Taliban Kamikazes Kill 26
A motorscooter suicide bomber in Spin Baldak and a car bomber in Qandahar killed 26 persons and wounded dozens in twin attacks on Monday in Afghanistan.
Analysts suggested that the Taliban were learning lessons from the guerrilla movement in Iraq. Despite killing many civilians, the attacks targeted Afghan military officers supporting the regime of Hamid Karzai.
That would be all we needed, for Afghanistan to spiral into an Iraq. (That the Bush administration has set up a situation in which Iraq is worse off than Afghanistan with regard to security is just breathtaking.)
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/17/2006 12:40:00 AM
Click to join Infoco
6 Comments:
And the idea that anyone expected anything other than the situation we currently have in Iraq is also breathtaking.
There was also a suicide attack on January 15 near Kandahar which targeted Canadian forces killing a senior diplomatic envoy and wounding three Canadian peacekeepers, two critically. Despite being in the last week of a federal election campaign this attack has remained very prominent in the Canadian media. Although the foreign affairs officer is not the first to die on deployment in Afghanistan, nine Canadians have died there since 2002, it appears to be the highest level political official to become victim. It seems to set a dangerous precedent for Canadians as specific targets abroad that are no longer simply targets of opportunity in coalition with the US presence, but selected in our own right.
In this same attack on January 15, two Afghans were also killed and 15 wounded. Despite a spike of attention towards Afghanistan in the wake of the death of the Canadian Foreign Affairs officer, the large number of dead to similar attacks you blogged about in today’s post will likely not receive near the attention that our, relatively, small number of victims have.
Breathtaking? Or simply the best of all possible (messy) worlds? What, the Neocons will ask, would be the alternative? Saddam in power, even amidst eroding sanctions? Brent Scowcroft thought this all along. Eliot Cohen may have shifted to this view. But maybe you, like Kerry, think the whole venture its simply a case of botched execution.
Regarding Iraq's security situation, consider of former Ambassador Bremer's recent assertion that Iraq's old army was impossible to resuscitate. His book says that the troops ran away and could not have been dragged back under command of Saddam's officers. Furthermore, he insists the former officers did get a stipend.
This sort of contradicts assertions made by Polk in Understanding Iraq and by others.
How could Iraq's security have been better? Would even 500,000 "infidel crusader" troops have prevented or perhaps only catalyzed the insurgency? Or would a larger US force simply have fatigued the US Reserve system sooner and more severely? Would any amount of troops or aid have offset the deliberate sabotage, looting, or ethno-sectarian strife?
It would be nice if you or a colleague would review the batches of books which have come out about Iraq. It is expensive for the layperson to obtain all these beefy tomes. Academics can presumably get free advance copies for review. A specialist would also be able to discern fact from factoid, fib from whopper.
Think of it: why should reading audiences know only what Max Boot or Michael Rubin think about the recent works of Packer, Feith, Bremer, Diamond, Shadid, or even Fisk?
Too many book reviews are written by buddies of the authors. Other reviewers are literati mostly interested in an entertaining read (drama, suspense, swank style, and portraiture), for whom the works of Bob Woodward or Judy Miller / Laurie Mylroie represent the apex.
It would also be interesting to know your riposte to purely interpretive works, such as The Long War for Freedom. The author has academic credentials, yet presents views that are 160 degrees, if not 180 degrees, opposite yours. Is there any reconciliation of such extremities that does not descend immediately into labels or name-calling?
What would be your "short list" of essential works to understand Iraq?
How about movies? Any IC review of Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World? Worth seeing? Might this be the very first film of its kind?
Don't underplay the effect of movies (even bad ones) on how people think. I'd bet that the eternal re-runs of action stories of Cannon Films, starring Norris, Stallone, Bronson, and Van Damme have an enormous effect. Would voters accustomed to Dirty Harry have any trouble in chosing the Neocon approach to international relations?
Movie trivia (or not such trivia) question: has Hollywood ever dealt with the theme of US troops in a occupation setting? I can think of The Big Lift, Night People, or Sayonara, but none seems more than superficially about occupation itself. This contrasts to battle movies where (at least occasionally) there is a serious attempt to recreate historic events with balance.
The poor planning by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq is unfortunately beginning to bear fruit.
I fear that we are entering a period of increasing destabilization that will only lead to a major regional war.
Flying IEDs or SA-7?
Just recently, there was unforgettable crap on NPR: Iraqi rebels use artillery shells to shoot down the US choppers. Yes, I know, admitting the use of SAMs would be a too bitter pill.
1. Surface-to-Air Missile Downed U.S. Chopper in Iraq
2. SA-7 specs
To reply to John Koch,
Bremer was on Daily Show this week. When he asked a US general "What can you do with 35,000 extra troops?" the answer he got was "Secure Baghdad." Bremer said the initial lawlessness really contributed to the atmosphere that the US was incompetent [and could be run over so easily].
Personally, I see plenty of other mistakes than simple troop levels, like the US failing to train toops to even say "hello" in Arabic, being incredibly culturally and religiously insensitive, delaying Iraqi elections for a year, condoning torture ie Abu Ghraib, radical de-baathification, and just allowing hate speech in the politics (anti-Saddam rants become anti-Sunni rants, takfiris everywhere, etc).
Post a Comment
<< Home