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The US thinking, going back to McChrystal, if not McKiernan, or Richards before him, was that the only solution to the resistance fighters crossing the Durand Line from Paktika into safe havens in North Waziristan was for PAKISTAN to seal the border.
Some 4-star general must have said that very thing at one point; the "military intelligence" echo chamber still cannot get past that paradigm.
ISI does not simply want to have some nebulous "influence" in Afghanistan; they want to prevent their arch-rival India from establishing strategic military depth there. If that threat is real, then Pakistan MUST respond to that prospect, in some fashion.
Seems to me that it would be counter to Pakistani interests to seal the border.
Juxtaposition of this post right above the one on sealing the Arizona-Mexico border raises the question in my mind of why we don't insist that Mexico seal that border. Silly, huh ? Well, that's similar to expecting Pakistan to seal their border with Afghanistan.
Here's a couple of new paradigms for Secretary Panetta/ General Allen to ponder:
*** maybe put the Pakistani Army in charge of occupying Paktika Province.
*** put the US Army in charge of sealing the border. They are the defacto government of Afghanistan; let them man up to protecting their own (actually, their subjects') sovereignty.
*** Hire the Haqqani militia to seal the border. Negotiate with them; pay them protection money. In terms of savagery, they are no worse than the folks from the Northern Alliance who we embraced in the opening days of the invasion.
Or, most outlandish,
*** start providing development and stability to the Afghans in this area, Khowst, Paktia and Paktika provinces. Out of maybe $120 Billion in aid spent in/on Afghanistan since 2001, very little has gone for the benefit of these people. Many seem to believe that NONE has been spent for their benefit. All they can see in terms of aid programs and infrastructure are things that seem to actually have been done to leverage or enhance kinetic military operations, like paving roads and appointing Tadjiks as their local governors.
I think that convincing the Pakistanis to realign their national and provincial governance structure in order to benefit 30 million Afghans (sorry, Pashtun Pakistanis) would be a tough job.
Ultimately, over the long run, we only have 2 choices:
…..Genocide; or
…..Liberation from foreign domination (de opresso liber.) To be clear on this option, not only are Americans in Pashtun lands considered foreigners. Afghan Tadjiks and Hazara and Uzbeks in Pashtun lands are also considered foreigners by the locals.
If we are not willing to kill them all, and we are not, then we will eventually give up and let them alone.
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Of course, you're right to blame Prez Obama for this tactic. He has approved it personally, striking first responders.
But there is plenty of blame to go around. I believe that the Pakistani Air Force has tacitly agreed to let these drone attacks continue. I do not know why.
The PAF has a modern inventory of aircraft, including an AWACS capability that can see any of the drones that I suspect are being employed for these attacks, which I think are limited to predators and reapers.
I suspect that they can even probably detect the supposedly "stealth" drones being used to monitor Pakistan's nuke weapons and ballistic missiles, the Dark Star (I don't believe it was ever canceled,) and the Sentinel.
PAF has several advanced, high- and medium altitude air defense systems that definitely can knock down the predators and reapers, and maybe even the stealth recon airframes.
And PAF has several squadrons of F-16's and some Chinese built air combat aircraft that would make simple work of stopping these drone attacks.
The one US drone that I don't think the PAF could shoot down is the Global Hawk - a very fast mover at high altitude. To defeat one of those, they would have to know it was coming even before their AWACS detected it, and have a combat air patrol aloft ready to intercept it.
The USAF reports that they have mothballed the Global Hawk in favor of returning to the U-2. I believe that to be another instance of "Strategic Communications" misdirection.
Does anyone know how a person on the "kill list" goes about gettingtheir name removed ? Does a person start at the District Court level ?
Elsewhere it is referred to as a "kill / capture list." Does anyone really get captured, or do we just kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out, as the old SF T-shirt says ?
there are drones, and then there are drones.
The Reaper flies 200 mph at up to 40,000 feet, for up to 15 hours.
The Global hawk flies at 450 mph, at up to 65,00 feet, for as long as 36 hours.
Reaper is designed to be launched in the same theater where it is employed. E.g., strikes in Yemen are by aircraft launched at Lemoiner, strikes in Waziristan launch from Bagram.
Global Hawk can circle the globe. once it's tanker model is ready.
The US Govt, all agencies, has purchased over 200 drones, with 48 in the air at any given time in Afghanistan. When they cross that Durand Line, the Pakistani Air Force could shoot reapers down with Cessnas. So far, Global Hawks aren't being used in Pakistan, but no Cessna is going to knock one of those out of the sky. But they could do that with F-5's or F-16's.
not sure what Obama gambled in OK'ing the UBL raid.
The military put together a plan and he said "OK."
If it had failed, cf Operation Eagle Claw, nobody within the US would have held that against him. He would have got props for trying.
I took a PsyOp course through the JFK Center back in the 1970's. Based on what I learned back then, DoD's entire "Strategic Communications" effort qualifies as "propaganda."
How I see it: simply by labeling the effort in Afghanistan as "counterinsurgency," the Government is deceiving the American public about the purpose and nature of the fight.
And rebranding it as "counterterrorism" would be even farther from the truth.
Since at least 2005, our military has been there to occupy and subjugate, the opposite of the SF motto, "de opresso liber." We are trying to build up Vichy surrogates who will betray their fellow Afghans.
If you think domestic support for the war is low now, what do you think would happen if the American public was to get straight talk out of our Government on this topic ?
"... the Catholic Church where failure is considered a badge of Honor."
not sure what this refers to, but I take exception to this statement. I am a Catholic Priest, though not ordained. I represent the Catholic Church. Heck, I AM the Catholic Church. I am not an official spokesman.
The Catholic Church considers failure to be an integral part of the human condition. The Church assumes that all have sinned and fall short of perfection. Perhaps there are counterexamples.
The central message that Jesus tried to transmit is that, despite our failures, we can be forgiven and do better in the future.
There are entire christianist industries set up to obfuscate that message. My Church has sometimes clouded that message. But we exist as an organization to spread that message.
Significantly, my Church has condoned, or at least concealed, great wickedness. If you, Mike, are a victim of that evil perpetrated against the vulnerable, I am heartily sorry. Not that it matters, but I am crying as I type this, aware of the breadth of the sins of the Church. But we strive to get better, and we try to help those we injured to heal.
May God bless and heal all of us.
this guy wasn't at the Pentagon.
He was an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College, which is in Norfolk, VA. I think this was an elective course, so the students selected whether or not to attend.
I presume that most knew what the course was going to be about before registering. Up until the one whistleblower attended, I presume that all other students were of a similar mind. That's the scariest p[art of this story.
I have done some analysis and consulting at the National Defense University in DC, the capstone DOD academic institution.
I was with the State Department program to train Afghan Police for a while.
I saw a bit of anti-Muslim bias institutionalized in both of those, as well.
It starts at the top.
maybe some good will come of this.
Maybe the Air Force will get back to its core mission and get out of partisan politics, race-baiting, institutional hatred, etc.
One can hope.
"Clive Stafford Smith ... gained a global reputation after he took on ... Guantanamo Bay. The drone war in Waziristan is, for Stafford Smith, the next American injustice that needs taking on."
I sure hope that doesn't mean that Barrister Smith and the organization he built, Reprieve, are moving on from the fight over indefinite detention at Gitmo. They've done much good in that regard, but much remains to be done.
I sure wouldn't want women in a front line combat unit under my command, and I have commanded a front-line combat outpost, though it was many years ago.
If all we use our infantry for is colonial conquest, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, then its not so bad doing all that social engineering and experimentation with our machinery of national defense. Our Army has failed miserably in both wars due to supremely incompetent leadership at the highest levels, after replacing military Generals with political sycophants, and the consequences aren't so bad.
But let's not undermine the ability to actually defend our nation, should the need arise.
Most of the decorations listed for GEN Dempsey are just what Generals get for not quitting.
But the Bronze star with a "V" device for valor in combat, that's the real deal.
the good news:
for all those soldiers who feel that they don't get enough time in Afghanistan to rake in those piles of tax-free combat pay, the US Senate heard you and is going to do something about it.
the bad news:
for everybody else, the Senate Banking Committee just crafted a bill to cut Iran off completely from the world economic system, demanding that SWIFT stop making payments to any Iranian entity from any source. That, of course, would be an act of war.
While the US Senate lacks the intestinal fortitude to vote outright to declare war, lest there be some unintended consequences that even American voters can trace back to them,
they are more than willing to fire the first, second, third, etc. salvos in that war, and insist that if Iran retaliates, then "they started it."
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No mention here of the extent of CIA and/or Mossad involvement in the opposition.
This is a pretty hot topic in Syria, I think.
Could someone provide some quantification of the dollars and manpower that US taxpayers are investing to remove the Opthalmologist from the Syrian Presidency,
whether directly through the CIA, or indirectly through intermediaries ?
While this would seem to run counter to core American values, overthrowing foreign governments that pose no threat to us,
at least we aren't spending nearly as much as we spent to overthrow Saddam,
or anything near to what we'll spend to overthrow the Iranian government.
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Mr. Squier,
I believe that the answers can be found by examining what America stands for.
I offer the 4 July 1776 Declaration as a good place to start.
Andreas,
I find your perspectives on these issues very interesting.
On these three points, I disagree with you and agree with Professor Cole, but perhaps you can point to a website where your interesting perspectives are explicated ?
maybe Kwang-ju (770+ students killed by the Korean national police) had something to do with General Chun overthrowing the government a few months earlier ?
I was in the US Army in Korea during the riots, and I had no idea at the time what had happened. total news embargo.
But from what is published today, I question your analysis.
I am under the impression that Prez Saleh has consistently promised to not run in the elections in 2013.
When he first made the promise, he surely planned to have a son step in and take over.
But he seems to be keeping to that commitment.
I don't know that Yemeni elections are free and fair, but they come closer to legitimacy deriving from the consent of the governed than in any GCC state.
I would guess that the US CIA has offered Saleh tens of millions of dollars to step down.
That signals to skeptics that we think we know who is going to be the new leader in Yemen, and we think we have co-opted him.
The folks running the USA do not trust free and fair elections in Yemen any more than they trust them at home.
..... .....
On a related note, I am under the impression that Yemeni public opinion toward the USA is shaped to a large degree by the detention of 60+ Yemeni men at Guantanamo who we know to be innocent.
Most of these men were "CLEARED FOR RELEASE" under G W Bush, more than 4 years ago, but they are now entering their tenth year in unlawful, indefinite detention.
the US has conducted many training programs for Iraqi military and police in Jordan.
That may be what Travis has in mind.
Or our other ally in the region, Syria, who has been instrumental in helping us track and fight al-Qaeda.
But maybe we aren't supposed to say that out loud ?
All that's really changed since Petraeus left Afghanistan is the matter of "Strategic Communications."
Under his leadership, the US spent about $200 million a year to plant false stories of success in the American press, propagandizing the voters and Congress. That seems to have stopped.
I guess your term "strategically significant" could mean different thinks to different people.
The most strategically significant aspect of the attacks on 9/11 was the indirect threat of shutting down US commercial air travel, as a result of litigation against the airlines.
I feel great sorrow at the horrific loss of lives on that day of infamy, but I don't think their loss, or the loss of some buildings, or even the interruption of train and subway service was strategically significant.
I expected the aftermath to include severe interruption of the financial services sector, but they picked up and moved forward pretty quickly.
If you accept this argument, then al-Qaeda has never had any capacity to inflict strategically significant damage on the US. Obviously, acquisition of nuclear weapons changes everything, but I don't think they ever came close to that, though they gamely tried.
So, in your calculus, we never should have gone after ai-Qaeda militarily.
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I'm afraid I couldn't follow the part about al-Qaeda having the resources of a sovereign state at its disposal.
R U referring to Afghanistan ?
If so, I think you're wrong.
The primary attribute that distinguishes a sovereign state is the ability to protect itself from outside forces. Under Taliban, Afghanistan had no such military capability.
