found that assertion obscene?

3. With exceptions, neither US, nor UK, nor any other personnel of the forces in Afghanistan go there to abuse the human rights of the population. Yes, there are exceptions, just as there were in Iraq (for a UK example of the latter see what is going on in The Baha Mousa Enquiry which is considering abuses and misconduct by members of the UK forces in Iraq and why a prosecution of those responsible failed). The use of the military for what is essentially a law enforcement function is a blunt instrument of last resort. We take young people, often as young as 18 years of age, train them to kill efficiently, then put them through one or more short courses designed to show them how to exercise restraint in peace enforcement operations, and then expect everything to go smoothly. It can be guaranteed that it will not. I know that from my own Northern Ireland experiences.

4. Further, the stresses on young soldiers in a civil disorder operation in their own culture or something near it (say a US National Guard operation to quell riots, the UK forces in Northern Ireland, or even Kosovo) are as nothing to operations in an environment as alien as Afghanistan.

5. When things go badly wrong, analysis nearly always shows that the fault lies (i) with politicians who expect the armed forces to make omlettes without breaking eggs; (ii) with the higher command who have been at their desks too long to remember what it was like as a platoon or company commander in a similar situation (and many US commanders actually have little or no personal experience of peace enforcement operations).

Peace enforcement is all about intervening with one hand tied behind one's back. That is why in some cases one has to accept casualties which might be avoided by the use of some weapons.

Charles Gittings therefore has some valid points - particularly on the use of drones, artillery and air power. Like Mattski however, I think they could be more effective if made with more restraint.
 

Part 8 - 1973-1977 The Daoud Coup

Daoud's achievements had foundered on the Pushtunistan issue, a problem created by the British Raj's Durand Line line which split the ancestral lands of the Pushtuns in two: half in Afghanistan and half in what had become Pakistan when British India was partitioned.

Daoud's dismissal led to a timid experiment with parliamentary democracy which Afghan communists worked vigorously to undermine. Their inflammatory speeches in parliament and organized street riots alarmed the king and he refused to sign a law legalising political parties.

Daoud started plotting and it seems that he involved both the communists and conservative Pushtun military officers. The coup itself was carried out by junior officers trained in the Soviet Union in July 1973 while the King was in Italy receiving eye treatment.

A second coup attempt against Daoud by Maiwandwal, a former prime minister and a highly respected former diplomat was brutally subdued. In October 1973, Maiwandwal, died in prison and the widespread belief was that he had been tortured to death.

The next year, Daoud established the National Revolutionary Party. In January 1977, a loya jirgah approved Daoud's constitution establishing a presidential, one party system of government. Any resistance to the new regime was suppressed.

Daoud's ties with the Soviet Union deteriorated during his five year presidency. Daoud's shift to the right made the Soviets anxious even though Daoud ensured that Afghanistan's representative in the United Nations voted regularly with the group of nonaligned countries. The Soviets however remained Afghanistan's largest aid donor.

Daoud still favored a state run economy, and, three years after coming to power, he drew up an ambitious seven-year economic plan (1976-83) that included major projects but which reuired a substantial inflow of foreign aid.

Daoud began distancing himself from over-reliance on the Soviet Union for military and economic support. He formed a military training program with India, and opened talks with Iran on economic development aid. Daoud also turned to other oil-rich Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.

Pushtunistan zealots had expected the new president to raise this issue with Pakistan but efforts by Iran and the United States to cool a tense situation succeeded after a time, and by 1977 relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan had improved.

Daoud's initial visit to the Soviet Union in 1974 was friendly, despite disagreement on the Pushtunistan issue. By the time of Daoud's second visit in April 1977, the Soviets knew of his purge of the left begun in 1975, his removal of Soviet advisers from some Afghan military units, and his changes in military training whereby other nations, especially India and Egypt, trained Afghans with Soviet weapons. Despite official goodwill, unofficial reports circulated of sharp Soviet criticism. Daoud was friendly with Iran and Saudi Arabia, and he had scheduled a visit to Washington for the spring of 1978.

By 1978 Daoud had achieved little of what he had set out to accomplish. Despite good harvests in 1973 and subsequent years, no real economic progress had been made, and the Afghan standard of living had not improved. He had also alienated key political groups by gathering power into his own hands and refusing to tolerate dissent. Although Muslim fundamentalists had been the object of repression as early as 1974, their numbers had nonetheless increased. Diehard Pushtunistan supporters were disillusioned with Daoud's rapprochement with Pakistan, especially by what they regarded as his commitment in the 1977 agreement not to aid Pushtun militants in Pakistan.
 

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Part 9 - The Soviet Backed Takeover

The April 19, 1978, funeral for the murdered Mir Akbar Khyber, a prominent figure on the left, served as a rallying point for Afghan communists. 10,000 to 30,000 persons gathered to hear speeches by Taraki and Karmal.

Shocked by this demonstration of communist unity, Daoud ordered the arrest of PDPA leaders, but he reacted too slowly. It took him a week to arrest Taraki, and Amin was merely placed under house arrest. According to later PDPA writings, Amin sent complete orders for the coup from his home while it was under armed guard using his family as messengers.

On April 27, 1978, a coup d'état beginning with troop movements at the military base at Kabul International Airport, gained ground slowly over the next twenty-four hours as rebels battled units loyal to Daoud in and around the capital. Daoud and most of his family were shot in the presidential palace the following day. Two hundred and thirty-one years of royal rule by Ahmad Shah and his descendants had ended.

Taraki would be obliged to ask the Soviets to intervene just months later in March 1979.
 

Mourad, forgive my american, but you are a studly-man.

I highly recommend Frank Rich in this mornings NYT. The money quote: "Wrong-Way McCain."
 

Well gee Mourad, now you have me curious...

1) Why do you think the initial invasion of Afghanistan was illegal?

Iraq was clearly a crime against peace, but in Afghanistan we had a colorable claim to be acting in self-defense. I do think they acted precipitously, and that their strategy and tactics were dumb, but I don't think it was illegal.

2) Just exactly what am I supposed to tone down?
 

" ... but in Afghanistan we had a colorable claim to be acting in self-defense."

Bush's National Security Strategy (October 2002, post action in Afghanistan) suggests support for such a claim, perhaps after the fact.
 

Charles Gittings wrote:-

Well gee Mourad, now you have me curious...1) Why do you think the initial invasion of Afghanistan was illegal? - Iraq was clearly a crime against peace, but in Afghanistan we had a colorable claim to be acting in self-defense....I don't think it was illegal.

Legitimate question to which my answer is as follows:-

1. In the terms of the UN Charter, a state may only invoke the right of self defence against imminent attack by another state. Non-state actors do not fall within the provisions of the UN Charter relating to self-defence.

2. Afghanistan (as opposed to Al-Quaida) had not attacked the United States. It was and is a sovereign state. It did not attack the United States. A group of terrorists did. That was a criminal act by individuals, not an act of state.

3. As against Afghanistan, the USA had the international law right to demand that any person known to have been a perpetrator, or a conspirator or an accessory before or after the fact be either surrendered to face justice in the USA or tried in Afghanistan. That is known as the principle of "aut dedere aut punire".

4. Equally, as against Afghanistan the USA could legitimately have taken the view that the presence of Al-Quaida within Afghanistan was a threat to international peace and security and brought that threat before the UN Security Council for action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

5. As it happens, I believe that at the time the responsible persons in the then members of the UN Security Council had been so horrified by what they had seen on television (and remember that the permanent representatives were actually in New York) that a Chapter VII mandate was there for the asking. In fact, I have personal grounds for belief that it was actually proposed.

6. However, the opposition of John Bolton and others within the Administration to the whole UN concept is well known. No mandate was requested. I happen to believe that this was because:-

(i) the Administration had already determined on the "Enterprise of Iraq" and feared that going to the UN would prejudice their proposed course of action there;

(ii) there was a strong "all hat and no cattle cowboy" ethos in the Bush White House - a "send a posse to get these varmints" anger, if you will.

At such times any government wants to be seen to be doing something. There is much temptation to act first and think second. Either the President did not get the advice he ought to have received, or he did get it and chose to disregard it. In future years the historians may be able to tell us more than we presently know.

In response to your second question, I think you know well and don't need me to tell you.
 

Mattski:-

I'm afraid I do not know the meaning of the expression "studly" which is not in my dictionaries so I'm afraid it's a case of "English spoken - Murkin not understood" and someone will have to elucidate.

I have just read Frank Rich's piece in the NYT and I think it makes a lot of sense.
 

Mourad,

That's all arguable, but it smacks of 20-20 hindsight. The only way we weren't going in is if they handed over bin Ladin.

As for your response to my second question, I find it patronizing: if I knew, I wouldn't have asked. I try to express myself VERY clearly, and my opinions are MINE, not yours. I don't think I've said anything that was out of bounds in the least, and if you aren't prepared to explain yourself, maybe you should keep your opinions of what other people say to yourself.
 

Part 10 - Afghanistan - Pakistan

My potted version of the origins of the Afghanistan problem is almost up to the Soviet invasion. I think it is now appropriate to pause a little and look at Pakistan, its tribal areas and its madrassas.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas ("FATA") of Pakistan are located on the Pakistan side of the 2,400 kilometres long border, once known as named the Durand Line after the British official who oversaw the demarcation of the 19th century boundary and now commonly referred to as "the Afghan-Pak Border".

