Category: War

Our Man in Kandahar

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So, we have been holding high level talks with a high ranking representative of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, and they plied him with many inducements, including no small amount of cash, only he turned out to be a con man scamming American negotiators:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

We are not just non winning in Afghanistan, we are actively, and aggressively, losing there.

Things like this are a sign of a failed policy being pursued by desperate people.

H/t Atrios.

Obama Can’t Win if He Does Not Fight

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There have been numerous reports that the White House will welsh on its promise to begin its withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011, and now it’s pushing back, claiming that it will begin a withdrawal on schedule.

I’m inclined to believe that what the Obama administration means by “withdrawal” from Afghanistan is rather like what it meant by “withdrawal” from Iraq, so-called “non-combat” troops and a sh%$ load of contractors, but still, the push-back from the administration from Pentagon leaks is impressively muscular:

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

(emphasis mine)

The spokesman is on the record and named, which, for any administration in this situation, is a strong statement.

That being said, we have a pretty good idea where these anonymous statements are coming from, because General, and Bush butt boy, David Petraeus is threatening Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his statements about withdrawal timing:

In what may be one of the most significant breaches between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration, Gen. David Petraeus personally warned Afghan officials over the weekend the U.S.-Afghan partnership could be “untenable” if Karzai wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan prematurely.

A senior coalition military official confirmed details of what Petraeus said, but asked not to be identified so he could speak more candidly.

………

After reading the article, Petraeus felt the views expressed by Karzai “makes it untenable for us to have a partnership,” the official told CNN.

I’m not sure who the “senior official” quoted is, but you can be pretty sure it is someone who was authorized by Petraeus to make this statement.

You see, according to the Pentagon, and perhaps other elements of the US state security apparatus, we have to be at war forever.

There is a hell of a lot of insubordination from the military on this matter, and unfortunately, Barack Obama is absolutely the wrong sort of person to tell them to shut up and do their jobs, because it means that they would not like him.

We Know Who is Going to Win This War

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Killing each Taliban soldier costs $50 Million; Killing each NATO soldier costs $50 Thousand:

Kabul Press, on September 30, 2010, published an article by this author detailing the best estimate of Taliban killed per year (2,000) divided by a portion of the direct costs that the Pentagon is spending each year in Afghanistan ($100 billion). The resulting statistic suggests that it costs $50 million to kill each Taliban soldier. This number is very conservative. If all NATO and American costs (direct and indirect) were included, the analysis would reveal that it actually costs about $150 million.

The present article examines spending from the Taliban side in order to comparatively determine what it costs to kill each NATO soldier. The Brookings Institution is the consulting firm with the best political access to the Obama Administration and the U.S. State Department. In September 2009, it published a report on Taliban annual revenue, based in part on data gathered by the Congressional Research Service. Brookings estimated Taliban annual income at between $140 and $200 million. The Taliban have already inflicted over 600 deaths on NATO soldiers and more than twice that number of fatalities on Afghan army and police personnel. By the end of the year, total Coalition deaths are expected to reach 3,000. The math is unfortunately easy. Assuming Taliban revenue of $150 million divided by 3,000 = $50,000 to kill a NATO, American or Afghan soldier.

The military says that this is the product of an over simplified analysis, which is true, but the trend reflected here is correct, and we are not winning “hearts and minds” and cannot win “hearts and minds” because the populace opposes occupying forces, and our man in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai is so indescribably incompetent and corrupt.

They Really Are Sociopaths……

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No, I don’t mean the Teabaggers, I mean the beltway pundits.

Case in point, David Broder, who is suggesting that Barack Obama start a war with Iran, because it might be good for the economy and his election prospects. (No direct link, we should not reward such behavior with eyeballs.)

As Scott Horton notes (link above), this clearly demonstrates the, “strongest evidence yet of the moral depravity and sheer nuttiness,” of the WaPo editorial page.

And I am sure that Broder was very proud of what he came up with, it seems so clever, and counter-intuitive, and it means that young men will die.

I bet that it gave the octogenarian psychopath his first stiffie in weeks.

Here is hoping that Keith Olbermann thinks to put him on his “worst” list tonight.

Non-Combat Role My Ass, Part XVII

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Barack Obama’s claim that combat troops are of Iraq is a lie, as is made clear by a letter from a soldier:

“The reason I’m sending this out is because I have had a few people ask if I left Iraq early because all of the combat troops are out of Iraq and I wanted to let everyone know the real deal.

Take our Brigade for example. We were originally called a HBCT (Heavy Brigade Combat Team). Well, since Obama said he would pull all of the “combat” troops out by Aug, all they did before we left was change our name from a HBCT to an AAB (Advise and Assist Brigade). We have the same personnel/equipment layout as before and are doing the same missions. The ONLY difference is that they changed our name from a HBCT to an AAB and that’s how we pulled all of the ‘combat’ troops out.