IIRC, Mullah Omar offered to turn OBL over to Afghan authorities for trial if the US would present a sound case against him.
...............
But I do appreciate your hallucination about Panetta setting up conditions so that Obama can declare the "War on Bogeymen" over. It is seductive. I think I will adopt it my own darn self.
Better than that realism POV that leads to depression, in which no member of the Mil-Industrial Complex would ever allow any excuse or option for ending (or even cutting back) the "national defense" gravy train.
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That's right, Joe.
You recognize that this is mostly a recent phenom.
Maybe you've started reading foreign websites ?
Even English translations of foreign websites will give a broader view than just looking at US sites.
You may also recognize that the level of Arab/ Muslim antipathy toward the US went up very little when we invaded Afghanistan, because the reasons were clear, if not completely correct.
But this antipathy shot way up when the US invaded the most advanced Arab country, Iraq, for no apparent reason other than to steal their natural resources. Whether you agree with this or not, that is what their newspapers reported.
Arab language papers and websites are probably a better reflection of Arab thinking than any analysis you might read from SITES, JDL, or any Murdoch news outlet.
The WSJ used to run a feature periodically that explained why Gitmo was not a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. It presented statistical analysis of Jihadist websites and publications, counting how many times a number of different aggravations/ grievances were mentioned.
I doubt that feature will ever run again.
Why ?
On the demise of OBL, his replacement Ayman al-Zawahiri specifically mentioned Gitmo Detainees, characterizing them as martyrs for Islam.
It is his #2 grievance.
You can doubt that all you want. Reasonable people can disagree. But I've presented my evidence. Where's yours ?
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The Palestinian issue is clearly the #1 (number One) reason for radical Islamist violent jihad.
Number 2 is the treatment of Muslim men while detained by the US. Abu Ghrayb, Guantanamo, Bagram, Black Sites, rendition to allies who torture for us.
Obama is powerless to do anything about Number 1.
He lacks the will to do anything more about Number 2. He actually has done a little about reducing torture, but he continues to detain 90 or so men at Gitmo that his Administration has declared "innocent" (technically, "Cleared for Release.")
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The al-Jazeerah host said that what happened to Prez Saleh was an accident.
If the CIA Contractor who aimed and launched the Hellfire missile that caused those wounds intended to kill him, what about that qualifies as an accident ?
Was it an accident that he wasn't burned to death ? Is that what she was referring to ?
Truthfully, I don't know how he was injured.
It has been suggested that a rival militia fired either a mortar (possible) or a howitzer (not very likely) at him. An artillery round would not only have killed Saleh, but it would have leveled the Mosque he was in at the time.
But isn't there some Islamic injunction or sanction against attacking someone who takes shelter in a Mosque ? That could suggest that it wasn't a Muslim who attacked him while he was praying.
CORRECTION: CNN reports that 30,000 troops will be withdrawn over 18 months, not 12 months.
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Some context on the pace of withdrawal.
There are about 104,000 US armed forces personnel in Afghanistan today, 22 June 2011.
There were about 35,000 there when President Obama took office in January, 2009, working with another ~65,000 troops from NATO and other allies.
Fulfilling promises he made during the campaign, he sent about 35,000 more in the first several months of his Administration.
In December, 2009, he held consultations with the military generals on what troop levels were appropriate. Neither he nor his Administration nor the military ever asked what the Mission, Vision or Values were that were driving the war effort. The President never consulted anyone about the big picture of what we were trying to accomplish. His top advisors on this matter were all generals, former generals and/or war mongers.
Accordingly, troop levels were decided on the basis of what it would take to achieve military “victory,” rather than how to advance US national interests.
These advisors lied and told him that another 40,000 troops would turn the tide. In truth, to succeed in subjugating the Pashtoon population, about 2,000,000 troops were and are still needed, if that’s the objective. We don’t have 2 million troops.
He decided to authorize another 30,000. The Pentagon figured that another 10% for “support troops” was implicit, and sent another 34,000.
While on any given day there are about 104,000 US armed forces personnel in Afghanistan, including military personnel and Naval and Air Force personnel,
There are actually over 112,000 personnel assigned there, or assigned to units deployed there.
In any given week, there are about 2,000 personnel headed out of the country for their mid-tour leave, about 2,000 headed back from mid-tour leave, and about 4,000 back in “the World,” on mid-tour leave.
There is also some number who are medically evacuated out, who are TDY for training, or who are otherwise not in the country, despite being assigned there.
Also, the normal 12-month rotation of units in and out of Afghanistan means that, on average, more than 8,000 personnel are deployed into the country each month, and a similar number are redeployed back to their home stations in the US, Germany, Korea or elsewhere.
In this context, the notion that reducing staffing levels by 5,000 in the month of July is a significant reduction loses some of its shininess.
The President could reduce troop levels by 8,000, simply by slipping the schedule for the deployment of the next Brigade, and the corresponding support personnel, by one month, and pushing back all subsequent deployments by the same amount of time. Likewise, a reduction of 10,000 before 1 January 2012 will be accomplished by sending a Brigade home one month early just before Christmas, and delaying their replacement until after New Year’s Day.
These are cosmetic actions intended to create an appearance of reducing troop levels, without actually reducing them by very much.
The same kind of shell games can be done by extending mid-tour leave from 3 weeks to 4.
I have some experience as a staff officer in the Army, and on an Air Force MAJCOM staff as a civilian. With my modest abilities, if the President gave me the word, and I had the position and authority, I could have all 34,000 “Surge” troops out by the end of September, if I started in July. Any general officer who says it isn’t possible is sandbagging.
………………… ............. …………………
But the real reason these are empty promises is the fact that, over the last 60 days, the Army and Special Operations Commands have advertised for about 30 new contracts for the services of Mercenaries. These are new contracts, not replacing existing contracts. These new contracts call for over 500 armed personnel per contract, on average.
See for example https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=87b840fca5ca77b02bbf730d0d22ebb7&tab=core&_cview=1
Nit pickers will argue that, since the armed personnel are to be “Afghan,” that they do not meet the definition of “Mercenary.” But they will be commanded by Americans, Brits and South Africans.
More importantly, these contracts will use the old tactic of the British Raj to exploit ethnic rivalries, as they employed Gurkhas from Nepal to subjugate Punjabis. In Pashtun territory, the “Afghans” will be from the ethnicities making up the “Northern Alliance” side of the Afghan civil war, and vice versa.
Apparently, for every US person withdrawn, the military is replacing them with 3 Mercenaries.
Who comes up with this stuff ? Do they not know anything of human nature, or of Afghan history or culture ?
Who is advocating for US interests within the Obama White House ?
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Dr. Cole,
it's only fair to let your readers know that,
if they posted comments or sent you email,
they too were investigated and the CIA will maintain open files on them until they die.
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The State Department isn't any more serious about opening up closed societies than Soros and his hobby OSI.
Right after Operation Desert Fox, December, 1998, State & CIA both rejected the idea of sneaking a clandestine Internet capability similar to the "Internet in a Suitcase" into Iraq. Of course, the technology was less sophisticated. At a cost of over $200 million, a contractor offered to smuggle in 5,000 mesh-tethered terminals, human-powered generators and a small number of expendable ground stations (which would have to be replaced as they were discovered and destroyed by Saddam's Mukhabarat.)
Again in early 2002, the contractor offered to implement an updated version, with 10,000 thin client terminals, assuming that better HumInt capability within Iraq would be in our interests. Note that, at the time, the CIA and the entire US Intel Community had ZERO spies in Iraq. We bought our Iraq HumInt from "allies" who were playing us.
DIA rejected it because it wasn't off-the shelf.
CIA rejected it because it was "not invented here."
A guy at the Iraq Desk at State (Callahan) said that there was no way to sneak anything past the Mukhabarat; they were invincible.
TSWG never replied directly, but indicated that they were more interested in things that went "boom."
And Jon Peiser at OSI said that they had already pretty much succeeded in opening up Iraqi society, because they spent $20,000 a year to beam Arabic language radio in the general direction of Iraq from Prague (no kidding!)
Maybe the current State Dept really does want to support dissident freedom of speech. But that would be a change from historical policy.
That's more of a CIA thing, and that agency has repudiated this technology.
Thnx, Dr. Cole, for telling me about this. I would have missed it.
I remember following Mr. Ellsberg's tribulations when I was in high school. I thought Sam Ervin and Hillary Rodham had seen to it that this would never happen again.
Wrong.
One correction:
Congressmen don't need to be tricked or psyop'ed into being deluded. They go to Nawa and Marjah because they want to believe the unbelievable.
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"If Afghan police and soldiers could project authority and force in local areas, air strikes would be unnecessary. And after nearly 10 years since the overthrow of the Taliban, it is legitimate to ask when and how exactly local troops can be expected to take up this slack?"
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Dr. Cole,
the answer to your question is embedded in its erroneous phrasing, using the word "local" incorrectly.
Consider who the "Afghan police and soldiers" really are.
In your hometown, the policeman on patrol lives in your neighborhood. She or he can be fired by a Mayor that you helped to elect.
The American strategy in Pashtoon regions is reminiscent of how the British Raj used Nepalese Gurkhas to repress Punjabis.
There are no "Local" troops or policemen. We are trying to replace our military occupation of Pashtoon areas with Hazara or Tadjik or Turkmen occupation of those areas; that's our exit strategy.
Shame on US.
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Torture IS despicable.
In the act of torturing, the torturer denies the humanity of his victim, and thereby elevates the victim.
As torturers take pleasure in the pain of their victims, and in their ability to inflict that pain,
they redeem and justify their victims.
Jesus was tortured. Accordingly, a Christian cannot torture. For a Christian to torture another human being would be to repudiate the salvation wrought through the Paschal Sacrifice.
when I was a soldier, the US Army was able to train illiterate Vietnamese to paint targets with laser designators, in about an hour.
Maybe there is another reason that the 10th Special Forces is there ?
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For anyone scratching their heads over what appear to be fairly light casualties,
victory in combat is only rarely correlated with massive casualties. See, for example, the etymology of "decimate."
Historically, the highest numbers of casualties are inflicted after the cessation of hostilities, when prisoners are massacred.
What turns the tide in battle, most often, is the perception by the grunts on one side that they are taking large losses. Wounding 1 soldier can take 4 more out of the fight. Veiled by the fog of war, they can't really know what's happening to their left or to their right. If they turn and run, based on those perceptions, the adversary can exploit that and roll up the flanks left unguarded.
I presume actual numbers are much higher, but if not, this is a reflection of the low level of commitment of the loyalists and Mercenaries.
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For context,
I've read that most of the 400,000 refugees gathered in Bosasso, Puntland, are hoping to cross the seas to the land of plenty that we call "Yemen." I've also read that 10 - 20,000 attempt the trip each year, most drowning before reaching shore.
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Dr. Cole,
the new country of (North) Sudan may have a claim on the title of "poorest Arab country."
Golly, I've read where Somalis have claimed that title.
I guess it all depends on who is allowed to claim to be Arab.
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Student,
you know better than I the ancient historical ties that Persian and Iranian merchants had to Bahrain and every other port of significance, from Ceylon to Zanzibar.
How many ports in that part of the world have the Persian name "Bandar ?"
Iran sees themselves as the final bulwark against Western hegemony and decadence. They see an invisible American hand behind every calamity.
If the US was smarter at International Relations, we would consult with them at least as much as we do with Israel.
But we are still mad that they didn't accept the regime change we gave them in 1953. How long is the USA going to keep fighting that battle, and hurting ourselves in the process ?
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very helpful post, giving an alternative perspective. I would like to know the author's take on the apparent falling out between President Farole of Puntland and the CIA.
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Yes, let's "shrink" the population.
Can we start with the homeless who live under bridges, especially Vets, then maybe expand to the elderly in nursing homes, and then let's "shrink" all the gangbangers ?
I've never like Texans.