It is to be understood that for most of its length is is a border in name only. There are seven Tribal Areas - six of which border Afghanistan: South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai, Khyber, Mohmand and Bajaur. Located within the seven districts are six tribal areas or Frontier Regions, which constitute an area of 27,220 sq. km, or 2.6 percent of the total area of Pakistan: Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Lakki, Tank, and Dera Ismail Khan. The 1998 Census gave the FATA an estimated population of 5.7 millions.

Like the southern part of Afghanistan on the other side of the nominal border, the FATA are inhabited by Pushtun tribes.

Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of British India were, of course, the scene of "the Great Game" where the British Raj and Russia jostled for influence and it was as a result of these jostlings that the Pushtun areas to the South of the Durand line were incorporated, at least nominally, into British India.

Part of the deal by which the loyalty of the tribal leaders was secured was an arrangement whereby the British surrendered control over domestic affairs within the tribal areas to the tribal chiefs who ruled in accordance with their own customs and as a consequence, the ordinary laws, police and judicial systems of Pakistan do not operate in the FATA.

Upon partition of British India in 1947, Jinnah, the founding President of Pakistan ordered the ending of the special status of the Tribal Areas, but he died in 1948 and his policy was never put into effect.

We have seen from the previous pages that the Pushtun tribes have never accepted the border, that there has long been a strong Pustunistan movement and there have long been difficulties between Pakistan and Afghanistan about the border, sometimes going as far as armed hostilities. Just as is the case with their tribal cousins on the Afghan side of the nominal border, the Pushtuns of the FATA have a tradition of armed rebellion against the central government if it tries to interfere with the way they wish to conduct their affairs.

The principal cash crop of the Afghans is the opium poppy. The opium base is taken across the nominal border into the tribal areas of Pakistan where it is refined into heroin and from where it is exported. The revenues from the drug trade enable the wholesale corruption of any representatives of the Pakistani central government who might venture into the FATA areas. Some 85% of the heroin used in Europe comes from Afghanistan. Heroin exports ex Afganistan are a scourge which has also impacted on Russia and on Iran.

Although Ghandi and his Congress Party as well as the British government and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, wished British India to become a single nation at independence, they ran into the implacable opposition of Jinnah and the Muslim League. The result was partition and the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

In the event, thus far Pakistan has often not had even a semblance of democracy as that expression is understood in the West. It would be more accurate to say that it has largely tottered on from military dictatorship to military dictatorship with occasional flirtations with democracy.
 

Mourad:

While I am a bit surprised by mattski's choice of complementary term, he is trying to say you are manly, a stand-up guy, an hombre to be admired - in your case, for your intelleignce and patience, I think.
 

The idiom is pretty straight forward...

Stud, as in a stallion at stud, hence, potent. Common sports slang over here.
 

Yes, and a little ironic humor intended. Thank you for raising the level of our intelligence, Mourad.
 

Part 11 - Pakistan's
Generals

Pakistan became an independent state in 1947, but on 7th October 1958 the then President, Iskander Mirza abrogated the Constitution and declared Martial Law, abrogating the 1956 Constitution.

General Muhammad Ayub Khan, the then Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, became the Chief Martial Law Administrator and within weeks he ousted President Mirza, declared himself President and promptly awarded himself the rank of Field Marshal. Martial law remained in force until a new constitution was promulgated in 1962.

The self-proclaimed Field Marshal shamelessly manipulated the 1965 elections to assure himself of re-election as President.

When there was widespread disorder in 1969, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan ousted Ayub Khan, declared martial law and named himself as Chief Martial Law Administrator but, in contrast with his predecessor, promulgated an interim constitution and enabled Pakistan to have its first democratic elections in 1970, which however resulted in the secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh and a war with India.

Zulfikar Ali Butto who had won the elections in West Pakistan became President and Chief Martial Law Administrator on 20th December 1971.

After the National Assembly passed the 1973 Constitution, Butto became Prime Minister but on 5th July 1977 was ousted by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the by now familiar coup process. Two years later, former Premier Butto was hanged.

Zia-Ul-Haq was an Islamic militant, a disciple of Abul A‘la Maududi (1903-1979), the founder of one of the more extreme islamist movements in Pakistan. He died in a mysterious airplane crash in August 1988. He will be an important player in the tragedy about to unfold.

A good history of how political Islam played a role in the progress to nationhood of the Indian Sub-Continent is to be found on this site: The Story of Pakistan

There have been Muslims on the Indian sub-continent for 13 Centuries or so. As a minority faith, Indian Muslims were historically very attached to their religion and religious practices. One of the important influences on the thought of the sub-continent's Muslim population was the The Khilafat Movement. The Khilafat Movement has been idealised as an anti-colonial movement. But the main 'achievement' of the Movement was the turning away of Indian Muslims from a secular understanding of politics, towards a religious and communalist one. It left a legacy of political activism of the Muslim clergy that bedevils both Indian and Pakistani politics to this day.

Another major influence was Jamaat el Islami, founded in British India by Abul A‘la Maududi (1903-1979) and others. A flavour of Maududi's thought can be discerned from his biography on the web site of his movement which continues as a powerful transnational salafist movement now based in Pakistan but influential throughout Asia.

In its early days Madudi and the Jamaat al Islami called for Muslims to leave British India and settle in Afghanistan. They were very active in making partition of British India inevitable and they encouraged the radicalisation of the Pakistani Madrassas - the cradles of the modern salafist terrorist movements.
 

CTS and Charles Gittings:-

Thank you both for your respective elucidations of Mattski's American epithet.

Since I do not think my posts would give any reason to use the expression in its more literal sense, I shall assume that its use was figurative and treat it is complimentary - thank you Mattski.
 

Mourad,

Is it true that, as I have read, under the rule of Zia al Haq, public education was defunded by the government, leaving the education of the masses to the madrassas?
 

Mattski - Your post crossed with mine.

A famous Edwardian barrister, Sir Edward Marshall-Hall KC who appeared for the defence in many celebrated trials was interrupted by a particularly irascible Judge who remarked testily:-

"Mr Marshall-Hall, I have been listening to your argument for over an hour and I am none the wiser."

To which Marshall-Hall replied,

"Wiser, perhaps not, M'Lud, but very much better informed, I hope."

I do not think my posts could possibly raise the level of intelligence of any of the contributers to this site many of whom have intellects I suspect may be superior to mine.

But I do hope that I can bring more information and make some contribution to a debate on an important and difficult issue which will have profound effects for all of us and not only on the people of Afghanistan who have already surely suffered enough.
 

Charles:-

Re your post @ 3.41 pm

If you found my answer to your 2nd question patronising, I am sorry and I apologise. I could not possibly object to the substance of the opinions you express and in fact I share some of them.

What I think would be helpful would be if you voluntarily refrained from putting complete words in upper case which makes it appear as if you were shouting and dialed back on the use of the more pejorative expressions you use.

I confess that I would sometimes like to use some of them myself, but, as you know the owner of this blog has his policies and one of them is not to censor threads in any way while other blogs have no hesitation in barring those who make a nuisance of themselves.

As a consequence, the default setting for contributions is now that there are no comments allowed and I think the blog is the poorer for that.

A few of the principals, for example, Professor Levinson and Professor Tamanaha, do generally permit comments and I would not like to see that change.

I do think there are those of a certain perspective who deliberately go out to needle people into outrage. I suspect they would like to see all comments turned off and thus make one of the best blogs covering the subjects it does less attractive to those who might be persuaded by the content.

Turning now to the substantive issue you raised in your post.

I do not see how my analysis of the international law position can possibly be 20/20 hindsight. Many may disagree with my view and, as we both know, there are those who claim that the very concept of international law is a nonsense and that a president may lawfully do more or less as he sees fit outside the territory of the USA (with the proviso perhaps that it be not done to US citizens). That many be true as a matter of US law - although I think that the true position might be that the actions of the president in the conduct of armed hostilities may be non-justiciable - i.e., the courts will decline to adjudicate leaving the propriety of the action to be determined by the remedy of impeachment.

In days gone by, the US intervention in Afghanistan might have been characterised as a "punitive expedition" of which there are many examples - one of the most notorious perhaps being the Don Pacifico Affair. Today, that action would be clearly unlawful as a matter of international law.

You wrote: "The only way we weren't going in is if they handed over bin Ladin.".

I'm not sure that Bin Laden alone would have satisfied the Delenda est Carthago mood of the time. But Zalamay Khalazid, who was in the Bush White House at the time is an ethnic Pushtun born in Mazar e-Sharif (site of one of the most beautiful mosques in Islam) and whose mother tongue is Dari (he also speaks Pushtu). Since he was in the Reagan State Department as a Secial Adviser on Afghanistan - essentially organising the Mujahiddin - he would probably have known the principal personalities in Afghanistan amd probably he had the connections to obtain some compromise along dedere aut punire lines. Who knows what steps he could have taken or perhaps even tried to take as an alternative to invasion - but he is also a Neocon having been much influenced by his time at Chicago - and it may be therefore be the case that he was as enthusiastic a supporter of the invasion as the rest of that shoddy crew despite knowing what would be the probable consequences for his country of origin.
 

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Hindsight is 20-20."

I used to believe that. But many (e.g., economists on the Great Depression, historians on wars, etc) quite often do not agree on the same past event in an area they may specialize in.
 

C2H50H asked:-

"Is it true that, as I have read, under the rule of Zia al Haq, public education was defunded by the government, leaving the education of the masses to the madrassas?"

Zia ul Haq was in power 1977-1988. I do not think the issue then was one of defunding but about no funding worth talking about.