There are other Brigades just like ours that are doing the same missions that are still over here. So anyway now you know the REAL story, so that’s why I’m not coming back early.”

Obama does not realize that being commander-in-chief of the military means to command.

Unfortunately, he is dealing with a military which, like pretty much all militaries, is culturally incapable of seeing a conflict beyond the prism of “winning”, and so by compromising, we simply dig ourselves deeper.

So Not Done In Iraq

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More combat action from our troops, notwithstanding the fact that our combat presence has ended:

American military units fired on insurgents while supporting Iraqi troops northeast of the capital on Sunday, Iraqi officials said. It was the second such episode since the United States declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq less than two weeks ago.

There were no American casualties in the fighting in Hudaidy, a village about 50 miles from Baghdad that has long harbored members of the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

They are just, “advisers,” and Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

Why the Hell is the US Government Supporting the Karzai Government?

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The largest bank in Afghanistan, Da Kabul Bank, is in the process of imploding due in a miasma of corruption and self dealing, as ordinary depositors rush to pull out their money from the institution following a number of stories revealing their corruption:

The Karzai government is corrupt and rotten to the core. Not a single US soldier should die to prop it up. The lie that we are fighting “al–Qaeda” in Afghanistan needs to be exposed. The US and NATO are fighting four or five groups of Pashtun insurgents, some of them until fairly recently US allies. The goal of the fighting is to keep the Karzai government from falling to the guerrillas and to train up an army and police force that could go on defending Kabul. The Afghanistan National Army from all accounts has poor morale. No wonder. What Afghan soldier or policeman would die for a ponzi scheme?

But Juan Cole’s outrage at this was premature, because it is actually worse than he first reported, because after the government seized control of the bank, as the Washington Post hed states, “Officials freeze assets of Kabul Bank shareholders, excepting Karzai’s brother.”

Why we supported his continued corruption, and his election theft, I’ll never know, but enough is enough.

Get out now, because the alternative, replacing him (see Diệm, Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình) just won’t work.

Non-Combat Role My Ass!

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Our troops are still conducting combat operations in Iraq:

US troops have been called in to help Iraqi forces battle insurgents who attacked an army base in Baghdad, killing 12 people, officials say.

It marks the first such use of US troops since the end of US combat operations five days ago.

US forces remaining in Iraq can now only participate in operations at the request of Iraqi authorities.

A US military spokesman said US forces had provided fired as Iraqis located two of the assailants inside the base.

When I said that the phony withdrawal from Iraq was a lie, I was right.

Because Lying to the American Public is Post Partisan

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I didn’t follow the commentary after Obama’s speech, hell, I didn’t follow the speech, I was busy driving back home to help out with a family emergency* but Rachel Maddow nails it:

“And to to have in this speech, as combat operations are ending, to have, as you point out Keith, the president not only not addressing the circumstances in which he we went to war, but these kind words for President Bush, describing his commitment to our security, despite the recklessness with which President Bush discarded that national security in favor of this war of choice, which only diminished our security, and is responsible probably for the Afghanistan war still going on today, for the depths of people who have died in Afghanistan after the time, after which that war would have ended had we not gone to Iraq, not to mention all of the people who died in Iraq,” Maddow continued.

“To talk about him having a demonstrated commitment to our security, having started this war on the terms on which he started it, — I mean, it’s beyond restraint from President Obama and anyone in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn’t feel like they’ve been given the greatest political present they never deserved was not listening to this speech,” she concluded.

I understand that Obama is not big into confronting people on wrongdoing, and I understand that he wants to look forward, not back, but he lied.

He sat in the oval office, and he lied through his teeth, because he is such conflict averse that he has to praise George W. Bush.

It wasn’t enough to not say anything, he felt compelled to lie to please people who will always hate him.

It’s truly pathological.

*Wife and kids are fine, but there are some health issues amongst the extended family.

Mission Accomplished Lite

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I listened to the speech on the road (long story), so I had to pay attention, as opposed to taking notes, and what I discovered was that I really don’t like listening to him, while he proclaims that maintenance of tens of thousands of troops, and permanent and extensive bases, somehow mean that the war is over.

Meh.

Trolling for Bribes

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Hamid Karzai is planning to ban the operations of private military contractors (PMCs, aka mercenaries) by the end of this year:

President Hamid Karzai is planning to sign a decree this week ordering the disbanding of all private security forces by the end of the year, his spokesman said Monday.

But it is not clear how the move, which would constitute an extraordinary change in the security makeup of the country, could be carried out. There are at least 24,000 private armed guards in the country, some foreign but most Afghan, and there is no immediately available alternative for the array of crucial tasks they perform.

This being Hamid Karzai, my guess is that this will not be fully implemented in time or in a consistent manner, but that is like saying the sky is blue.