We could maybe start a couple of wars to "shrink" the military population. Mandate smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to increase deaths from traffic accidents. Cut taxes on chewing tobacco and legalize heroin. Promote "hooking up" through social media and TV.
Leverage "Second Amendment solutions."
Give tax breaks to producers of high fructose corn syrup and biodiesel.
See where I'm going with this ? Me neither. But I cannot comprehend the worship of death. It will come soon enough; have patience.
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In pursuit of economies of scale, the design of nuclear plants outgrew the ability of communities to protect themselves.
There are nuke plant designs that ARE safe. They tend to be far smaller than the 300 - 1500 MWe plants built over the last 4 decades, more in the range of 15-25 MWe (50-70 MWt.) They are more robust, less vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis or sabotage.
Based on my incomplete understanding of the American political process, I offer that nuke power is here to stay. The most that you and I can do is to affect changes around the edges. Maybe we should try to affect the designs of plants that are GOING TO BE BUILT, rather than fight for a complete prohibition.
Before the price of electricity is raised to include those costs that have so far been externalized, there will be great pain for the mass of humanity that pays rates. Such widespread pain is bad for reelection prospects. Our system has evolved to avoid pain, if not inconvenient truths.
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Travis, I believe that I saw video of three different types of engagements in Tripoli, Ras Lanuf and in Zawiyah. But I really don’t know what’s going on.
TRIPOLI: CS, tear gas, is a non-lethal agent used to disperse crowds. Fatalities are rare and usually accidental. The crowd was throwing rocks, and appeared unarmed. Government forces were in a crowd control formation coming down the middle of the street. They had weapons, but weren't firing. The unit exhibited what I call discipline, acting like they were under the control of a sergeant or officer.
RAS LANUF: Rebels were all armed. One guy with huge rounds (maybe .50 cal or larger) in bandoleers criss-crossing his chest was carrying a weapon that cannot fire such rounds. A fellow kicked a small caliber (maybe 75 mm) towed howitzer and something exploded. I couldn't tell if that was how he fired it, or if the breech exploded. Definitely not aimed fire, nor was it being adjusted on the other end. Government aircraft passed over for reconnaissance, never firing. Occasional ambulances evacuating wounded. The Rebels didn't look to me like they thought that they were in danger or on their way to battle, firing off celebratory rounds. Maybe they were coming back from the front.
I felt like I could take the 200 or so rebels I saw in the video with one disciplined squad (about 10 men.) Overall, I thought they were just celebrating that they had guns, which can give a sense of empowerment.
Then again, the video report was hundreds or thousands of meters from where the fighting was. I saw one burned out bus. Who knows what I didn't see.
ZAWIYAH: The crowd was responding like the crowd at Kent State in 1970. Some victims on the ground. Folks startled that they might actually get hurt. No context.
But if a sniper was killing folks one by one, I would expect the crowd to disperse, which they hadn't.
All in all, I don't know what's going on. I trained for crowd control while in the National Guard, not while on Active Duty (Posse Comitatus,) after Kent State. I got training on how to use rubber bullets for non-lethal effects. I doubt that the Libyan military cares much about preventing injuries, but the injuries looked light to me. If an unarmed crowd was facing down a Mercenary force and the Mercs started shooting to kill, I would not expect to see any crowd. Maybe this was immediately after the first salvo ?
GENERAL IMPRESSION: What I’ve seen is just a glimpse. No “big picture” view yet. But this is not the second coming of Attila the Hun.
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As a former infantry officer, I must say that the "action" in the video looks a lot more like Civil Disturbance/ Crowd Control (non-lethal) than combat.
Either Colonel Qaddafi does not want to kill the protesters, or his lieutenants don't.
I don't think he believes that his hold on power is seriously threatened.
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King and Gandhi yet live.
Wait. Be patient.
"How long? Not long."
"Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
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JT, to my biased view,
that dam failure did have at least one good thing come of it, eventually. Whether motivated by shame, or megalomania, or something else, the party most responsible subsequently established numerous free public libraries across the country.
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If there really is bombing going on, bombing of civilians, then the US Air Force will have evidence of that, and President Obama will be briefed on that.
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Bill,
I'm projecting. I assume that America's "aspirational values" concerning self-determination, liberty, etc. are the core values that guide our foreign policy. Maybe I'm wrong ?
In any event, I just saw a post - uncorroborated, so far - that the Libyan former Ministers and Ambassadors who have abandoned Colonel Qaddafi have appealed to Obama to announce and immediately enforce a "no-fly zone." Not waiting for the UN to act. This proposal is not that different, in effect, from what I proposed this afternoon.
I sure hope the trolls from the NSC are checking this site out.
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The US Air Force has the technology to monitor the Libyan Air Force 24/7/365. They have the ability to shoot down Libyan aircraft from 40 miles away.
AWACS could very well have identified specific aircraft that engaged in attacks on civilians, and shot down only those aircraft. After about a dozen airframes crashed in Tripoli, the rest of the Libyan Air Force would have figured out what was going on, and all such attacks would have stopped.
This is actually pretty close to what happened in the Gulf of Sidra in 1986.
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The US Navy airbase in Sigonella, Sicily, Italy is about 250 miles from Tripoli.
US Naval aviators eat Libyan pilots for lunch.
Why hasn't the Libyan Air Force been -grounded- knocked out of the sky ? It's almost 4 hours since the US President knew what was going on.
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The US Navy has a large investment in its Manama-based 5th Fleet. Folks will inevitably read hidden meaning into that.
I hope, for the time being, that the Commander has ordered all ships out to sea, so that we are not seen as propping up an unpopular dictator.
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The video is vaguely reminiscent of events in al Kut the first week of April, 2004, when locals expressed their displeasure with the RTI approach to distributing food rations.
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"The army is too blunt an instrument to be used in a crackdown."
Looking more broadly than just this circumstance, a foreign army is even less utilitarian. It is too blunt to win hearts and minds during an occupation, too blunt to implement reconstruction and nation-building, too blunt for most anything but war-fighting.
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Just in case the occasion ever arises, how would one spirit a boatload of money out of a local bank and out of the country ?
Seems to me I would try to do it electronically, but this reporting suggests that the former regime members are doing it the old fashioned way, either in cash or bullion.
Far better to do what the Karzai cartel has done: sock it away a little at a time, taking monthly trips to Genf or Dubai, loaded down with bricks and cases of diamonds.
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In making the point that Guantánamo is NOT the #1 recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, William Kristol's Weekly Standard explains http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/gitmo-not-al-qaedas-number-one-recruitment-tool_524997.html
that the reason that al-Qaeda even exists is because of some tie-in with
"Israel/Israeli/Israelis (98 mentions), Jew/Jews (129), Zionist(s) (94), Palestine/Palestinian (200), Gaza (131), and Crusader(s) (322)."
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Shootist,
not sure how you think big changes occur.
It wasn't righteous indignation of the citizens of the British Empire that got them to end their Afghan campaigns, nor was it the protests of the Soviet subjects that led to the withdrawal in 1989.
In both cases, the folks pulling the levers took advantage of opportunities to save face, while preserving their grasp on those levers of power.
If our military pulls out of Afghanistan in my lifetime (I'm nearly 60,) it will be because either the President or a groundswell in Congress sees a way to pull out while saving face and staying in office.
Young folks today don't care about the war, and older folks don't, either. Whether they recognize the immorality of the whole affair or not, they are convinced that they are powerless to change anything. Remember, they voted for Hope and Change 2 years ago, and look what that got them.
There will be NO REPEAT of the protests over the Vietnam war.
It's up to me and several others at this site to chart a course to withdrawal. Help if you like.
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Wanna hear a joke ? This is from an official document issued by ISAF last month:
“In FY2006, USAID/Afghanistan established the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) program to promote and establish linkages between provincial governments and local communities in priority districts determined by USAID Field Program Officers, their local Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and GIRoA counterparts. This ‘bottoms up’ program sought to address causes of instability at the community level in selected districts and assist the local citizenry, along with provincial and district level governments, to develop the institutions, processes and projects to create a stable environment for long-term political, economic and social development.
“Despite successes at the community level with the LGCD project, violence continues and it is believed that a lack of donor and GIRoA attention at the district level is still problematic. This lack of district level focus threatens to erode the legitimacy of provincial governments being able to expand their authority and deliver basic services throughout their provinces. A credibility gap exists throughout [Afghanistan] that prevents community level confidence in district level governments. It is believed that this thereby fuels the insurgency and creates instability. This broken ‘mid-link’ between GIRoA at the provincial level and local communities undermines the ability of provincial governance to expand their authority and legitimacy with the populace. Recognizing this, efforts to promote District level formal authorities (such as District Governors and their staffs) along with their informal District Councils, Shuras and District Development Assemblies is a priority for both the United States and GIRoA.”
Me, I think of something else when I hear “bottoms up.” Wonder how that got in there. Methinks the ISAF staff drinks too much.
But here’s the cruel, unfunny joke:
ISAF is saying that it is a bottom-up approach when we try to put more horsepower behind the efforts of the central government to control people and events at the District level.
In my dictionary, that is at the entry for “stovepiped top-down control.”
Where are all the experts in Governance, and why aren’t they being heard ?
This is the key reason our efforts are failing, and must fail. With this mindset, success is not an option.
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I have one major area of disagreement with President Karzai’s overall approach. He wants to have all armed forces under his control. He sees himself as the (Bourbon) King of the Afghans, so that makes sense to him. I do not believe that the French model of a central government is a good fit for Afghanistan.
In direct opposition to everyone in the Obama Administration responsible for losing this war, including the Generals and the diplomats and the politicians who are losing this war, I believe in the values and principles in the US Declaration of Independence.
I particularly believe that the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed. In opposition to that, the military, the White House and the State Department seem to believe that legitimacy can also come from being selected at the 2002 Bonn Conference, a variation of the “Divine Right of Kings.”
When I start from a foundation of core American values, no matter how many times I try, I keep coming back to wanting to create stability from the bottom up. In my myopic view, if you start with recognizing the dignity and franchise of individual Afghans, then the ONLY righteous cause that American soldiers should be asked to die for, if the mission is nation-building, is to build up representative governance, and local security forces, at the local/ village level. Then the various authentic indigenous local leaders will work out governance (and everything else) at the District and Provincial levels. In due time, a legit national government will emerge.
But what are we really sacrificing our soldiers, and thousands of Afghan civilians, for ? We are fighting to impose the monarchy in Kabul (that we hand-selected) on the Provinces and the Districts.
Note that the King, under the current “Constitution,” appoints a crony to rule (not govern) every one of the 398 Districts. With the Presidential and parliamentary elections a farce, the Afghan people have NO SAY in who rules them. There is no level where the people get to choose who governs them; they only get to vote for “representative councils” that “advise” their local Karzai appointees, who the “Constitution” says can ignore their advice.
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If wishes were horses,
then I would have the US and NATO and Coalition military forces cease all offensive operations in Afghanistan, post haste, taking no more than about 45 days to wrap that up. Based on my anecdotal experience in the Army, it can take about that long for a new directive to percolate down in the slowest, poorest-led units.
For the next 2 years, I'd keep Quick Reaction Forces, plus precision fires/ air power, on call. I'd have about a Brigade at each Regional Command Center/ Regional Platform. They would have 2 missions, besides self-protection:
***__ 1. Providing backup to Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF;) and
***__ 2. Providing backup to specified NGO's conducting aid, development and reconstruction activities.
This backup force would also have a free hand to help any Coalition force that needed it in order to disengage from enemy contact, though that really shouldn’t happen if units follow the rules.
BUT--
In order to commit to kinetic combat operations, Coalition forces could only go outside the wire of their compounds with escorts from the ANSF, and with the permission of the Ministry of Defense, which is the opposite of the situation today, where ANSF are in effect commanded by the US/NATO Commanders.
To anyone who objects that the ANSF are not ready yet, I concede that is true. But they will never be ready, not even in 100 years. This is partially because you cannot have a “national” anything without a nation.