In 1960 public expenditure on education was only 1.1 percent of the gross national product; by 1990 the figure had risen to 3.4 percent. This amount compared poorly with the 33.9 percent being spent on defense in 1993

Pakistan has excellent private schools for those rich enough to pay the fees. But in Zia's time, for the poor it was a Madrassa or other philanthopic school or, more likely, nothing.

The Pakistan Education Statistics handbook, most recently available for 2006-2007, give the total number of students enrolled in all types of educational institutions -- beginning from age three, and including students at the university (all the way to the PhD) level is less than 37 million. Between ages five and 19, only 27.9 million are enrolled in schools. But since there were about 70 million young people aged between 5-19 that year, about 40 million were not attending school at all and only 19 millions were in government funded schools.

The percentages will be lower in the FATA.
 

Mourad,

"I do not see how my analysis of the international law position can possibly be 20/20 hindsight..."

It isn't your analysis that's hindsight, it's your view of the basic facts, which were not nearly as clear then as they are now.

Like for example, that the attack was made by non-state actors.

-----------------------

As for the other stuff, I use the caps for emphasis simply because I'm a lousy typist and it's easier than coding tags for italics or bold. That depends on how busy or tired I am.

I don't know what else to tell you. I speak my mind as honestly and clearly as I can. I assume you do the same. If I ever need instruction on manners, I'll let you know.

Why don't you try telling Bart to tone it down?

I guess we all know how that would turn out, huh?
 

What is America's National Interest today with respect to Iraq, Afghanistan and/or Pakistan? Has America's National Interest with respect to each of these nations changed from the time of 9/11 to the present or is it a constant?

Nations bordering on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan each have their own National Interests, which may not necessariy be the same as America's National Interest. These bordering and near bordering nations, including India, China, Russia, Iran, others in the Middle East, and the other 'Stans in in Central Asia are more immediately impacted by turmoil in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan such that they should have grave concerns about their National Interests. Much of the commonality of the National Interests of America and these closer nations concerns energy - and nuclear power for other than energy purposes. America, despite 9/11, seems to be in less danger than nations closer to the epicenter of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in an area termed in more recent times as the Greater Middle East, the source of much of the world's energy in the form of gas and oil. Longtime animosities between many of these nations have led to nuclear proliferation as one nation tries to get a leg up on its neighbor. A significant portion of Europe is tethered to the Greater Middle East because of energy needs, so much so that NATO is involved in Afghanistan although only a few European nations joined American in Iraq.

Should America's National Interest cause America to take the lead unilaterally with its powers? Perhaps when America was the No. 1 superpower, that may have been appropriate. (I don't think so.) But both America and the world have changed in so many ways since America responded to 9/11 to protect its National Interests. America cannot go it alone. The rest of the world has to understand this. Other nations, especially those closer to the epicenter of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with their National Interests impacted, must respond. There should be no American empire. Pres. Obams has tried to address some of this with his UN (and other) speeches. Whether or not history repeats itself, history does provide lessons if heeded. What was America's National Interest following WW II is or ought to be changing. While America remains No. 1 militarily, economically and politically in the world, it cannot afford the burdens of policeman of the world. American can and should lead, but these other nations with closely related National Interests must do their share. NATO nations seem to be drifting from Afghanistan just as some of America's allies in Iraq have left.

[Perhaps after breakfast I'll have a little more to say. I was watching the Sunday morning political shows yesterday and hear over and over "National Interest." It's a great phrase, but exactly what is America's National Interest that has us bollixed in the Greater Middle East, apparently for years, even decades? Because we broke it, we must fix it?]
 

Why don't you try telling Bart to tone it down?

Charles, Bart is given a much stiffer dose on a regular basis here by numerous parties.

I agree with Mourad that you would be more persuasive if you were softer in your speech. Looking for motivation more in love for other human beings and less in outrage at injustice is one way of cultivating a gentler style.
 

Charles:-

Thanks for your response.

The Invasion Issue

Obviously, neither you nor I know precisely what information was before those taking the decision to invade, since some many still be classified and not in the public domain, but a decision to invade another sovereign country rather than seek a UN Mandate is one I would expect to have been taken very carefully (other than by the Bush Administration).

I would have expected the Administration to be able to show publicly that the 9-11 conspiracy was was a sovereign act of the state of Afghanistan by overwhelming evidence and to be prepared to put that evidence into the public domain, before taking an action otherwise unlawful as a matter of international law.

Can you point me to any contemporaneous justification along those lines, or indeed to any facts and matters which could have been used to make such a justification?

The reason I doubt whether the question was even considered is that there is ample evidence that the USA caused its agents to violate the sovereignty of other nations (including allies) by snatching suspects in, for example, Italy, Kosovo, and Gambia. And of course there have been other examples of the USA so acting, eg the invasion of Grenada under Reagan.

Concern About Comments

I note everything that you say and I endorse what Mattski has just posted above. Bart used to have the same effect on me and at one stage I started out referring to him as "our resident LSR" "LSR" being an abbreviation for "loathsome spotted reptile" words the inimitable Peter Cook put into the mouth of Mr Justice Cantley in a skit on the Jeremy Thorpe Trial - full text Entirely a Matter for You.

But every joke palls after a time and after some particularly obnoxious comment (from me or him, I recall not) I decided that enough was enough. Since then, I have never addressed him directly, but simply copied what I thought was relevant into a post addressed to the readership generally. I find that inclines me to be politer that way than I might otherwise be and I think it still works to get across any point I think worth making. There is after all a distinction between forensic debate and what otherwise takes place which might be characterised as "bold assertion met with a vigorous response, followed by exchanges of vulgar abuse". One Barbuster is enough for any blog.
 

Part 12 - Madrassas

Historically, Muslim communities have always regarded it as their duty to provide for the education of the young. As soon as a mosque was built it would have a madrassa ("school") attached which would meet in the mosque itself or in rooms within the precincts of the mosque. In time the madrassas attached to the great mosques in urban centres became universities, in villages they fulfilled the function of the local school.

Pious Muslims who had the means would establish a trust (a "wakf") which would often have as its object the advancement of education. Islamic schools and universities, particularly those in Muslim Andalusia in modern Spain, preserved and developed for the use of the western European renaissance the culture, philosophy and science of the Hellenistic world.

The Madrassas or Koranic Schools of Pakistan, and in particular of the FATA pose a particular problem in the context of islamist groups and terrorism.

The original Islamic model of the Madrassa was a school to produce the scientists, lawyers and civil servants needed by the community - it sought to teach a full and broad curriculum while the Pakistan/FATA model deviated from the original beneficial model to a wholly religious curriculum so that the students are not educated in the skills needed to contribute to the material development of the community.

The lack of education of many of the "teachers" is proverbial. Many are barely literate. Much of the time in the elementary classes is devoted to learning the verses of the holy Quran by rote. Very little time is spent expounding the meaning or on making it relevant to the social context because the tribal lords and elders do not wish it. Many of the Pakistani/FATA Madrassas have been funded by Saudi Wahhabis with more money than sense to promote the Wahhabi and islamist model of the islamist state ruled by religious leaders and rejecting all scientific and social progress seen as coming from the West and as dangerous. Islamist education of the type dispensed in these Madrassas, particularly in its exposition of the concept of jihad, predisposes young men towards joining jihadist or terrorist groups.

Given the numbers of extremists which have been churned out each year for many years now by the Madrassas of the North West Frontier/FATA region, this problem is very relevant to the international terrorism issue. It is likely that the only practical solution will be root and branch reform of these pernicious institutions - but it is doubtful that the Pakistan government can do this without help. The scale of the problem can be illustrated by the fact that the private income of the Madrassas coming from islamist and Wahhabi sources outside Pakistan is estimated to be equivalent to the entire national tax revenue raised by the Pakistan Government.
 

Part 13 Zia-ul-Haq

In a paper written by F.S. Aijazuddin for a 2004 Yale University conference on The Future of Secularism entitled The Shifting Qiblah Mr Aijazuddin speaks at length of the Islamisation of Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq
and by the term "Islamisation" he means the destruction of the secular state. He writes trenchantly:

"The Pakistan state Ayub Khan (Pakistan’s first Ataturk) wanted to bequeath to his successors – one that was ‘modern, progressive, united and strong’ – was undone by Yahya Khan. Between 1977 and 1988, another Ataturk –this time the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Zia Ul Haq - took steps to restructure it but according to an Islamic design. Soon after he had consolidated his authority over Pakistan, Zia pursued his mission of reforming Pakistan’s society.

He began by declaring his intention to establish Nizam-e-Mustafa or rule in accordance with the injunctions of the Holy Prophet. To achieve this, he had to revert to the spirit of the preamble of the 1973 Constitution, the letter of which, by his act of treason in removing an elected prime minister, he had subverted. On 1984, he held a Referendum in which the choice placed before the Pakistani electorate was: Do you want Islam? Those who voted yes would be deemed to have simultaneously endorsed also Zia’s Islamization programme.

Predictably, the result was overwhelmingly in Zia’s favour.

In 1978, he established Shariat Courts, introducing a parallel track of justice that looked into the Holy Quran and the Sunnah for precedents. The performance expected from such Shariat courts was not ‘law-making, only law-finding.’ A year later, he approved the notorious Hudood Ordinances, prescribing physical punishments such as flogging in public and amputation of limbs for theft, etc. He regressed further by affecting the rights of women on the laws of evidence. He introduced the compulsory deduction of Zakat, a percentage charge by the state on private wealth.