As to the motivations for his doing this, I see three main policy goals here:

  • An attempt to ameliorate some of the outrage among Afghan citizens who are the ones on the wrong ends of the Mercenary’s bullets.
  • He wants to ensure that whoever is allowed to continue will be people whom he has vetted as being supportive of him.
  • Any mercenary operations allowed to continue will have to pay some sort of bribes to him and his family.

I am a cynic on such matters.

Breaking: Obama Breaks Iraq Withdrawal Promise

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The news is out, and the State Department has announced that they have declared victory but we will not be leaving.

You see, there are no more combat troops, just, “50,000 advisers,” along with something like 85,000 mercenaries contractors, or about 1 per every 200 Iraqis.

And this is what these folks will do:

So will all the troops be coming home? Hopefully, but don’t bet on it. Recall that US troops remain in South Korea, six decades after the Korean War.

The 50,000 US troops left until 2011 will supposedly “advise and assist” and perform “anti-terrorism” missions and training. To this old war correspondent and military historian, that sounds an awful lot like the British Empires employment of native troops under white officers.

These remaining rebranded US “training” troops will likely be six armor-heavy combat brigades, backed by warplanes from US air bases in the Gulf. A US brigade withdrawn from Iraq will go to neighboring Kuwait. Most of the rest will transfer to Afghanistan.

You know, he doesn’t have to get through Congress, he can just do this, and he won’t.

I called this 2 weeks ago, and said that it would be a phony withdrawal.

Unfortunately, I was correct.

Call Me a Cynic………

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So Barack Obama has repeated his promise to be out of Iraq by August 31.

Note that this involves a lot of weasel words, the core phrase being, “America’s combat mission in Iraq would end.”

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be soldiers there, and that they won’t be shot at, but rather that they are providing “Training and Logistical Support.”

Shades of American advisers in Vietnam.

I don’t think that Obama wants to stay, but he does not have the strength to tell the Pentagon to get the F%$# out and shut the F%$# up, and because the generals still want a little war, because it’s good for careers, and because a real peace dividend would interfere with their consulting gigs in retirement.

I am not suggesting that the Pentagon is unpatriotic, any more than I would suggest that the telemarketing industry is, but they view their benefit to be an independent good for the nation, which does not serve the nation.

This is why robust civilian control of the military is essential for a civil society.

I may be wrong in my prediction, I am wrong more often than not, but I fear that I am right.

Quote of the Day

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Most presidents start wondering—or, more often, worrying—about their “legacy” well into their first term. Or, if they have a second term, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his legacy, even this early. It is already fixed, and in one word: Afghanistan. He took on what he made America’s longest war and what may turn out to be its most disastrous one.

—Historian Garry Wills

It should be noted that Mr. (Dr?) Wills was one of 8 academics historians who had a dinner with him in June 2009, and gave him advice, and this is what he, and most of the other, guests said to his face.

I hope that Obama is just desperately wrong on Afghanistan, because the alternative is that we are killing our hundreds soldiers, and thousands of Afghans, because Obama feels the political need to “look tough.”

Torturing Duncan Black

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Mr. Black, better known by his nom de blog Atrios, coined the term, “Friedman Unit ,” to describeThomas “The Mustache of Pablum” Friedman’s penchant for saying that the whichever war we are involved in will be won in the next 6 months.

A few months later Friedman would say that the next 6 months were “crucial.”

Rinse…lather…repeat…

Well, now Michael O’Hanlon is torturing the young lad:

At this moment, as we enter into perhaps the most crucial six months of the entire war, I hope and pray that President Obama will decide we cannot afford to be without the leadership of such an amazing American.

(emphasis mine)

Mr. Black wants someone to, “Make it stop.”

Your mouth to God’s ear, Mr. Black.

Does Jordan River Water Make You Stupid?

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Because it does appear that stupidity is way too common in the Middle East.

Case in point: After 9 deaths, and a major propaganda victory, Hamas is refusing the supplies that the ships were trying to deliver:

Israel has attempted to deliver humanitarian aid from an international flotilla to Gaza, but Hamas — which controls the territory — has refused to accept the cargo, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.

Palestinian sources confirmed that trucks that arrived from Israel at the Rafah terminal at the Israel-Gaza border were barred from delivering the aid.

Does this place make people stupid-crazy, or is it that the people who aren’t stupid-crazy simply leave?

I’m just wondering, because there has been an endemic of stupid over the past 72 hours or so.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Liebowitz Beam Down. Who Isn’t Coming Back?

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Answer: Al Qaeda’s number 3 guy:

Al-Qaeda’s third-ranking operative, an Egyptian who was a founding member of the terrorist network and a key conduit to Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a statement Monday from al-Qaeda that U.S. intelligence officials believe is accurate.

A U.S. official said there is “strong reason” to believe that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, known as Sheik Saeed al-Masri, was killed, apparently by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt within the past two weeks.

I’ve seen this episode before.