Also, I would embrace the Karzai decision to get rid of all foreign mercenaries and private military companies in the country, even Afghan ones. If DAI or Chemonics, for example, refuses to go downrange without their mad killers for PSD escort, cancel their contracts. Indigenous NGO’s would just LOVE to get in on that action. Plus, in addition to being cheaper, a lot cheaper, they would be more effective.
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OOps.
If I read the legend correctly, the orange color means rainfall of more than 0.5 meters per year.
That is the color covering the area of the Empty Quarter on the map.
But according to Jimmy Wales' website, it is hyper-arid, one of the driest places on Earth.
This is not Dr. Cole's error: the exact same error can be found at the NCAR webpage he linked to.
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Some folks don't belong to organized religions,
but who doesn't hold any "religious beliefs ?"
"Religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of life and the universe, ...
or human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
You've got yours and I've got mine. Our beliefs diverge on the proper place of homosexuality in society.
Your religious beliefs are right, and mine are wrong, because ... ?
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Maybe we should go ahead with the gift of the most advanced military aircraft in the world. Just encourage the secular state of Israel to expand their abuse of their own citizens, and encourage them to attack Iran. But stay out of it directly ourselves.
Within 2 years of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, this whole mess will sort itself out. And when it does, it will stop that huge drain on the US Treasury.
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while it is sorry that the American public cannot work up a sweat over a colonial invasion, and the American boys killed in it,
I am more deeply troubled that one American boy has been held as a POW by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani gang, held for more than 18 months,
and almost nobody knows or cares.
on 11 November, I tried to walk to the POW memorial service in Arlington National Cemetery with his name on a 2' X 3' sign. Park Police in SUV's and cruisers chased me down, lights flashing, and ran me off.
In front of the Lincoln Memorial that day, half a dozen POW-awareness groups had set up camp. They were agitated that we left boys in Vietnam, but none of THEM even knew who Bowe Bergdahl is.
I walked up and down the National Mall with my sign on Veterans' Day, past the White House, telling everyone I met about his situation. Out of more than 700 people I talked to, fewer than 10 knew about him. A couple of preachers from the Philippines knew more about him than most US active duty military folks I encountered. Looks like Juan is right about the complicity of the domestic media.
I was a GI when I was his age. I got the treatment: refused service in a restaurant in my hometown because I was in uniform, e.g. My fellow soldiers got the same, and worse.
Now it's hard to find anyone who will admit to treating soldiers that way back then, during the Vietnam war. Everyone claims to "support the troops."
And I cannot stop thinking how lonely SPC Bergdahl must feel. His entire Chain of Command, up to the Commander in Chief, has abandoned him.
The Army is supposed to have this Code of Honor thing, that says we won't ever leave a fallen comrade behind. Guess we gotta update that to reflect the new realities.
Didn't Geo. Washington say that the way to judge a society was to look at how it treated it's vets ?
Whether you're religious or not, I ask everyone who reads this to offer a prayer for Bowe.
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I believe it was produced by the CIA several years ago.
The CIA is more careful about accuracy in the maps it produces for internal use only. Those that are made for public release sometimes have hidden agendas embedded in the (human) geographic representations.
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Speaking of daily provocations, Dr. Cole,
does Arabic satellite TV also provide regular reports on the detention of innocent men at Guantanamo ? The US Government formally declared about half of the remaining detainees to be "cleared for release" more than a year ago.
I've been told that it does, but I don't watch Arabic TV.
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As with many things, T-Partiers come in many varieties. For some, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Pete King might serve as archetypes. For me and my fellow travelers, we prefer to hold up Ron Paul or Alan Keyes as bearers of our standard.
As a Constitutionalist/ T-Partier, I am outraged at the US Government engaging in torture. I am bewildered by my neighbors who rationalize its use.
I'm also not so keen on the special tribunals set up to skirt the bedrock; bills of attainder; bills restricting the construction of houses of worship; or the employment of Mercenaries to
to subjugate civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Democracy is a work in progress. As an experiment, there are salients in the wrong direction, and it is up to us to point out these errors, and to demand their rectification.
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"It does not say they could not withdraw more quickly than that."
Pulling our troops out before the last possible moment allowed in the "Security Agreement" would require political courage from a President not afraid to stand up to Army Generals. Since the next Presidential election is 2 years away, what makes you think President Obama might be replaced before then ?
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I wish the video of the Kabul protest showed a handful of American faces in the crowd, marching and protesting right alongside the Afghanis against the desecration of the Koran.
Then the other marchers would not be shouting "Death to America," but "death to that small group that is defiling the holy book."
Would it be unsafe for an American to participate in such a protest ? Doesn't Pakhtunwhali demand that Afghanis be hospitable toward, and even protective of, a foreigner who puts his safety in their hands ?
Or am I naive beyond belief ?
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where I live, ordinary folks get permits and carry concealed firearms in their purses and in holsters under their jackets. Don't read too much into a guy carrying a knife.
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Let me throw out some harebrained assumptions for the community to refute:
Wasn't the dominant meme of the March election, carried by most parties, to throw the US occupation forces out ? Isn't that what most Iraqi voters voted for ? Isn't that what al-Maliki promised ?
Hasn't the young Sayyid al-Sadr said that the Iraqis cannot govern themselves as a sovereign nation until the last foreign soldier is expelled ?
Hasn't he tacitly encouraged this stalemate as a way to pressure elected officials to ask the US military to please hurry up and leave ahead of the December 2011 deadline ?
Isn't the US free, under the "Security Agreement," to leave before the deadline ? Can't we legally pull out before this Christmas, rather than waiting another year ?
Couldn't al-Sadr break this stalemate by releasing his loyalists to form a coalition ?
Couldn't Chris Hill break the impasse by telling the Iraqis that they can choose their own government ?
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I am reluctant to correct the teacher.
But the notion that 1/3 of the territory of Pakistan is under water strains credulity.
I was hoping an earlier comment would make the appropriate correction.
Riverbeds in Pakistan are wide and shallow, as a rule. When the volume carried increases a little, the width of the river increases more. When the river has to carry flood-level volumes, the Indus, for example, can be more than 5 miles across, in places. So the amount of land inundated by swollen, widened streams and rivers is maybe 100 times or more what is normally covered by visible surface water.
But the map is a little misleading. If there is any flooding in a district, the entire district is shown as flooded. The map shows that districts amounting to 1/3 of the area of Pakistan are at least partially inundated. For 1/3 to really be under water, the entirety of all of these districts would have to be under water, and that's just not the case.
When the actual scope of the crisis is almost beyond comprehension, there is no need to exaggerate. Unfortunately, transparent hyperbole can actually undercut appeals for sympathy and support.
Please retract the statement about 1/3 of the country being submerged.
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JT, as a simple man I think in simple terms.
Afghanistan will never be worth the effort needed to do Occupation right, and actually woo hearts and minds, because there is so little possible Return on Investment. Unless we are willing to stay 100 years, and spend whatever it takes, we need a more sustainable approach.
Even if we spent money on Afghanistan at the level we give money to Israel, for example, which I've heard approaches $7,000 per capita per year, when you add it all up, I still doubt that we could persuade them to like us and adopt our values.
Smarter analysts than me have concluded that there is a possibility of coalescing a functional government in Kabul, given enough time and money. Me, I'm skeptical.
But we all know that we can incubate a small number of self-governing, self-protecting small communities that can not only provide for their own security and stability, but can also do a much better job of economic development at a local scale than foreign Expats.
The authentic indigenous local leaders ought to be empowered to protect and develop their own small communities.
There's got to be a way to deliver basic health care with locals as the face of the health delivery system. I'm thinking about a system where the foreigners back in Kabul, or Brussels, coach local Midwives and Nurses over the Internet, in the local language.
Locals should get to decide whether to fix a road or build a school.
Locals should decide who gets micro-loans.
There's going to be graft and skimming, no matter who is handling the money. Wouldn't it be better if folks in the small villages were getting the graft, rather than the big wheels in the national "government ?
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If our vision of what we can accomplish is too expansive, pie in the sky, and we burn through all that money trying to develop a national governance structure that won't ever work, that poor dirt farmer 25 miles from the nearest road won't have any reason to be grateful to us.
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Jason Motlagh wrote in the TIME article you linked to:
"Once allowed to operate with a degree of immunity, aid workers now face a dramatically increased threat of kidnapping and assassination."
Taliban and ordinary locals used to regard unarmed Westerners in civilian clothing and civilian vehicles as benign, or even as a benefit to their communities.
For 9 years, the US Army, the brutal and hated occupation force, has employed "civilians" or civilian-looking personnel as an adjunct to kinetic military operations. Genuine civilian aid efforts were compromised by Louis Berger, RTI, DAI, Chemonics, abt and the rest of the USAID 'development-industrial complex' camouflaging themselves in the guise of civilian aid in order to covertly serve as a force multiplier for the warfighter. Whether mapping human terrain or appointing local government officials, these "civilians" in the service of the military mission were bound to be found out. And now they've spoiled it for the authentic civilians, security-wise.
I disagree with the Obama implication that sending in unlawful combatants and calling them civilians somehow changes that character of the unwanted Occupation. Taking folks out of ACU's and putting a bush jacket and boonie hat on them doesn't make them "civilian."
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I have a strong bias in this matter, and sometimes you have to simply ignore me. Perhaps this is one of those times.
I think the Reuters report misstates what President Karzai probably said about quasi-military armed forces, because I think he is worried about two separate problems that the wire service conflated into one.
First, there is the problem with Western Private Military Companies, who employ Western Expatriates to supervise Third World Mercenaries. He isn't so concerned about sexual hazing. Karzai is concerned about para-military organizations whose SOP for convoy ops includes "anticipatory enfilading fire," sometimes imitating Sherman's march to the Sea. The Westerners in this category are down to about 15,000, I think, including PSD's and Diplomatic Security. The Fijians, Gurkhas and Salvadorans, among others, are down to less than 20,000 by now, I should think.
But "President" Karzai is also deeply concerned about the number of Afghanis that the US Army has under arms as ASG's. That number was around 30,000 to 40,000 some months back, but the Army is adding 5 - 10,000 every single month. Almost all of the Commanders of US FOB's and COP's in Afghanistan now have their own little private army, manned by locals, for perimeter security and other combat-related missions. Their numbers are available from public sources, but the aggregate numbers may be classified, so I won't estimate. But figure enough people to man all guard towers on all US posts, camps and stations. These forces are also equipped, trained and commanded by cadres of Western Expats. They are not accountable in any way to any Minister of the Afghan "government." They could become local militias or worse, Karzai fears. From reading the professional journals of our warriors, I get the distinct impression that our battlefield commanders are not 100% on board with leaving everything related to local security up to bureaucrats back in Kabul.
I think this arming of local Afghanis and organizing them into quasi-military forces is of more concern to Karzai than a bunch of former US soldiers acting out homoerotic taboo on tape. He would rather that all indigenous fighting forces came under a Ministry of the Kabul GoIRA. Who knows where local, autonomous control can lead.
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I admit that I don't know much about maritime warfare, whether littoral or blue water.
But I do not believe that US Navy vessels are really vulnerable to speedboat suicide bombers. There's a layered defense around any US Navy vessel in the Hormuz Straits, from AWACS down to the Aegis mini-gun.
I'm pretty sure that the only ways that the Guards of the Revolution can strike these vessels are either with missiles, which can be made hard to shoot down, or command-detonated mines on the seabed. The US Navy can detect almost any mine floating between the seabed and the surface.
Problem for the Pasdaran maritime forces is that ships can sail in and out of the Gulf and never come within 250 feet of the seabed. I don't know of any mine that can damage a ship 250 feet above, and some distance to the side.
IF they're thinking of suicide mini-subs, those can be detected from the air pretty easily.
So they are pretty much limited to attacking commercial vessels, it seems to me.
p.s.: I thought that only US Intelligence Agencies referred to them as the "IRGC." That acronym stands for "Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps," which is not that similar to their name.