And in an act of which Hitler might have been proud, he declared the Ahmadiya community non-Muslims. ...

The fount of Zia’s Islamic ideology came from Maulana Maudoodi and his Jamaat-IIslami party. Zia shared his zealous belief that Islam was more than merely a religion. It was a complete code of life. Furthermore, it could not be contained within territorial boundaries. Islam was a religious transnational, cutting across borders. ‘Mawdudi understood the Islamic state not as a territorial but as a cultural and ethical entity. Its boundaries, values, goals, and citizens were defined in Islamic terms.’ ...

Zia’s assertion, though, had a more sinister implication. Pakistan, despite having been cut down to size in 1971 and thereby having lost to Indonesia its pre-eminence as the largest Muslim nation in the world, nevertheless wanted to re-assert its role as the muezzin of Islam in the subcontinent. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the financial, military and international support given to him by the United States to fight a proxy war against the Soviets across his border, gave Zia an international legitimacy the Pakistani public were never permitted nor encouraged to decide.

And, as we shall see, this fanatic was one of the principal US allies involved in the support of the Mujahiddin who (if they survived) became members of the Taliban or participants in Al Quaida type groups.
 

Mourad continues to provide us with much needed background on Afghanistan. From the American perspective faced by Pres. Obama, take a look at this 10/11/09 post:

"Tomgram: William Astore, Apocalypse Then, Afghanistan Now" at:

http://tomdispatch.com/

Tom's introduction together with Astore's essay present serious arguments for leaving Afghanistan. That might not seem fair to the Afghans, but America staying there - and escalating - may be worse, at least for America.
 

On the int'l law front, the interesting two law review articles by Marty Lederman/David Barron discussing limits on the commander in chief power in a historical context* made an interesting comment:

As we have stressed throughout our survey, in our early constitutional history there was a general consensus that Presidents were constrained in their conduct of war by the laws and usages of war, even in the absence of a statute.

They cite court rulings upholding the principle. There was some debate if Congress had the power to override such restraints but executives generally didn't dispute it, arguing their power was met by such restraints.

[Thus, Justice Field's comments in Miller v. U.S. holding that Congress is restrained by "the law of nations" did not have to be addressed by the majority opinion there.]

FWIW, I think the U.S. is constrained by the Declaration of Independence, which speaks of the nation being independent to do what nations "may of right do." I don't think this totally a 'political question,' but as Lederman/Barron note, even if it is, it doesn't stop it from being a key constitutional one.

On the Afghanistan front, I wonder if the law of reprisal had any relevance here. Anyway, I too appreciate Mourad's free online seminars.

---

* Harvard Law Review, Jan/Feb 2008; available online
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Mourad,

I didn't say they were right, nor did I say they went about it the right way (indeed, it was seeing how they went about it that ended my support). What I said was that they had a colorable claim to be acting in self-defense -- as distinct from Iraq, which was merely an unambiguous crime against peace in the same sense that the Nazi invasion of Poland was.

And wars don't work like that: you almost never have perfect information.

As for this other matter...

Mattski said:

"I agree with Mourad that you would be more persuasive if you were softer in your speech. Looking for motivation more in love for other human beings and less in outrage at injustice is one way of cultivating a gentler style."

I don't dislike you or Mourad at all, but all I can say to that is that it's not only patronizing, it's pure BS. You just go right ahead and show me one quote where I said anything untrue or unfair.

And how exactly would showing tolerance or consideration to a vicious lying bigot who promotes murder and torture express my love of humanity?

The Republican Party is the most dangerous criminal organization since the German Nazis. Bart is a dangerous subversive and a menace to public safety. You may not understand that, but I do.

As for "persuasion", I'm not a con-artist or a politician. The only one who can persuade you of anything is you, and then only to the extent that you're able to apply sound logic to an objective understanding of the facts. The clearest facts of the last eight years are 1) the general ignorance and incompetence of people on both sides of the political spectrum, and 2) the vicious dementia and criminality of the Republican Party.

Those who ignore such facts are inviting disaster... And here we are -- up to our necks in it.
 

Selig S. Harrison, author of "Out of Afghanistan" and "In Afghanistan's Shadows," has an Op-Ed in today's (10/12/09) Boston Globe titled "Overcoming our failed strategy in Afghanistan" in which he suggests changing America's strategy "with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China-all opposed to a Taliban takeover-join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.
 

"...I'm a lousy typist and it's easier than coding tags..."


I commensurate with you there, brother Gittings....
 

all I can say to that is that it's not only patronizing, it's pure BS.

Well, I disagree.

Bart is a dangerous subversive

I agree that Bart is dangerous. Wholeheartedly.

As for "persuasion", I'm not a con-artist or a politician.

Persuasion is not simply a matter of what the facts are. Delivery has a lot to do with it. Unadulterated outrage is a symptom of emotional imbalance. A balanced voice invites trust. That is why I.F. Stone is one of my greatest heroes. He was motivated not by anger but by love, and it showed.
 

Mattski:

"That is why I.F. Stone is one of my greatest heroes."

Stone so effectively used the words of government officials and documents to make his case against them, all before the days of FOIA. There are too few journalists today doing the same.

Mattski, I downloaded and printed the two Barron and Lederman articles you mentioned, a total of over 280 pages. Thanks a lot! Somehow I'll try to find the time to read them.
 

Mattski,

Who appointed you the judge of my mental balance?

And when exactly did you start reading my mind to determine just how "adulterated" my "outrage" is??

You've gone all the was from patronizing me to the borders of bigotry, and if you form your views on your subjective opinion of style ahead of facts, all you're doing is randomizing your beliefs. You could save yourself a lot of time and energy by just flipping a coin.

If you want to play patty cake with lairs, bigots, and neo-fascist subversives who advocate murder and torture, that's your problem. They will get no tolerance from me as long as they continue to subvert the government and laws of the United States.

I haven't said anything that was unreasonable or untrue, and my style is mine, not yours. Get used to it, because this Ms. Manners act is silly and you're just wasting your time.
 

Part 14 - Prelude to The Soviet Invasion - US Policy

Containment of Soviet expansionism was standard US policy during the Cold War, but there is evidence which suggests that President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to provide covert support to the Afghan resistance before the Soviets invaded in the hope that it would draw the Soviets into a war they could not win.

The Digital National Security Archive has papers on the immediate prelude to the Soviet invasion, in particular one entitled Afghanistan: The Making of US Policy (1973-1990) which includes the following account:-

"In March 1979, Afghans in the western city of Herat responded to rebel calls for a jihad by massacring hundreds of DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] officials and Soviet advisors who were in charge of introducing the women’s literacy program there. Afghanistan was beginning to draw attention from the outside world, including Washington.

At the White House, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned President Carter that the Soviet Union, with its hundreds of advisors in Afghanistan to assist in reforms and counterinsurgency operations, had territorial designs on Afghanistan and possibly the whole South Asia region. Brzezinski and others worried that the USSR might take advantage of its presence in Afghanistan in order to influence events in neighboring Iran or Pakistan, two traditionally pro-American countries that for years had helped safeguard U.S. interests in the region, namely access to oil and the containment of the Soviet Union...

Weeks after the Herat uprising and while President Carter was absorbed by the Iran hostage crisis, Brzezinski pushed a decision through the Special Coordination Committee (SCC) of the National Security Council (NSC) to be, as he put it, "more sympathetic to those Afghans who were determined to preserve their country’s independence."

The paper asserts that immediately the CIA asked the Pakistan Intelligence Services to put them in touch with what the Pakistani government considered the most militant and organized rebel Afghan group, the Hizb-i Islami.

There there is this interview published in the French magazine, Nouvel Observateur, and posted in translation on the web site of the Center for Research on Globalisation:-

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan - Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser - Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 in which Brzezinski claims that covert asssitance was given to the Afghan resistance in the hope it would provoke a Soviet invasion. The interview ends with this exchange:-

"Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
 

Part 15 - Resisting Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan - Consequences

Remember that quotation from the Brzezinski interview:
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

If the proposition that Brzezinski initiated the "Afghan Trap" with the welfare of Eastern Europe in mind is correct, and he certainly seems to claim that he did, that indicates for me the inherent danger of allowing people who have strong emotional connections with other countries influence US foreign and national security policy, particularly if that policy includes interference in the internal affairs of other states.

One wonders just how many Afghan lives Dr Brzezinski thought it was worth sacrificing to liberate his ancestral homeland (Poland) and the remainder of the Eastern bloc.

The Afghan-Soviet War was one of the deadliest and most persistent conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. Nearly 2 million Afghans were killed (as well as at least 15,000 Soviet soldiers during the 1980s), and there were 600,000 to 2 million wounded. More than 6 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, producing the world’s largest single refugee population since 1981, while at least 2 million more Afghans were internally displaced. More than 50 percent of Afghanistan’s indigenous population (estimated at 15 to 17 million persons at the war’s beginning, now estimated to be as many as 22 million) became casualties—killed, wounded, or made homeless by the war. The Soviet army in Afghanistan and the Afghan communist government planted an estimated thirty million mines throughout the country, most of them completely unmarked and unmapped.

It must be remembered that this was a war which the United States of America fought by proxy inasmuch as it desperately wished to contain Soviet expansion in the region, but did not wish an open confrontation which might have "gone nuclear". So the war was fought by encouraging, arming and training mujahhidin groups.

Insofar as these mujahhidin groups came from throughout the Muslim world to fight the "jihad" against the Soviets, were brainwashed into salafist belief as part of their indoctrination and training before being set into battle against the Soviets and insofar as the thus trained and battle-hardened survivors have returned to their own countries to indoctrinate others - the decision of the United States of America to have the CIA promote the arming and training of these forces, must be counted one of the most serious instances ever of the law of unintended consequences.

"Some stirred-up Muslims" indeed!
 

Wasn't this ZBIG of him?

"We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire."

What goes around, comes around and goes back around again, and on and on ....

And just who are the victims of these superpowers' actions over the centuries in Afghanistan? Who are the losers? The English empire is long gone; then the Soviets. I can just hear the barber finishing up with a customer: NEXT?
 

Who appointed you the judge of my mental balance?

I'm not the judge, I'm a judge, just as you are a judge of the world around you. I mentioned emotional imbalance, not mental.

Look, Charles, I think you know that I consider you my ally. From my perspective I'm trying to improve your effectiveness. I don't mean to cause offense but I realize I'm walking a fine line.

**Shag, I think you might have got me confused with someone else...??
 

(Sorry, Mattski, I thought you provided the link to Barron and Lederman's Harvard Law Review articles on the "Commander-in-Chief." I do plan to read these article. I miss Marty Lederman's posts at this Blog.)

The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2009, has an article by David M. Edelstein titled "Exit Lessons, The search is on for graceful strategies for exiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Apart from victory, history suggests, there are none." Of course, what constitutes victory in a meaningful sense may not be that clear.
 

Edelstein's article is very sobering. It provides a history of interventions and exit strategies going back to Korea, but not limited to the US. This article may have been put to bed before McCrystal's Afghan surge plan was leaked. Obama faces tough choices that include, unfortunately, the political.

[The article is available on the Internet to subscribers to The Wilson Quarterly only. Sorry.]
 

Mattski,

I know you're a good guy, but you're way off base in an area where I'm just not going to let you pass.

Mental / emotional makes no difference: the point is that you're claiming to have knowledge of what's going on inside my head that could not possibly be based on any valid inference from observable data.

And gee, I didn't want to go here, because I didn't want to get into psychoanalyzing you, but at this point I'm going to have to ask:

What exactly is your distinction between adulterated and unadulterated outrage?

I'll have been working on my project for eight years as of Nov. 13, and from day one I've had two principle concerns: the facts and the law. As a systems analyst, I've taken great pains to keep my emotions out of it, because emotions get in the way of sound objective judgments.

We're talking about a gang of disgraceful war criminals who've committed virtually every crime that the Nazis did except genocide, and pathological liar who enthusiastically promotes those crimes as just good ideas that are perfectly lawful according to his utterly fraudulent depictions of the law. The only way any sane person could not be outraged by that is that they've got their head up their ass and just aren't paying attention.

What exactly am I supposed to adulterate here? I consider Bart and his ilk worse than Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. They're all insane, but the Republican body count is a lot higher.

And I keep asking you what I've said that was untrue or unfair, which is the only evidence you could possibly have that I'm being unreasonable. The reality is that I'm not being unreasonable in the least. What's unreasonable is that anyone in this country would be willing to excuse, condone, or tolerate demented, lying, murderous criminals like Bart De Palma, David Addington, or Dick Cheney, et al.

There's nothing subjective about any of that: it's just the way things are. These people are murderers.
 

Charles:

If I may, allow me to note that I think your posts - while always intelligent and informed - have been, on this thread, a bit over the top.

For example, whatever one might make of Bart, we do not have any evidence that he is a "murderous criminal." And comparing him with Dahmer is pretty wild.

I am not scolding you at all. I find Bart very hard to take, and I regard him as a test of my better nature - the one that does not always win out. :-)

I thought his repeated smear that you hate our soldiers was outrageous. Undoubtedly one of the rest of us should have come to your defense. I think Bart gets away with a great deal, in a sense, because so few take him seriously. We would rather just roll our eyes and move on.

Your passion on these matters is clear. I believe Mattski is just suggesting, as a friend, that you would make your arguments more cogently with more restraint. Also, I would guess that he is concerned that so much rage directed at anyone like Bart is a waste of energy and not healthy for you.

Peace.
 

CTS,

Do you really see a significant distinction between inciting a murder and committing one?

I don't, and neither did the jury that convicted Charles Manson. As for Dahmer, maybe you're right: he was clearly nutty as a fruitcake, so it's probably a little unfair to compare him to even worse monsters like like Bart or Hitler. OTOH, a murder is a murder.

Now I don't how much you've actually read Bart's stuff, but he's been polluting this blog for years now and I've had a number of extremely in-depth debates with him along the way. His advocacy of murder, torture, subversion, and his pathological dishonesty are simply not in doubt.

And I really don't know what more I can say. Your profile says you're philosopher, so perhaps you are familiar with the dictum that "the world is everything that is the case". My view of Bart isn't motivated by politics or emotion in the least, it's based entirely on what Bart himself has said, the facts, and the law.

Bottom line: I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Bart De Palma is a liar and a bigot who advocates murder, torture and subversion. The hypocrisy of this nation in regard to such people and such crimes goes back to our earliest colonies. You'll have to forgive me but I made a conscious decision not go along with such nonsense a long time ago. I wish I could say the same for Barrack Obama.
 

CTS:

How is Charles' rant comparing me to Dahmer or Manson any more "wild" than his earlier rant declaring our soldiers to be mass murderers of innocent civilians?

While I appreciate your half hearted defense of myself as something less than a mass murderer, I would far more appreciate your taking up the defense of our men and women under arms from the slanders of this bitter and hateful little man.

I can easily defend myself against rants directed against me on this blog, our soldiers cannot.

Meanwhile, I am proud to stand with my brothers and sisters as a target of of Charles' venom. Good company that.
 

Part 16 - US Policy on Afghanistan - Carter Administration

At the time of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Carter Administration's primary foreign policy concern was Iran and the US hostage situation and it is thus likely that even in he immediate aftermath of the invasion, Afghanistan, Iran rather than Afghanistan is likely to have been the primary focus of NSC meetings. There is in the public domain a memorandum from Zbigniew Brzezinski to the President dated 26th December 1979 which contains the following recommendations:-

...

WHAT IS TO BE DONE ?

What follows are some preliminary thoughts, which need to be discussed more fully:

A. It is essential that Afghanistani resistance continues. This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice;

B. To make the above possible we must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels. This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid.

C. We should encourage the Chinese to help the rebels also.

D. We should concert with Islamic countries both a propaganda campaign and in a covert action campaign to help the rebels;

E. We should inform the Soviets that their actions are placing SALT in jeopardy and that will also influence the substance of the Brown visit to China, since the Chinese are doubtless going to be most concerned about implications for themselves of such Soviet assertiveness so close to their border. Unless we tell the Soviets will not take our "expressions of concern" very seriously, with the effect that our relations will suffer, without the Soviets ever having been confronted with the need to ask the question whether such local adventurism is worth the long-term damage to the U.S.-Soviet relationship;

F. Finally, we should consider taking Soviet actions in Afghanistan to the U.N. as a threat to peace.

In the event, President Carter authorised assistance to the "rebels" via Pakistan and a review of relations with Pakistan.

Shortly thereafter, President Reagan was inaugurated and there was a new team in charge of US foreign policy.
 

Pres. Obama has not made a decision on Afghanistan. Apparently the WaPo looks favorably on Gen. McCrystal's ball as a solution. So in today's WaPo it has an editorial that looks at Pakistan's recent anti-Taliban actions as the key to Af-Pak security, not Al Queda; that in the view of the WaPo, it is the Taliban that is the major threat that may take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, and thus the Af-Pak region. In effect, the WaPo is looking beyond McCrystal's ball, perhaps to expand America's role in that region's conflicts. Pakistan's recent Taliban actions may relate to US funding of Pakistan with limitations on military use/control of such funding. It seems as if the WaPo editorial board wants to significantly expand the US involvement in the region. Now where was it that Pres. Lyndon Johnson came to a fork in the road and stabbed himself? I suggest that Congress hold off on health care reform and get cracking with a draft so all Americans will have to sacrifice, as a means, perhaps, to combat the military-industrial-congressional complex's drive for permanent war.
 

[Bart]: "I can easily defend myself against rants directed against me on this blog, our soldiers cannot."

Why does Bart hate our troops so much? This is just vile calumny directed towards the troops.

Cheers,
 

As usual with lunch on weekdays, I watch a Charlie Rose rerun. Today, it was last night's show. A long segment featured David Finkel, a WaPo reporter (not an opinion writer or pundit), whose "The Good Soldiers" was recently published. It is about the time he spent with a surge unit in Iraq. He stressed that his book is not political; it was about the soldiers and their families. I chocked up as he related stories about two soldiers in the unit. Charlie Rose, I thought, held back from chocking as well. I haven't read the book, only a review. I don't plan on reading it, just as I don't read books on genocides (including one in which my forbears were involved) and the holocaust, as I can well up just thinking of these events and their atrocities. I wish Pres. Obama would read Finkel's book. When sacrifices are made only by a few, it is difficult for most of us to understand the issues that Pres. Obama must address.

I just got on the Internet to check my mail. Here's what I got from Commentary:

"COMMENTARY

The most pressing issue on the president’s agenda today is whether he will commit more troops to Afghanistan – the “good war.” In this special preview from the November issue of COMMENTARY, Max Boot brings all his expertise to bear on explaining how the U.S. can win in that Taliban-plagued country. But first we have to win the battle at home – the battle to convince Obama to learn the right lessons from history and to heed the wise counsel of his own general.