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I presume that all these homes and villages were built in the Indus River flood plain, which appears to be several miles wide for most of its length.
Were flood control structures like the Tarbela Dam overwhelmed ?
Is Karachi threatened ?
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I believe that the Iraqi Blocks are trying to negotiate who will be PM, and everything else waits for that.
So what's the holdup there ?
Based on March election results, the Parliament is trying to select someone who meets with the approval of Moqtada al-Sadr, since he is the most respected and popular leader in all of Iraq today.
But the US occupation force demands that al-Sadr be ostracized and ignored for his pro-Iraqi leanings. IIRC, the US Government still has a standing order to shoot him on sight.
I think the Iraqis have been biding time until the end of August, when some of them believe that the US will quit bossing them around. After all, there will be a NEW DAWN on 1 September, and the US combat units will transform magically into advisory and training units. Then, these Iraqi politicians hope, then they can appoint/ select whoever they want. We shall see.
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This is an estimate/ MSU data. If someone has better numbers, have at it.
I estimate that there were about 160,000 contractor personnel in Iraq working for the US military & State Department, as of the end of June 2010. Just over half are Iraqis. About 25,000 are Westerners. Many of the rest are from poor countries.
I estimate that around one third of those contractor personnel will be gone by the end of October, no longer needed because of the departure of American units.
I estimate that there were about 65,000 contractor personnel at the end of June whose main purpose was to shoot and kill people, Iraqis mostly, if they didn't follow orders, such as to stay away from key installations or to stop at checkpoints. These contractor personnel operated roadblocks/ checkpoints, guarded key infrastructure and military bases, and patrolled built-up areas.
I am reluctant to use the vernacular "Mercenaries" because some correspondents will quibble over the definition of the word as used in the Geneva Protocol dealing with Mercenaries. Some would argue that, regardless of circumstance or conduct, if a particular quasi-military armed soldier/ unlawful combatant on the US Army payroll is an Iraqi, or an American or a Brit, then they cannot be a Merc.
In November, once the US settles into occupation largely by proxy, I assume that there will be about the same number of civilian soldiers, 65,000. There appears to be a rapid transition from third world Mercenaries to Iraqi armed guards. But as long as they work for American companies, carrying loaded rifles and occasionally shooting other Iraqis on the orders of Americans, well, the est of the Iraqi population will continue to think of them as collaborators with the US military occupation.
Note that I include some of the Sunni Sahwa militias in these numbers. If you had the impression that the US Army was paying the salaries of 80,000 to 100,000 of these militiamen, I am under a different impression. For the most part, the US quit paying those units at the end of 2008, and the Iraqi government promised to take over. I am including businesses hired to guard pipelines in Saladin Governate and those hired to maintain roads free of IED's in Diyala Governate.
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Does the US still insist that al-Sadr not have any seat at the table, and that the 40% of the population that he represents must remain without a voice in the Iraqi government ?
If so, there will not be any reconciliation or brokered alliance until the US occupation of Iraq is completely ended.
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One dividing line among the various Christian sects is how the visions of the Prophet John of Patmos inform their doctrine and dogma. This John was not an Apostle and never met Jesus in the flesh, having been born after Jesus' bodily Ascension into heaven. A hermit living alone in a cave on the Greek isle of Patmos, John had a number of visions of Jesus appearing to him and telling him what the future held.
John of Patmos wrote down his recollection of these visions in the Book of Revelations, as it is now called. This is where most "Christian" teachings about end times, the Millennium, Christian Triumphalism, Armageddon, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Rapture, and more, come from. This is where most teachings about the Second Coming come from. Most of these teachings are not related to the teachings of Jesus to his Apostles.
The Jesus who walked the Earth taught that what was important in one's spiritual life was what a person chose, and what they did. The Jesus in Revelations taught that what is most important is the Divine Magic performed by God, relieving believers of any responsibility.
These quite different versions of Christianity appeal to very different sorts of Christians.
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my very first reaction to the note that some locals had busted their neighbors out of jail
was to recount the motto of US Army Special Forces: de opresso liber.
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Even the Tuareg have access to the technology needed to shoot down CIA drones.
I'm sure it happens weekly, considering that the US military & CIA have maybe 1,000 aloft at any given time, worldwide.
If these folks want their sovereignty respected, they need to step up and buy a Cessna. Don't count on the US Government respecting it otherwise.
By the way, I believe there is currently a moratorium against drone surveillance across most of Western Europe, Japan and New Zealand.
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The US thinking, going back to McChrystal, if not McKiernan, or Richards before him, was that the only solution to the resistance fighters crossing the Durand Line from Paktika into safe havens in North Waziristan was for PAKISTAN to seal the border.
Some 4-star general must have said that very thing at one point; the "military intelligence" echo chamber still cannot get past that paradigm.
ISI does not simply want to have some nebulous "influence" in Afghanistan; they want to prevent their arch-rival India from establishing strategic military depth there. If that threat is real, then Pakistan MUST respond to that prospect, in some fashion.
Seems to me that it would be counter to Pakistani interests to seal the border.
Juxtaposition of this post right above the one on sealing the Arizona-Mexico border raises the question in my mind of why we don't insist that Mexico seal that border. Silly, huh ? Well, that's similar to expecting Pakistan to seal their border with Afghanistan.
Here's a couple of new paradigms for Secretary Panetta/ General Allen to ponder:
*** maybe put the Pakistani Army in charge of occupying Paktika Province.
*** put the US Army in charge of sealing the border. They are the defacto government of Afghanistan; let them man up to protecting their own (actually, their subjects') sovereignty.
*** Hire the Haqqani militia to seal the border. Negotiate with them; pay them protection money. In terms of savagery, they are no worse than the folks from the Northern Alliance who we embraced in the opening days of the invasion.
Or, most outlandish,
*** start providing development and stability to the Afghans in this area, Khowst, Paktia and Paktika provinces. Out of maybe $120 Billion in aid spent in/on Afghanistan since 2001, very little has gone for the benefit of these people. Many seem to believe that NONE has been spent for their benefit. All they can see in terms of aid programs and infrastructure are things that seem to actually have been done to leverage or enhance kinetic military operations, like paving roads and appointing Tadjiks as their local governors.
I think that convincing the Pakistanis to realign their national and provincial governance structure in order to benefit 30 million Afghans (sorry, Pashtun Pakistanis) would be a tough job.
Ultimately, over the long run, we only have 2 choices:
…..Genocide; or
…..Liberation from foreign domination (de opresso liber.) To be clear on this option, not only are Americans in Pashtun lands considered foreigners. Afghan Tadjiks and Hazara and Uzbeks in Pashtun lands are also considered foreigners by the locals.
If we are not willing to kill them all, and we are not, then we will eventually give up and let them alone.
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thanks for that personal account.
Of course, you're right to blame Prez Obama for this tactic. He has approved it personally, striking first responders.
But there is plenty of blame to go around. I believe that the Pakistani Air Force has tacitly agreed to let these drone attacks continue. I do not know why.
The PAF has a modern inventory of aircraft, including an AWACS capability that can see any of the drones that I suspect are being employed for these attacks, which I think are limited to predators and reapers.
I suspect that they can even probably detect the supposedly "stealth" drones being used to monitor Pakistan's nuke weapons and ballistic missiles, the Dark Star (I don't believe it was ever canceled,) and the Sentinel.
PAF has several advanced, high- and medium altitude air defense systems that definitely can knock down the predators and reapers, and maybe even the stealth recon airframes.
And PAF has several squadrons of F-16's and some Chinese built air combat aircraft that would make simple work of stopping these drone attacks.
The one US drone that I don't think the PAF could shoot down is the Global Hawk - a very fast mover at high altitude. To defeat one of those, they would have to know it was coming even before their AWACS detected it, and have a combat air patrol aloft ready to intercept it.
The USAF reports that they have mothballed the Global Hawk in favor of returning to the U-2. I believe that to be another instance of "Strategic Communications" misdirection.
Does anyone know how a person on the "kill list" goes about gettingtheir name removed ? Does a person start at the District Court level ?
Elsewhere it is referred to as a "kill / capture list." Does anyone really get captured, or do we just kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out, as the old SF T-shirt says ?
there are drones, and then there are drones.
The Reaper flies 200 mph at up to 40,000 feet, for up to 15 hours.
The Global hawk flies at 450 mph, at up to 65,00 feet, for as long as 36 hours.
Reaper is designed to be launched in the same theater where it is employed. E.g., strikes in Yemen are by aircraft launched at Lemoiner, strikes in Waziristan launch from Bagram.
Global Hawk can circle the globe. once it's tanker model is ready.
The US Govt, all agencies, has purchased over 200 drones, with 48 in the air at any given time in Afghanistan. When they cross that Durand Line, the Pakistani Air Force could shoot reapers down with Cessnas. So far, Global Hawks aren't being used in Pakistan, but no Cessna is going to knock one of those out of the sky. But they could do that with F-5's or F-16's.
not sure what Obama gambled in OK'ing the UBL raid.
The military put together a plan and he said "OK."
If it had failed, cf Operation Eagle Claw, nobody within the US would have held that against him. He would have got props for trying.
I took a PsyOp course through the JFK Center back in the 1970's. Based on what I learned back then, DoD's entire "Strategic Communications" effort qualifies as "propaganda."
How I see it: simply by labeling the effort in Afghanistan as "counterinsurgency," the Government is deceiving the American public about the purpose and nature of the fight.
And rebranding it as "counterterrorism" would be even farther from the truth.
Since at least 2005, our military has been there to occupy and subjugate, the opposite of the SF motto, "de opresso liber." We are trying to build up Vichy surrogates who will betray their fellow Afghans.
If you think domestic support for the war is low now, what do you think would happen if the American public was to get straight talk out of our Government on this topic ?
"... the Catholic Church where failure is considered a badge of Honor."
not sure what this refers to, but I take exception to this statement. I am a Catholic Priest, though not ordained. I represent the Catholic Church. Heck, I AM the Catholic Church. I am not an official spokesman.
The Catholic Church considers failure to be an integral part of the human condition. The Church assumes that all have sinned and fall short of perfection. Perhaps there are counterexamples.
The central message that Jesus tried to transmit is that, despite our failures, we can be forgiven and do better in the future.
There are entire christianist industries set up to obfuscate that message. My Church has sometimes clouded that message. But we exist as an organization to spread that message.
Significantly, my Church has condoned, or at least concealed, great wickedness. If you, Mike, are a victim of that evil perpetrated against the vulnerable, I am heartily sorry. Not that it matters, but I am crying as I type this, aware of the breadth of the sins of the Church. But we strive to get better, and we try to help those we injured to heal.
May God bless and heal all of us.
this guy wasn't at the Pentagon.
He was an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College, which is in Norfolk, VA. I think this was an elective course, so the students selected whether or not to attend.
I presume that most knew what the course was going to be about before registering. Up until the one whistleblower attended, I presume that all other students were of a similar mind. That's the scariest p[art of this story.
I have done some analysis and consulting at the National Defense University in DC, the capstone DOD academic institution.
I was with the State Department program to train Afghan Police for a while.
I saw a bit of anti-Muslim bias institutionalized in both of those, as well.
It starts at the top.
maybe some good will come of this.
Maybe the Air Force will get back to its core mission and get out of partisan politics, race-baiting, institutional hatred, etc.
One can hope.
"Clive Stafford Smith ... gained a global reputation after he took on ... Guantanamo Bay. The drone war in Waziristan is, for Stafford Smith, the next American injustice that needs taking on."
I sure hope that doesn't mean that Barrister Smith and the organization he built, Reprieve, are moving on from the fight over indefinite detention at Gitmo. They've done much good in that regard, but much remains to be done.
Brian
creator, Dat-Dazh-deet Derad Program
I sure wouldn't want women in a front line combat unit under my command, and I have commanded a front-line combat outpost, though it was many years ago.