Sincerely,
The Editors"

First of all, Afghanistan is the "good war"? That's not what Pres. Obama called it. If WW II was a "good war," how in the world can Afghanistan be any where near on a par with it? Second, what are Max Boot's credentials and expertise? Wasn't he leading the neocon pack on invading Iraq and during its inept operation? Max probably thinks Iraq was a "good war" as well. Max has never met a US war he hasn't liked, except perhaps when his ass may have been on the line. Third, the right lessons from history, especially pertaining to Afghanistan (and perhaps Vietnam), suggest not following McCrystal's ball. Wise counsel from his own general? LBJ had wise counsel from his own general also.

I won't be reading the November issue of Commentary as it is obvious Max Boot is just continuing his cheerleading of Bush/Cheney.

By the Bybee (awful man!), I saw Rahm Emanuel on the Lehrer News Hour the other day and the thought came to me that when he clenches his right fist, he may be giving people the phantom finger. I do that openly for Max Boot.
 

Part 17 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 1

There is a BBC Documentary called The Power of Nightmares which anyone who has not seen the series might find it interesting to watch. Part I documents a battle between the CIA and a Neoconservative view of the Soviet Union:-

"PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, June 1, 1972: Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.

VO: But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power, both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam, and the resignation of President Nixon over Watergate, led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political class. And the neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America.

DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that?

VO: The CIA, and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat, said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth to Rumsfeld’s allegations. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. And the inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz. The aim was to change the way America saw the Soviet Union.

MELVIN GOODMAN, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war."

[more follows]
 

Part 18 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 2

More from The Power of Nightmares :-

VO: The neoconservatives chose, as the inquiry chairman, a well-known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B, and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz.
....

VO: What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world.

....
VO: The neoconservatives set up a lobby group to publicize the findings of Team B. It was called the Committee on the Present Danger, and a growing number of politicians joined, including a Presidential hopeful, Ronald Reagan.

VO: Through films and television, the Committee portrayed a world in which America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time, forces that America must conquer to survive.

VO: This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true, but it was necessary, to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny, that would give meaning and purpose to their lives. The neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction—a vision of the Soviet Union as the center of all evil in the world, and America as the only country that could rescue the world. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the neoconservatives great power and influence.

HOLMES: The Straussians started to create a worldview which is a fiction. The world is not divided into good and evil. The battle in which we are engaged is not a battle between good and evil. The United States, as anyone who observes understands, has done some good and some bad things. It’s like any great power. This is the way history is. But they wanted to create a world of moral certainties, so therefore they invent mythologies—fairytales—describing any force in the world that obstructs the United States as somehow Satanic, or associated with evil."

[more follows]
 

Part 19 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 3

More from The Power of Nightmares :-

VO: And at the beginning of 1981, Ronald Reagan took power in America. The religious vote was crucial in his election, because many millions of fundamentalists voted for the first time. And as they had hoped, many neoconservatives were given power in the new administration. Paul Wolfowitz became head of the State Department policy staff, while his close friend Richard Perle became the Assistant Secretary of Defense. And the head of Team B, Richard Pipes, became one of Reagan’s chief advisers. The neoconservatives believed that they now had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny—to use the country’s power aggressively as a force for good in the world, in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union. It was a vision that they shared with millions of their new religious allies.

UNIDENTIFIED PREACHER : I take a personal and public stand as a minister, a stand against Communism. To destroy it, to wipe it from the face of the Earth, because believe you me, these people are dedicated to the destruction of the United States of America and freedom as we know it.

VO: But the neoconservatives faced immense opposition to this new policy. It came not just from the bureaucracies and Congress, but from the President himself. Reagan was convinced that the Soviet Union was an evil force, but he still believed that he could negotiate with them to end the Cold War.

Professor RICHARD PIPES , Adviser to President Reagan 1980-83: Reagan at first didn’t quite understand that their aggressiveness is rooted in the system. He had a rather benign view of human beings. He was a very kindly man, and he attributed kind motives to others. There was another form of mirror imaging. And he would say on more than one occasion, something like this: “If I could just sit down with the Soviet leaders and explain to them that they’re following a wrong ideology, and if they adopt the right ideologies, they could make their people happy and prosperous.” So [unintelligible] “Mr. President, that is not going to do it! You have to go after the system. Force them to reform the system.” It took him a very long time to assimilate this view.

VO: To persuade the President, the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.


[more follows]
 

Part 20 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 4

More from The Power of Nightmares :-

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don’t know what their motive was. I mean, I don’t know what people’s motives are, hardly ever. And I don’t much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn’t exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): You told him this?

GOODMAN : We told him that, point blank. And we even had the operations people to tell Bill Casey this. I thought maybe this might have an impact, but all of us were dismissed. Casey had made up his mind. He knew the Soviets were involved in terrorism, so there was nothing we could tell him to disabuse him. Lies became reality.

VO: In the end, Casey found a university professor who described himself as a terror expert, and he produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist. Under such intense lobbying, Reagan agreed to give the neoconservatives what they wanted, and in 1983 he signed a secret document that fundamentally changed American foreign policy. The country would now fund covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world.

President RONALD REAGAN : The specter of Marxist-Leninist controlled governments with ideological and political loyalties to the Soviet Union proves that there’s a direct challenge to which we must respond. They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

VO: It was a triumph for the neoconservatives. America was now setting out to do battle against the forces of evil in the world. But what had started out as the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had said was necessary for the American people increasingly came to be seen as the truth by the neoconservatives. They began to believe their own fiction. They had become what they called “democratic revolutionaries,” who were going to use force to change the world.

LEDEEN : We were aiming for an expansion of the zone of freedom in the world. And in part that had to do with fighting Communism, and in part that had to do with fighting other kinds of tyrannies. But that’s what we were about, and that’s what we’re still about.

VO: The neoconservatives now set out to transform the world. In next week’s episode, they find themselves joining forces with the Islamists in Afghanistan, and together they fight an epic battle against the Soviet Union. And both come to believe that they had defeated the Evil Empire.
 

Part 21 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 5

While there was a degree of restraint about actions taken under the Carter Administration in realtion to Afghanistan, under Reagan and his Neocons the brakes were taken off with a vengeance. This is an extract from Part 2 of the Power of Nightmares:-

President RONALD REAGAN : Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man’s finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man’s highest aspirations for freedom. I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people, the March 22nd launch of the Columbia to the people of Afghanistan.

VO: Since 1979, the mujaheddin resistance had been fighting a vicious war in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. But now, a small group in the Reagan White House saw in these fighters a way of achieving their vision of transforming the world. To them, they were not just nationalists; they were freedom fighters, who could bring down the Soviet Union and help spread democracy around the world. It was called the Reagan Doctrine.

JACK WHEELER , Adviser to the Reagan White House, 1981-1984: ... It was a small little cabal within the Soviet—within the Reagan White House, that really pulled this off. What united this small group of ours was the vision of bringing more freedom to the world, more security to the world, to actually get rid of the Soviet Union itself. As a result, supporting the freedom fighters became the premier cause for the entire conservative movement during the Reagan years.

...

VO: And the man who was going to help the neoconservatives do this was the new head of the CIA, William Casey. He was convinced that Afghanistan was one of the keys to this aggressive new policy. America was already sending limited amounts of aid to the mujaheddin. But now, Casey ordered one of his agents to go and form an alliance with the freedom fighters, and give them as much money as they wanted and the most sophisticated weapons to defeat the Soviet military forces.

MILTON BEARDEN , CIA Field Officer, Afghanistan, 1985-89: For Casey, Afghanistan seemed to be possibly one of the keys. So he tapped me one day to go. He says, “I want you to go out to Afghanistan, I want you to go next month, and I will give you whatever you need to win.” Yeah. He said, “I want you go to there and win.” As opposed to, “let’s go there and bleed these guys,” make a [unintelligible] Vietnam, “I want you to go there and win. Whatever you need, you can have.” He gave me the Stinger missiles and a billion dollars.

[ SUBTITLE OVER AFGHAN WAR SCENE : God is great!]

VO : American money and weapons now began to pour across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan. CIA agents trained the mujaheddin in the techniques of assassination and terror, including car bombing.

And they gave them satellite images of Russian troops to help in their attacks. [ SUBTITLE OVER AFGHAN WAR SCENE : Move your fat arse and shoot the f…ing rocket!]
 

Part 22 - US Policy on Afghanistan - The Neoconservatives and Reagan No 6

In the US system of government, the legislature controls the activity of the executive in very large measure by exercising its power to control the purse-strings. The Reagan Administration deliberately - and quite unlawfully - set out to subvert that restraint by creating "back-routes" to funding. A lot of relevant data came out during the Iran-Contra scandal which resulted in the indictment of a number of Reagan Administration officials.

One important source of covert funds was Saudi Arabia as this 1987 Bob Woodward Washington Post Story archived by Professor Juan Cole makes clear.

Part of the longstanding, close relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia involves the exchange of covert and overt foreign policy favors that predate the Reagan Administration. Saudi Arabia has made substantial covert contributions to the anticommunist resistance in Afghanistan, Angola and Ethiopia that also are being assisted covertly by the CIA. In the case of support to the Afghanistan rebels, the two governments have a secret agreement to match each others covert contributions dollar for dollar. The latest reliable figures show that each is providing at least $ 280 million a year.

The stinger missiles found their way to Afghanistan. CIA funding for Afghanistan was largely channeled through Pakistan's military intelligence service (the ISA), Saudi Royal family money also went largely via Pakistan, but in addition, there was much money raised from wealthy Saudi families sympathetic to the Mujahiddin cause.