If all we use our infantry for is colonial conquest, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, then its not so bad doing all that social engineering and experimentation with our machinery of national defense. Our Army has failed miserably in both wars due to supremely incompetent leadership at the highest levels, after replacing military Generals with political sycophants, and the consequences aren't so bad.
But let's not undermine the ability to actually defend our nation, should the need arise.
Most of the decorations listed for GEN Dempsey are just what Generals get for not quitting.
But the Bronze star with a "V" device for valor in combat, that's the real deal.
well, I have good news and bad news.
the good news:
for all those soldiers who feel that they don't get enough time in Afghanistan to rake in those piles of tax-free combat pay, the US Senate heard you and is going to do something about it.
the bad news:
for everybody else, the Senate Banking Committee just crafted a bill to cut Iran off completely from the world economic system, demanding that SWIFT stop making payments to any Iranian entity from any source. That, of course, would be an act of war.
While the US Senate lacks the intestinal fortitude to vote outright to declare war, lest there be some unintended consequences that even American voters can trace back to them,
they are more than willing to fire the first, second, third, etc. salvos in that war, and insist that if Iran retaliates, then "they started it."
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No mention here of the extent of CIA and/or Mossad involvement in the opposition.
This is a pretty hot topic in Syria, I think.
Could someone provide some quantification of the dollars and manpower that US taxpayers are investing to remove the Opthalmologist from the Syrian Presidency,
whether directly through the CIA, or indirectly through intermediaries ?
While this would seem to run counter to core American values, overthrowing foreign governments that pose no threat to us,
at least we aren't spending nearly as much as we spent to overthrow Saddam,
or anything near to what we'll spend to overthrow the Iranian government.
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so, what did folks think of how President Obama handled Guantanamo in the speech ?
Mr. Squier,
I believe that the answers can be found by examining what America stands for.
I offer the 4 July 1776 Declaration as a good place to start.
Andreas,
I find your perspectives on these issues very interesting.
On these three points, I disagree with you and agree with Professor Cole, but perhaps you can point to a website where your interesting perspectives are explicated ?
maybe Kwang-ju (770+ students killed by the Korean national police) had something to do with General Chun overthrowing the government a few months earlier ?
I was in the US Army in Korea during the riots, and I had no idea at the time what had happened. total news embargo.
But from what is published today, I question your analysis.
any mention of Jones demands an homage to Leo J. Ryan.
He proved that, once in a while, a good person can serve in our legislature.
I am under the impression that Prez Saleh has consistently promised to not run in the elections in 2013.
When he first made the promise, he surely planned to have a son step in and take over.
But he seems to be keeping to that commitment.
I don't know that Yemeni elections are free and fair, but they come closer to legitimacy deriving from the consent of the governed than in any GCC state.
I would guess that the US CIA has offered Saleh tens of millions of dollars to step down.
That signals to skeptics that we think we know who is going to be the new leader in Yemen, and we think we have co-opted him.
The folks running the USA do not trust free and fair elections in Yemen any more than they trust them at home.
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On a related note, I am under the impression that Yemeni public opinion toward the USA is shaped to a large degree by the detention of 60+ Yemeni men at Guantanamo who we know to be innocent.
Most of these men were "CLEARED FOR RELEASE" under G W Bush, more than 4 years ago, but they are now entering their tenth year in unlawful, indefinite detention.
What say you, community ?
Any truth in this ?
Joe,
the US has conducted many training programs for Iraqi military and police in Jordan.
That may be what Travis has in mind.
Or our other ally in the region, Syria, who has been instrumental in helping us track and fight al-Qaeda.
But maybe we aren't supposed to say that out loud ?
All that's really changed since Petraeus left Afghanistan is the matter of "Strategic Communications."
Under his leadership, the US spent about $200 million a year to plant false stories of success in the American press, propagandizing the voters and Congress. That seems to have stopped.
#4. Libya.
The moment is auspicious. This could be the opening where Obama finally earns his Nobel Prize.
I guess your term "strategically significant" could mean different thinks to different people.
The most strategically significant aspect of the attacks on 9/11 was the indirect threat of shutting down US commercial air travel, as a result of litigation against the airlines.
I feel great sorrow at the horrific loss of lives on that day of infamy, but I don't think their loss, or the loss of some buildings, or even the interruption of train and subway service was strategically significant.
I expected the aftermath to include severe interruption of the financial services sector, but they picked up and moved forward pretty quickly.
If you accept this argument, then al-Qaeda has never had any capacity to inflict strategically significant damage on the US. Obviously, acquisition of nuclear weapons changes everything, but I don't think they ever came close to that, though they gamely tried.
So, in your calculus, we never should have gone after ai-Qaeda militarily.
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I'm afraid I couldn't follow the part about al-Qaeda having the resources of a sovereign state at its disposal.
R U referring to Afghanistan ?
If so, I think you're wrong.
The primary attribute that distinguishes a sovereign state is the ability to protect itself from outside forces. Under Taliban, Afghanistan had no such military capability.
IIRC, Mullah Omar offered to turn OBL over to Afghan authorities for trial if the US would present a sound case against him.
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But I do appreciate your hallucination about Panetta setting up conditions so that Obama can declare the "War on Bogeymen" over. It is seductive. I think I will adopt it my own darn self.
Better than that realism POV that leads to depression, in which no member of the Mil-Industrial Complex would ever allow any excuse or option for ending (or even cutting back) the "national defense" gravy train.
Thanks, Ken, for the clarity.
I don't think it's very conservative to start unprovoked wars, either.
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That's right, Joe.
You recognize that this is mostly a recent phenom.
Maybe you've started reading foreign websites ?
Even English translations of foreign websites will give a broader view than just looking at US sites.
You may also recognize that the level of Arab/ Muslim antipathy toward the US went up very little when we invaded Afghanistan, because the reasons were clear, if not completely correct.
But this antipathy shot way up when the US invaded the most advanced Arab country, Iraq, for no apparent reason other than to steal their natural resources. Whether you agree with this or not, that is what their newspapers reported.
Arab language papers and websites are probably a better reflection of Arab thinking than any analysis you might read from SITES, JDL, or any Murdoch news outlet.
The WSJ used to run a feature periodically that explained why Gitmo was not a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. It presented statistical analysis of Jihadist websites and publications, counting how many times a number of different aggravations/ grievances were mentioned.
I doubt that feature will ever run again.
Why ?
On the demise of OBL, his replacement Ayman al-Zawahiri specifically mentioned Gitmo Detainees, characterizing them as martyrs for Islam.
It is his #2 grievance.
You can doubt that all you want. Reasonable people can disagree. But I've presented my evidence. Where's yours ?
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The Palestinian issue is clearly the #1 (number One) reason for radical Islamist violent jihad.
Number 2 is the treatment of Muslim men while detained by the US. Abu Ghrayb, Guantanamo, Bagram, Black Sites, rendition to allies who torture for us.
Obama is powerless to do anything about Number 1.
He lacks the will to do anything more about Number 2. He actually has done a little about reducing torture, but he continues to detain 90 or so men at Gitmo that his Administration has declared "innocent" (technically, "Cleared for Release.")
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The al-Jazeerah host said that what happened to Prez Saleh was an accident.
If the CIA Contractor who aimed and launched the Hellfire missile that caused those wounds intended to kill him, what about that qualifies as an accident ?
Was it an accident that he wasn't burned to death ? Is that what she was referring to ?
Truthfully, I don't know how he was injured.
It has been suggested that a rival militia fired either a mortar (possible) or a howitzer (not very likely) at him. An artillery round would not only have killed Saleh, but it would have leveled the Mosque he was in at the time.
But isn't there some Islamic injunction or sanction against attacking someone who takes shelter in a Mosque ? That could suggest that it wasn't a Muslim who attacked him while he was praying.
CORRECTION: CNN reports that 30,000 troops will be withdrawn over 18 months, not 12 months.
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Some context on the pace of withdrawal.
There are about 104,000 US armed forces personnel in Afghanistan today, 22 June 2011.
There were about 35,000 there when President Obama took office in January, 2009, working with another ~65,000 troops from NATO and other allies.
Fulfilling promises he made during the campaign, he sent about 35,000 more in the first several months of his Administration.
In December, 2009, he held consultations with the military generals on what troop levels were appropriate. Neither he nor his Administration nor the military ever asked what the Mission, Vision or Values were that were driving the war effort. The President never consulted anyone about the big picture of what we were trying to accomplish. His top advisors on this matter were all generals, former generals and/or war mongers.
Accordingly, troop levels were decided on the basis of what it would take to achieve military “victory,” rather than how to advance US national interests.
These advisors lied and told him that another 40,000 troops would turn the tide. In truth, to succeed in subjugating the Pashtoon population, about 2,000,000 troops were and are still needed, if that’s the objective. We don’t have 2 million troops.
He decided to authorize another 30,000. The Pentagon figured that another 10% for “support troops” was implicit, and sent another 34,000.
While on any given day there are about 104,000 US armed forces personnel in Afghanistan, including military personnel and Naval and Air Force personnel,
There are actually over 112,000 personnel assigned there, or assigned to units deployed there.
In any given week, there are about 2,000 personnel headed out of the country for their mid-tour leave, about 2,000 headed back from mid-tour leave, and about 4,000 back in “the World,” on mid-tour leave.
There is also some number who are medically evacuated out, who are TDY for training, or who are otherwise not in the country, despite being assigned there.
Also, the normal 12-month rotation of units in and out of Afghanistan means that, on average, more than 8,000 personnel are deployed into the country each month, and a similar number are redeployed back to their home stations in the US, Germany, Korea or elsewhere.
In this context, the notion that reducing staffing levels by 5,000 in the month of July is a significant reduction loses some of its shininess.
The President could reduce troop levels by 8,000, simply by slipping the schedule for the deployment of the next Brigade, and the corresponding support personnel, by one month, and pushing back all subsequent deployments by the same amount of time. Likewise, a reduction of 10,000 before 1 January 2012 will be accomplished by sending a Brigade home one month early just before Christmas, and delaying their replacement until after New Year’s Day.
These are cosmetic actions intended to create an appearance of reducing troop levels, without actually reducing them by very much.
The same kind of shell games can be done by extending mid-tour leave from 3 weeks to 4.
I have some experience as a staff officer in the Army, and on an Air Force MAJCOM staff as a civilian. With my modest abilities, if the President gave me the word, and I had the position and authority, I could have all 34,000 “Surge” troops out by the end of September, if I started in July. Any general officer who says it isn’t possible is sandbagging.
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But the real reason these are empty promises is the fact that, over the last 60 days, the Army and Special Operations Commands have advertised for about 30 new contracts for the services of Mercenaries. These are new contracts, not replacing existing contracts. These new contracts call for over 500 armed personnel per contract, on average.
See for example https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=87b840fca5ca77b02bbf730d0d22ebb7&tab=core&_cview=1
Nit pickers will argue that, since the armed personnel are to be “Afghan,” that they do not meet the definition of “Mercenary.” But they will be commanded by Americans, Brits and South Africans.
More importantly, these contracts will use the old tactic of the British Raj to exploit ethnic rivalries, as they employed Gurkhas from Nepal to subjugate Punjabis. In Pashtun territory, the “Afghans” will be from the ethnicities making up the “Northern Alliance” side of the Afghan civil war, and vice versa.
Apparently, for every US person withdrawn, the military is replacing them with 3 Mercenaries.
Who comes up with this stuff ? Do they not know anything of human nature, or of Afghan history or culture ?
Who is advocating for US interests within the Obama White House ?
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Dr. Cole,
it's only fair to let your readers know that,
if they posted comments or sent you email,
they too were investigated and the CIA will maintain open files on them until they die.
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The State Department isn't any more serious about opening up closed societies than Soros and his hobby OSI.