Muslim states friendly to the USA were encouraged to permit the recruitment of volunteers to fight the "jihad" in Afghanistan. The CIA organised a program to support the Afghani Mujahiddin with arms and funds in cooperation with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bin Laden, and called upon the Gulf states and Egypt to facilitate the travel of Arabs who wished to participate in the fighting.

Kamal Hassan Ali, then the Egyptian Minister of Defence, announced the training of Afghani volunteers in Egyptian army camps.

In 1980 the Egyptian Parliament issued an official invitation to Egyptian citizens to enlist in the Mujahiddin. Advertisements in the official papers invited young Egyptians to "join the caravan" traveling to Afghanistan. The Islamic seminary of Al Azhar which was and which remains a hotbed of islamist clerics also pitched in to recruit youth and send them over.

Many of those who went to Afghanistan went with the express purpose of gaining military expertise during their participation in battles there which would help them train their brothers and pass on their expertise."

In time, the Soviet Army was fought to a standstill. Gorbachev came to power in Russia and quickly realised that he had no alternative pull to pull the Soviet troops out. He sought to warn the USA that without some scheme for a transition to a democracy, Afghanistan would degenerate into a failed state and result in islamist terrorism.

But this was the time of the Reagan Administration and the Neoconservatives running US foreign policy were not listening.

So the unintended consequence of the Reagan Administration's foreign policy towards the "Evil Empire" was the creation of Islamist Afghanistan as a haven and base for Bin Laden and the salafists who joined Al-Quaida from there to pursue a policy of targeting Arab states allied to the USA, in particular Saudi Arabia and, later, the United States itself.

Perhaps the most appalling part of this is that Reagan was conned into the policy which has had such terrible consequences.
 

My posts on Afghanistan during the Reagan Administration have rather swamped this thread and I apologise for that. However I think it is important that as many people as possible come to understand just how the Taliban and the salafist terrorists came to be in Afghanistan in the first place and how they were trained.

Meanwhile, the UK Prime Minister announced today that 500 more UK troops are going to Afghanistan BBC Story.

Note this:-

"Newsnight says the Obama administration has already told the UK government it will soon announce a substantial increase to its military forces in Afghanistan. The programme understands an announcement could come next week, in time for a Nato defence ministers meeting in Bratislava"

This suggests that the UK move is intended to persuade other NATO countries to step up and provide substantial additional resources. I remain of the view that many more "boots on the ground" are required, but I do hope there will be a real effort to find troops from other countries - particularly Muslim countries - but not, please not, from Saudi Arabia, or other Gulf States or Egypt. All can too easily be characterised as "apostate regimes" by salafists and in the case of Egypt, I have considerable reservations about their military abilities. An Algerian friend of mind who when he was in the Algerian Commandos was "volunteered" to fight against the IDF in Egypt put it this way: "most Egyptians don't know how to fight their way out of a wet paper bag"

Further I am utterly unconvinced that the armies of many of the NATO countries have the requisite training and experience to be effective in some of the most difficult areas and it is time to cast the net wider for that reason alone.

I remain of the view that there also has to be a vast increase in development resources - carrots have to accompany the sticks - and I would hope the Administration can cash in some chips from the Gulf States in this regard.
 

Mourad,

"I remain of the view that many more "boots on the ground" are required"

For what?
 

Glenn Greenwald recently provided a segment of a Frontline video on our mission in Afghanistan.

One thing that came to mind was Star Trek. Seriously. Never quite liked the show, since it never quite dealt with the true complexities of the situation. For instance, the constant confusions and difficulties dealing with such foreign cultures.

The video shows how hard it is to deal with cultures of our own species.
 

Glenn Greenwald recently provided a segment of a Frontline video on our mission in Afghanistan.

Everyone who thinks we can "win" in Afghanistan should be required to watch that Frontline episode. I thought the most eye-opening moment was when the very frustrated Marine commander was trying to ask the local Afghans why they would not help him. Their response (slightly paraphrased): "You have lots of guns and tanks and bombs. We don't even have swords. If you can't defeat the Taliban, what do you expect us to do?"
 

Part 23 - Afghanistan and the Proxy War - 1

As discussed previously, President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to provoke the Soviet invasion by supporting Afghan resistance to the Afghan government and when President Reagan takes office, he is persuaded by the Neoconservatives that a massive investment in a proxy war will bring down the "Evil Empire" of the Soviets.

But a "proxy war" requires a proxy army and that army was to be created by misusing the power of religious fundamentalism. The BBC's documentary "The Power of Nightmares" again:-

VO: At the very same time, another group began to arrive in Afghanistan to fight alongside the mujaheddin. They were Arabs from across the Middle East, who had been told by their religious leaders that their duty was to go and free Muslim lands from the Soviet invader.

ABDULLAH ANAS , General Commander Afghan Arabs, Northern Afghanistan, 1984-1989: I saw the fatwa, the order saying that every Muslim has a duty to help the Afghans to liberate their land. But I had no idea, where is this Afghanistan? How can I go there? I’ve never heard about Afghanistan, and I’ve never heard—in the map. Which airline goes there? From where can I take the visa? It—100 questions! But I did meet Abdullah Azzam.

VO: Abdullah Azzam was a charismatic religious leader who had begun to organize the Arab volunteers in Afghanistan. He had set up what he called the Services Bureau, in Peshawar on the Afghan border. It became the headquarters of an international brigade of Arab fighters. Azzam quickly became one of the most powerful figures in the battle against the Soviets. He was allowed to visit America on many occasions, both to raise funds and recruit volunteers for the jihad.

Dr. AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: When, Abdullah Azzam became so instrumental in marketing the Afghan cause among the Arabs, he became very important. He became called “the emir of the Arab mujaheddin.” The leader of the Arab mujaheddin. And he set up an office in Peshawar which provided services to Arabs who came and wanted to participate in the jihad. There were no doors closed, so all doors were opened, because the Americans, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and many other people wanted the Soviet Union to lose in Afghanistan, and to be humiliated. That brought about huge numbers of Arabs from different backgrounds in the jihad in Afghanistan. He went to America, he went to Saudi Arabia, he traveled wherever he wanted, because the Afghan cause was a cause that everybody was happy supporting.

VO: But like the neoconservatives, Azzam also saw the struggle against the Soviets as just the first step in a much wider revolution. He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who wanted Islam to play a political role in governing Muslim societies. And Abdullah Azzam believed that the Arabs in Afghanistan could be the nucleus of a new political force. They would return to their own countries and persuade the people to reject the corrupt, autocratic regimes that dominated the Middle East. But these regimes, Azzam insisted, must be overthrown by political means. He made every fighter pledge they would not use terrorism against civilians in the pursuit of their vision. One of Azzam’s closest aides was a Saudi, Osama bin-Laden.

[more follows]
 

Part 24 - Afghanistan and the Proxy War - 2

More from the Power of Nightmares documentary:-

ANAS : Osama came to participate in ‘85. When he was—when he came, as you know, he is, he came from a rich family from Saudi, and he had much, much money to spend. Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was a scholar, he can organize the Afghans, but he is not a rich man. So when Osama came, he filled in this gap. So the main duty of Osama at that time was spending money. Beside his good personal qualities.

VO: But then, in 1985, a new force began to arrive in Afghanistan, who were going to challenge Azzam’s approach. They were the extreme radical Islamists, who were being expelled from prisons across the Arab world.

BEARDEN : And then, very quietly, most of the governments in the Middle East, the Arab governments, began to empty their prisons of their bad guys and send them off to the jihad with the very fondest hope that they would become martyred. Many of them were the people in Egypt that had not been executed after the murder of Sadat, but were implicated in it and had been in prison. Off they go.

VO: One of the most powerful of these newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri. He was the leader of a radical faction from Egypt called Islamic Jihad. And he was convinced that they, not the moderates, were the true Islamists.

In many ways, the story of the proxy war is the story of the misuse of religion for political ends.
 

Mourad has not responded as yet to Charles regarding more boots on the ground. I did not read Mourad's comment for more boots as support for Gen. McChrystal's ball, although that may be the case. I just read Ivan Eland's "Five Facts About Afghanistan" posted on 10/14/09 at the website of The Independent Institute:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2637

Eland recommends getting out of Afghanistan, but points out that to get the job done in Afghanistan, much, much more than 40,000 additional US troops would be required. Perhaps that is what Mourad had in mind as well.
 

"Mourad has not responded as yet to Charles regarding more boots on the ground."

Maybe he overlooked it....

To say that "more boots on the ground are required" implies a purpose. The question is what purpose does Mourad think would be served by putting more US troops in Afghanistan?
 

IF, and it's a real big IF, Pres. Obama relies upon Gen. McChrystal's ball on Afghanistan, from all I have read (including our own military's studies) 40,000 additional U.S. boots on the ground would not be enough to bring about victory in any real sense over what would necessarily be a long occupation. PM Brown's commitment of 500 additional Brit troops is insignificant in comparison to 40,000 GIs. Will Brown thus inspire other NATO nations to pony up on a similar pro rata basis? I have my doubts.

I recall from my high school physics course back in 1946 that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever the U.S.'s action in Afghanistan, surely there will be a reaction, but unlike the physical sciences, sometimes the reaction is greater when homeland is being protected. And Gen. McChystal's ball does not prove results scientifically.
 

I apologise to Charles for the delay in responding.

Shag is also right in his assumption as to what I would prefer and his reference to Five Facts About Afghanistan is timely.

More basic data about Afghanistan ex CIA Factbook: An area of 652,230 sq km. An entirely landlocked state with 5,529 km of borders with: China 76 km, Iran 936 km, Pakistan 2,430 km, Tajikistan 1,206 km, Turkmenistan 744 km, Uzbekistan 137 km. The biggest problem border is that with Pakistan, the infamous "Durand Line".

Topography is mostly rugged mountain, highest peak Nowshak 7,485 m with the Hindu Kush mountains dividing the country. Only 12.13% of the land is arable. The climate is arid to semi-arid with cold winters and hot summers. Machinery degrades rapidly. There are huge numbers of landmines - unmapped and unmarked - left over from the Soviet Invasion.

The ratio of troops to inhabitants to which Ivan Elend refers (20 to 25 occupation forces per one thousand inhabitants) needs to be modified to allow different ratios for urban and extra urban territory and to cover border security needs and the especially difficult terrain - which Afghanistan possesses in abundance.

Forget not the supply train - everything has to be trucked in or flown in - there are no ports. The US army has a particularly heavy supply train due, inter alia, to the soldiers' expectation that they will have many of the creature comforts of home.

We have the advantage of having a fairly good idea of the Soviet figures. Between December 25, 1979 and February 15, 1989, a total of 620,000 soldiers served in Afghanistan (with between 80,000-104,000 serving at one time). That level of troops failed to cut it. The Soviets had to withdraw.

The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. There were 469,685 sick and wounded, of whom 53,753 or 11.44 percent, were wounded, injured, or sustained concussion and 415,932 (88.56 percent) fell sick.

A high proportion of casualties were the result of local climatic and sanitary conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious hepatitis, 31,080 of typhoid fever, and 140,665 of other diseases.

This is a BBC report of a John Simpson interview of General McChrystal on 19th August 2009 NATO's new approach in Afghanistan and I particularly applaud the "no sunglasses - no body armour" general approach.

I would like it better if the US presence could be diversified and other nations step up to the plate instead. Quite apart from anything else, with what it costs to deploy and supply each US serviceman one could probably obtain 4 or 5 from other nations (and a smaller supply train) and, in reality, for many areas high tech soldiering is not what is required - just a basic infantry presence.

For me the concern is that without greatly increased numbers and the increased legitimacy which could come from wider participation, including contingents of muslims and a police presence, without a real training program, without [probably] a change of government, the mission will simply muddle on relying overmuch on artillery and air power which is what is most resented.

And for the record, the reason we need to restore law and order and build a civil society is because we (principally the USA) played a very large part in creating the mess in the first place. It is a moral obligation - reparations if you will - for the misconduct going back to the Reagan presidency.
 

Mourad closes with this:

"It is a moral obligation - reparations if you will - for the misconduct going back to the Reagan presidency."

Some in the U.S. might wonder why reparations might not apply to slavery and Amer/Indian victims going back much further than the Reagan presidency.

This is like Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule that he cautioned Bush about regarding Iraq. With Afghanistan now being Obama's war, that rule may come into play with Obama's successor if it turns out that Gen. McChrystal's ball is at best opaque.
 

The Charlie Rose rerun (last night's show) I watched while lunching today included a segment with a BBC journalist who indicated, based upon "good" Brit sources, that PM Brown's commitment of an additional 500 Brit troops to Afghanistan was based upon assurances from the Obama administration that it would be furnishing 45,000 additional troops; that the Obama administration would be announcing this in a week or so. If this is so, it may be that PM Brown is "sticking it" to Obama, perhaps for a recent perceived snub. If this is not so, Obama's administration should promptly speak up.
 

Shag:-

No, I don't think Brown would, as you put it, "stick it" to your President. He is a fervent admirer of the USA and the first rule of UK diplomacy is to seek always to be in sympathy with Washington.

I very much suspect that this was co-ordinated for the upcoming NATO summit. There is a strong perception here that other NATO countries are not pulling their weight. Brown read out in Parliament the names of the 37 UK servicemen who have died in Afghanistan over the summer recess as a prelude to his announcement.

There has also been a McChrystal moment in that one of the Defence Chiefs went public with the fact that the army wanted more troops - more than Brown has committed to in fact.

His problem is that around 37% of the electorate think we should pull out of Afghanistan. They will mostly be Labour supporters, Brown has an election coming up - he cannot hang on past next May and he is way behind in the polls.
 

The NY Times has a big piece on Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal’s Long War:-

I was pleased to see this:-

Then one of the European generals started talking about an airstrike. A group of Taliban insurgents had attacked a coalition convoy, and the soldiers called for air support. A Hellfire missile, the European general said, obliterated an Afghan compound. The general — he cannot be named because of the confidentiality of the meeting — was moving on to the next topic when McChrystal stopped him.

“Can you come back to that, please?” McChrystal said.

McChrystal’s voice is higher than you would expect for a four-star general.

“Yes, sir,” the European general said.

“We just struck a compound,” McChrystal said. “I would like for you to explain to me the process you used to shoot a Hellfire missile into a compound that might have had civilians in it.”

The European commander looked at an aide and muttered something. The killing of Afghan civilians, usually caused by inadvertent American and NATO airstrikes, has become the most sensitive issue between the Afghans and their Western guests. Each time civilians are killed, the Taliban launch a campaign of very public propaganda.

“Were there civilians in that compound?” McChrystal asked. He was leaning into the microphone on the table.

The commander started to talk, but McChrystal kept going.

“Who made that decision?” McChrystal said.

An aide handed the European general a sheaf of papers.

“I’m sorry, but the system is not responsive enough for us to get that kind of information that quickly,” the general said.

McChrystal’s face began to tighten. Generals tend to treat one another with the utmost deference.

“We bomb a compound, and I don’t know about it until the next morning?” McChrystal said. “Don’t just tell me, ‘Yeah, it’s O.K.’ I want to know about it. I’m being a hard-ass about it.”

The European general looked down at his papers.

“It seems it was not a Hellfire missile but a 500-pound bomb,” he said.

McChrystal took off his reading glasses and looked around the room — at the video screens and the other American officers.

“Gentlemen, we need to understand the implications of what we are doing,” he said. “Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction. A guy with a long-barrel rifle runs into a compound, and we drop a 500-pound bomb on it? Civilian casualties are not just some reality with the Washington press. They are a reality for the Afghan people. If we use airpower irresponsibly, we can lose this fight.”

That sounds to me like the General understands an essential doctrine which I have been banging on about for some time.
 

[sigh]

The old "you raped here so now you're morally obligated to marry her for her own good" argument huh?

How can you read all that history and nor learn anything from it Mourad?

They've screwed this up for eight years running, and you want more?

Sorry to be so blunt, but that's just dumb, and 5,000 years of history says so. The best thing we can do for Afghanistan is get out: the United States is simply not competent to act in the best interests of the Afghan people. We're acting strictly in our interests, when the USG has absolutely no rational understanding of what our own interests are. The major force driving all this is domestic US politics, not any valid military purpose.

It makes me want to vomit.
 

Juan Cole's post today (10/16/09) at Informed Comment presents 4 disturbing news items that indicate more problems in Af-Pak and perhaps the rest of Central Asia as Pres. Obama looks into Gen. McChrystal's ball.
 

Mourad said:

"Brown has an election coming up - he cannot hang on past next May and he is way behind in the polls."

I think PM Brown is a most decent person. He is paying the price for Tony Blair's Bush/Cheney coat-tailing. It is a shame that he waited so long before challenging Blair.

By the Bybee ("I've got mine for life, so I don't care"), what sticks in my craw are reports that Tony Blair may become the EU president. Apparently his recent epiphany won't hurt with the Mediterranean EU votes. Who knows, maybe George W. Bush should head the UN.
 

Shag:-

Largely for the reasons set out in this leader in The Independent on Sunday, I agree that the EU Council would make a big mistake were it to appoint Poodle Blair to the EU Presidency.
 

It is to be noted that both White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Senator Kerry are reported in the Washington Post and widely elsewhere as saying there will no decision on more troops before the Afghan Government's problems are resolved. It seems that a lot of pressure is being put on Hamid Karzai over the ballot rigging issue.

Givn the inefficacy of President Karzai's government, that seems no bad thing, and my guess is that he is going to be put under a lot of pressure to do a deal with his rival the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, under the threat of a run-off election. Also the timing of the Pakistan offiensive in South Waziristan can be no accident.

On the issue of reconstruction aid, the Indpendent on Sunday today ran a piece about how British troops in Helmand are angry about lack of progress on the civil infrastructure side The British base called Stalingrad - Surrounded by the Taliban, British troops and their commander in north Helmand feel let down by the slow pace of reconstruction and that journalist did not get facilities without the Ministry of Defence giving the green light.

One gets the impression that the Obama Administration (with assistance from the British) is gearing up to push both NATO and the UN for an Afghanistan programme which is going to be a whole lot more sophisticated than just flying in more troops - and that may go some way to meeting the concerns I have expressed in previous posts.
 

" ... there will no decision on more troops before the Afghan Government's problems are resolved. It seems that a lot of pressure is being put on Hamid Karzai over the ballot rigging issue."

It is difficult trusting someone who wears a cape (except, of course, Batman) or a backpack for that matter.

Maybe Karzai will challenge a run-off election in Afghan courts citing the authority of Bush v. Gore. (Query: is it okay with Justice Scalia if a foreign court applies US law?)
 

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