Right after Operation Desert Fox, December, 1998, State & CIA both rejected the idea of sneaking a clandestine Internet capability similar to the "Internet in a Suitcase" into Iraq. Of course, the technology was less sophisticated. At a cost of over $200 million, a contractor offered to smuggle in 5,000 mesh-tethered terminals, human-powered generators and a small number of expendable ground stations (which would have to be replaced as they were discovered and destroyed by Saddam's Mukhabarat.)
Again in early 2002, the contractor offered to implement an updated version, with 10,000 thin client terminals, assuming that better HumInt capability within Iraq would be in our interests. Note that, at the time, the CIA and the entire US Intel Community had ZERO spies in Iraq. We bought our Iraq HumInt from "allies" who were playing us.
DIA rejected it because it wasn't off-the shelf.
CIA rejected it because it was "not invented here."
A guy at the Iraq Desk at State (Callahan) said that there was no way to sneak anything past the Mukhabarat; they were invincible.
TSWG never replied directly, but indicated that they were more interested in things that went "boom."
And Jon Peiser at OSI said that they had already pretty much succeeded in opening up Iraqi society, because they spent $20,000 a year to beam Arabic language radio in the general direction of Iraq from Prague (no kidding!)
Maybe the current State Dept really does want to support dissident freedom of speech. But that would be a change from historical policy.
That's more of a CIA thing, and that agency has repudiated this technology.
why not mention that Sammy Ofer died last week ? Isn't that why this is in the news ?
see page 4 of clippingnews for 5 June at http://www.maasmondmaritime.com
Thnx, Dr. Cole, for telling me about this. I would have missed it.
I remember following Mr. Ellsberg's tribulations when I was in high school. I thought Sam Ervin and Hillary Rodham had seen to it that this would never happen again.
Wrong.
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brilliant post.
One correction:
Congressmen don't need to be tricked or psyop'ed into being deluded. They go to Nawa and Marjah because they want to believe the unbelievable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-will-be-major-factor-in-troop-reduction-talks/2011/05/27/AGR8z2EH_story.html
Rajiv Chandrasekaran sez in the WaPo today that
"Last year, the United States spent nearly $1.3 billion on military and civilian reconstruction operations in one district of Helmand province — home to 80,000 people who live mostly in mud-brick compounds"
An article yesterday noted that more than half of all Congressional visits to Afghanistan include a trip to this Potemkin Village for photo op.
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"If Afghan police and soldiers could project authority and force in local areas, air strikes would be unnecessary. And after nearly 10 years since the overthrow of the Taliban, it is legitimate to ask when and how exactly local troops can be expected to take up this slack?"
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Dr. Cole,
the answer to your question is embedded in its erroneous phrasing, using the word "local" incorrectly.
Consider who the "Afghan police and soldiers" really are.
In your hometown, the policeman on patrol lives in your neighborhood. She or he can be fired by a Mayor that you helped to elect.
But let's look at General Petraeus' showcase example in Helmand Province of how "Counterinsurgency" has stabilized and secured the town of Nawa.
http://www.stripes.com/news/despite-lingering-reliance-on-u-s-aid-afghanistan-s-nawa-district-a-model-of-transition-1.144926
The key to stability in Nawa is to bring in Turkmen to police a Pashtoon town. The US official says that police can do a better job when they cannot speak the local language.
The American strategy in Pashtoon regions is reminiscent of how the British Raj used Nepalese Gurkhas to repress Punjabis.
There are no "Local" troops or policemen. We are trying to replace our military occupation of Pashtoon areas with Hazara or Tadjik or Turkmen occupation of those areas; that's our exit strategy.
Shame on US.
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Torture IS despicable.
In the act of torturing, the torturer denies the humanity of his victim, and thereby elevates the victim.
As torturers take pleasure in the pain of their victims, and in their ability to inflict that pain,
they redeem and justify their victims.
Jesus was tortured. Accordingly, a Christian cannot torture. For a Christian to torture another human being would be to repudiate the salvation wrought through the Paschal Sacrifice.
Oh. Torture is unAmerican.
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when I was a soldier, the US Army was able to train illiterate Vietnamese to paint targets with laser designators, in about an hour.
Maybe there is another reason that the 10th Special Forces is there ?
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For anyone scratching their heads over what appear to be fairly light casualties,
victory in combat is only rarely correlated with massive casualties. See, for example, the etymology of "decimate."
Historically, the highest numbers of casualties are inflicted after the cessation of hostilities, when prisoners are massacred.
What turns the tide in battle, most often, is the perception by the grunts on one side that they are taking large losses. Wounding 1 soldier can take 4 more out of the fight. Veiled by the fog of war, they can't really know what's happening to their left or to their right. If they turn and run, based on those perceptions, the adversary can exploit that and roll up the flanks left unguarded.
I presume actual numbers are much higher, but if not, this is a reflection of the low level of commitment of the loyalists and Mercenaries.
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For context,
I've read that most of the 400,000 refugees gathered in Bosasso, Puntland, are hoping to cross the seas to the land of plenty that we call "Yemen." I've also read that 10 - 20,000 attempt the trip each year, most drowning before reaching shore.
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Dr. Cole,
the new country of (North) Sudan may have a claim on the title of "poorest Arab country."
Golly, I've read where Somalis have claimed that title.
I guess it all depends on who is allowed to claim to be Arab.
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Student,
you know better than I the ancient historical ties that Persian and Iranian merchants had to Bahrain and every other port of significance, from Ceylon to Zanzibar.
How many ports in that part of the world have the Persian name "Bandar ?"
Iran sees themselves as the final bulwark against Western hegemony and decadence. They see an invisible American hand behind every calamity.
If the US was smarter at International Relations, we would consult with them at least as much as we do with Israel.
But we are still mad that they didn't accept the regime change we gave them in 1953. How long is the USA going to keep fighting that battle, and hurting ourselves in the process ?
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is the food that the author mentions being distributed by al-Shabaab the same food aid that is provided by USAID ?
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very helpful post, giving an alternative perspective. I would like to know the author's take on the apparent falling out between President Farole of Puntland and the CIA.
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Yes, let's "shrink" the population.
Can we start with the homeless who live under bridges, especially Vets, then maybe expand to the elderly in nursing homes, and then let's "shrink" all the gangbangers ?
I've never like Texans.
We could maybe start a couple of wars to "shrink" the military population. Mandate smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to increase deaths from traffic accidents. Cut taxes on chewing tobacco and legalize heroin. Promote "hooking up" through social media and TV.
Leverage "Second Amendment solutions."
Give tax breaks to producers of high fructose corn syrup and biodiesel.
See where I'm going with this ? Me neither. But I cannot comprehend the worship of death. It will come soon enough; have patience.
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In pursuit of economies of scale, the design of nuclear plants outgrew the ability of communities to protect themselves.
There are nuke plant designs that ARE safe. They tend to be far smaller than the 300 - 1500 MWe plants built over the last 4 decades, more in the range of 15-25 MWe (50-70 MWt.) They are more robust, less vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis or sabotage.
Based on my incomplete understanding of the American political process, I offer that nuke power is here to stay. The most that you and I can do is to affect changes around the edges. Maybe we should try to affect the designs of plants that are GOING TO BE BUILT, rather than fight for a complete prohibition.
Before the price of electricity is raised to include those costs that have so far been externalized, there will be great pain for the mass of humanity that pays rates. Such widespread pain is bad for reelection prospects. Our system has evolved to avoid pain, if not inconvenient truths.
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I suggest changing to:
"... and so will control everything EAST of Tripoli."
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Travis, I believe that I saw video of three different types of engagements in Tripoli, Ras Lanuf and in Zawiyah. But I really don’t know what’s going on.
TRIPOLI: CS, tear gas, is a non-lethal agent used to disperse crowds. Fatalities are rare and usually accidental. The crowd was throwing rocks, and appeared unarmed. Government forces were in a crowd control formation coming down the middle of the street. They had weapons, but weren't firing. The unit exhibited what I call discipline, acting like they were under the control of a sergeant or officer.
RAS LANUF: Rebels were all armed. One guy with huge rounds (maybe .50 cal or larger) in bandoleers criss-crossing his chest was carrying a weapon that cannot fire such rounds. A fellow kicked a small caliber (maybe 75 mm) towed howitzer and something exploded. I couldn't tell if that was how he fired it, or if the breech exploded. Definitely not aimed fire, nor was it being adjusted on the other end. Government aircraft passed over for reconnaissance, never firing. Occasional ambulances evacuating wounded. The Rebels didn't look to me like they thought that they were in danger or on their way to battle, firing off celebratory rounds. Maybe they were coming back from the front.
I felt like I could take the 200 or so rebels I saw in the video with one disciplined squad (about 10 men.) Overall, I thought they were just celebrating that they had guns, which can give a sense of empowerment.
Then again, the video report was hundreds or thousands of meters from where the fighting was. I saw one burned out bus. Who knows what I didn't see.
ZAWIYAH: The crowd was responding like the crowd at Kent State in 1970. Some victims on the ground. Folks startled that they might actually get hurt. No context.
But if a sniper was killing folks one by one, I would expect the crowd to disperse, which they hadn't.
All in all, I don't know what's going on. I trained for crowd control while in the National Guard, not while on Active Duty (Posse Comitatus,) after Kent State. I got training on how to use rubber bullets for non-lethal effects. I doubt that the Libyan military cares much about preventing injuries, but the injuries looked light to me. If an unarmed crowd was facing down a Mercenary force and the Mercs started shooting to kill, I would not expect to see any crowd. Maybe this was immediately after the first salvo ?
GENERAL IMPRESSION: What I’ve seen is just a glimpse. No “big picture” view yet. But this is not the second coming of Attila the Hun.
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As a former infantry officer, I must say that the "action" in the video looks a lot more like Civil Disturbance/ Crowd Control (non-lethal) than combat.
Either Colonel Qaddafi does not want to kill the protesters, or his lieutenants don't.
I don't think he believes that his hold on power is seriously threatened.
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King and Gandhi yet live.
Wait. Be patient.
"How long? Not long."
"Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
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JT, to my biased view,
that dam failure did have at least one good thing come of it, eventually. Whether motivated by shame, or megalomania, or something else, the party most responsible subsequently established numerous free public libraries across the country.
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That leaves the Colonel in control of only a slice of the oil & gas industry.
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/wp-content/gallery/libya/libya_oil_gas_fields_weo_2005.jpg
Not shown: the Greenstream Natural Gas pipeline to Sicily, that comes ashore 40 miles West of Tripoli.
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If there really is bombing going on, bombing of civilians, then the US Air Force will have evidence of that, and President Obama will be briefed on that.
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Lina,
I did not hear or read this myself; it is second-hand hearsay.
The call was for "No fly zones."
If you didn't hear that, and you listened to all of the officials who defected, then perhaps my source, a friend ob another blog, was wrong.
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Bill,
I'm projecting. I assume that America's "aspirational values" concerning self-determination, liberty, etc. are the core values that guide our foreign policy. Maybe I'm wrong ?
In any event, I just saw a post - uncorroborated, so far - that the Libyan former Ministers and Ambassadors who have abandoned Colonel Qaddafi have appealed to Obama to announce and immediately enforce a "no-fly zone." Not waiting for the UN to act. This proposal is not that different, in effect, from what I proposed this afternoon.
I sure hope the trolls from the NSC are checking this site out.
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Well, yes and no.
The US Air Force has the technology to monitor the Libyan Air Force 24/7/365. They have the ability to shoot down Libyan aircraft from 40 miles away.
AWACS could very well have identified specific aircraft that engaged in attacks on civilians, and shot down only those aircraft. After about a dozen airframes crashed in Tripoli, the rest of the Libyan Air Force would have figured out what was going on, and all such attacks would have stopped.
This is actually pretty close to what happened in the Gulf of Sidra in 1986.
No war would ensue.
And I don't really know if I'm insane.
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The US Navy airbase in Sigonella, Sicily, Italy is about 250 miles from Tripoli.
US Naval aviators eat Libyan pilots for lunch.
Why hasn't the Libyan Air Force been -grounded- knocked out of the sky ? It's almost 4 hours since the US President knew what was going on.
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The US Navy has a large investment in its Manama-based 5th Fleet. Folks will inevitably read hidden meaning into that.
I hope, for the time being, that the Commander has ordered all ships out to sea, so that we are not seen as propping up an unpopular dictator.
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The video is vaguely reminiscent of events in al Kut the first week of April, 2004, when locals expressed their displeasure with the RTI approach to distributing food rations.
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Euronews the source for this video ?
They need to hire a geographer.
22 seconds in, a map places al Kut near Basra, rather than in Wasit Governate, which borders Diyala Governate.
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You, sir, are too modest.
While the contours, texture and shading were a surprise, you pretty much nailed the basics.
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"The army is too blunt an instrument to be used in a crackdown."
Looking more broadly than just this circumstance, a foreign army is even less utilitarian. It is too blunt to win hearts and minds during an occupation, too blunt to implement reconstruction and nation-building, too blunt for most anything but war-fighting.
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Just in case the occasion ever arises, how would one spirit a boatload of money out of a local bank and out of the country ?
Seems to me I would try to do it electronically, but this reporting suggests that the former regime members are doing it the old fashioned way, either in cash or bullion.
Far better to do what the Karzai cartel has done: sock it away a little at a time, taking monthly trips to Genf or Dubai, loaded down with bricks and cases of diamonds.
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In the first video, what were those cards that the marchers were holding up ? Identity cards ? Cards showing that they were policemen ?
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In making the point that Guantánamo is NOT the #1 recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, William Kristol's Weekly Standard explains
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/gitmo-not-al-qaedas-number-one-recruitment-tool_524997.html
that the reason that al-Qaeda even exists is because of some tie-in with
"Israel/Israeli/Israelis (98 mentions), Jew/Jews (129), Zionist(s) (94), Palestine/Palestinian (200), Gaza (131), and Crusader(s) (322)."
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Shootist,
not sure how you think big changes occur.
It wasn't righteous indignation of the citizens of the British Empire that got them to end their Afghan campaigns, nor was it the protests of the Soviet subjects that led to the withdrawal in 1989.
In both cases, the folks pulling the levers took advantage of opportunities to save face, while preserving their grasp on those levers of power.
If our military pulls out of Afghanistan in my lifetime (I'm nearly 60,) it will be because either the President or a groundswell in Congress sees a way to pull out while saving face and staying in office.
Young folks today don't care about the war, and older folks don't, either. Whether they recognize the immorality of the whole affair or not, they are convinced that they are powerless to change anything. Remember, they voted for Hope and Change 2 years ago, and look what that got them.
There will be NO REPEAT of the protests over the Vietnam war.
It's up to me and several others at this site to chart a course to withdrawal. Help if you like.
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Wanna hear a joke ? This is from an official document issued by ISAF last month:
“In FY2006, USAID/Afghanistan established the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) program to promote and establish linkages between provincial governments and local communities in priority districts determined by USAID Field Program Officers, their local Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and GIRoA counterparts. This ‘bottoms up’ program sought to address causes of instability at the community level in selected districts and assist the local citizenry, along with provincial and district level governments, to develop the institutions, processes and projects to create a stable environment for long-term political, economic and social development.
“Despite successes at the community level with the LGCD project, violence continues and it is believed that a lack of donor and GIRoA attention at the district level is still problematic. This lack of district level focus threatens to erode the legitimacy of provincial governments being able to expand their authority and deliver basic services throughout their provinces. A credibility gap exists throughout [Afghanistan] that prevents community level confidence in district level governments. It is believed that this thereby fuels the insurgency and creates instability. This broken ‘mid-link’ between GIRoA at the provincial level and local communities undermines the ability of provincial governance to expand their authority and legitimacy with the populace. Recognizing this, efforts to promote District level formal authorities (such as District Governors and their staffs) along with their informal District Councils, Shuras and District Development Assemblies is a priority for both the United States and GIRoA.”
Me, I think of something else when I hear “bottoms up.” Wonder how that got in there. Methinks the ISAF staff drinks too much.
But here’s the cruel, unfunny joke:
ISAF is saying that it is a bottom-up approach when we try to put more horsepower behind the efforts of the central government to control people and events at the District level.
In my dictionary, that is at the entry for “stovepiped top-down control.”
Where are all the experts in Governance, and why aren’t they being heard ?
This is the key reason our efforts are failing, and must fail. With this mindset, success is not an option.
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I have one major area of disagreement with President Karzai’s overall approach. He wants to have all armed forces under his control. He sees himself as the (Bourbon) King of the Afghans, so that makes sense to him. I do not believe that the French model of a central government is a good fit for Afghanistan.
In direct opposition to everyone in the Obama Administration responsible for losing this war, including the Generals and the diplomats and the politicians who are losing this war, I believe in the values and principles in the US Declaration of Independence.
I particularly believe that the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed. In opposition to that, the military, the White House and the State Department seem to believe that legitimacy can also come from being selected at the 2002 Bonn Conference, a variation of the “Divine Right of Kings.”
When I start from a foundation of core American values, no matter how many times I try, I keep coming back to wanting to create stability from the bottom up. In my myopic view, if you start with recognizing the dignity and franchise of individual Afghans, then the ONLY righteous cause that American soldiers should be asked to die for, if the mission is nation-building, is to build up representative governance, and local security forces, at the local/ village level. Then the various authentic indigenous local leaders will work out governance (and everything else) at the District and Provincial levels. In due time, a legit national government will emerge.
But what are we really sacrificing our soldiers, and thousands of Afghan civilians, for ? We are fighting to impose the monarchy in Kabul (that we hand-selected) on the Provinces and the Districts.
Note that the King, under the current “Constitution,” appoints a crony to rule (not govern) every one of the 398 Districts. With the Presidential and parliamentary elections a farce, the Afghan people have NO SAY in who rules them. There is no level where the people get to choose who governs them; they only get to vote for “representative councils” that “advise” their local Karzai appointees, who the “Constitution” says can ignore their advice.
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If wishes were horses,
then I would have the US and NATO and Coalition military forces cease all offensive operations in Afghanistan, post haste, taking no more than about 45 days to wrap that up. Based on my anecdotal experience in the Army, it can take about that long for a new directive to percolate down in the slowest, poorest-led units.
For the next 2 years, I'd keep Quick Reaction Forces, plus precision fires/ air power, on call. I'd have about a Brigade at each Regional Command Center/ Regional Platform. They would have 2 missions, besides self-protection:
***__ 1. Providing backup to Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF;) and
***__ 2. Providing backup to specified NGO's conducting aid, development and reconstruction activities.
This backup force would also have a free hand to help any Coalition force that needed it in order to disengage from enemy contact, though that really shouldn’t happen if units follow the rules.
BUT--
In order to commit to kinetic combat operations, Coalition forces could only go outside the wire of their compounds with escorts from the ANSF, and with the permission of the Ministry of Defense, which is the opposite of the situation today, where ANSF are in effect commanded by the US/NATO Commanders.
To anyone who objects that the ANSF are not ready yet, I concede that is true. But they will never be ready, not even in 100 years. This is partially because you cannot have a “national” anything without a nation.
Also, I would embrace the Karzai decision to get rid of all foreign mercenaries and private military companies in the country, even Afghan ones. If DAI or Chemonics, for example, refuses to go downrange without their mad killers for PSD escort, cancel their contracts. Indigenous NGO’s would just LOVE to get in on that action. Plus, in addition to being cheaper, a lot cheaper, they would be more effective.
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OOps.
If I read the legend correctly, the orange color means rainfall of more than 0.5 meters per year.
That is the color covering the area of the Empty Quarter on the map.
But according to Jimmy Wales' website, it is hyper-arid, one of the driest places on Earth.
This is not Dr. Cole's error: the exact same error can be found at the NCAR webpage he linked to.
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That's sure counter to my intuition. Rub' al-Khali the wettest part of the country ?
Thanks for sharing, and upsetting my assumptions.
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Some folks don't belong to organized religions,
but who doesn't hold any "religious beliefs ?"
"Religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of life and the universe, ...
or human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
You've got yours and I've got mine. Our beliefs diverge on the proper place of homosexuality in society.
Your religious beliefs are right, and mine are wrong, because ... ?
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Maybe we should go ahead with the gift of the most advanced military aircraft in the world. Just encourage the secular state of Israel to expand their abuse of their own citizens, and encourage them to attack Iran. But stay out of it directly ourselves.
Within 2 years of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, this whole mess will sort itself out. And when it does, it will stop that huge drain on the US Treasury.
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while it is sorry that the American public cannot work up a sweat over a colonial invasion, and the American boys killed in it,
I am more deeply troubled that one American boy has been held as a POW by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani gang, held for more than 18 months,
and almost nobody knows or cares.
on 11 November, I tried to walk to the POW memorial service in Arlington National Cemetery with his name on a 2' X 3' sign. Park Police in SUV's and cruisers chased me down, lights flashing, and ran me off.
In front of the Lincoln Memorial that day, half a dozen POW-awareness groups had set up camp. They were agitated that we left boys in Vietnam, but none of THEM even knew who Bowe Bergdahl is.
I walked up and down the National Mall with my sign on Veterans' Day, past the White House, telling everyone I met about his situation. Out of more than 700 people I talked to, fewer than 10 knew about him. A couple of preachers from the Philippines knew more about him than most US active duty military folks I encountered. Looks like Juan is right about the complicity of the domestic media.
I was a GI when I was his age. I got the treatment: refused service in a restaurant in my hometown because I was in uniform, e.g. My fellow soldiers got the same, and worse.
Now it's hard to find anyone who will admit to treating soldiers that way back then, during the Vietnam war. Everyone claims to "support the troops."
And I cannot stop thinking how lonely SPC Bergdahl must feel. His entire Chain of Command, up to the Commander in Chief, has abandoned him.
The Army is supposed to have this Code of Honor thing, that says we won't ever leave a fallen comrade behind. Guess we gotta update that to reflect the new realities.
Didn't Geo. Washington say that the way to judge a society was to look at how it treated it's vets ?
Whether you're religious or not, I ask everyone who reads this to offer a prayer for Bowe.
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I believe it was produced by the CIA several years ago.
The CIA is more careful about accuracy in the maps it produces for internal use only. Those that are made for public release sometimes have hidden agendas embedded in the (human) geographic representations.
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Speaking of daily provocations, Dr. Cole,
does Arabic satellite TV also provide regular reports on the detention of innocent men at Guantanamo ? The US Government formally declared about half of the remaining detainees to be "cleared for release" more than a year ago.
I've been told that it does, but I don't watch Arabic TV.
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As with many things, T-Partiers come in many varieties. For some, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Pete King might serve as archetypes. For me and my fellow travelers, we prefer to hold up Ron Paul or Alan Keyes as bearers of our standard.
As a Constitutionalist/ T-Partier, I am outraged at the US Government engaging in torture. I am bewildered by my neighbors who rationalize its use.
I'm also not so keen on the special tribunals set up to skirt the bedrock; bills of attainder; bills restricting the construction of houses of worship; or the employment of Mercenaries to
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We are going to make them like us, and appreciate what we are doing for them, even if it kills
usthem..
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"It does not say they could not withdraw more quickly than that."
Pulling our troops out before the last possible moment allowed in the "Security Agreement" would require political courage from a President not afraid to stand up to Army Generals. Since the next Presidential election is 2 years away, what makes you think President Obama might be replaced before then ?
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"There are frequent large training exercises on US soil that involve many foreign troops. "
I don't think that statement is correct.
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I wish the video of the Kabul protest showed a handful of American faces in the crowd, marching and protesting right alongside the Afghanis against the desecration of the Koran.
Then the other marchers would not be shouting "Death to America," but "death to that small group that is defiling the holy book."
Would it be unsafe for an American to participate in such a protest ? Doesn't Pakhtunwhali demand that Afghanis be hospitable toward, and even protective of, a foreigner who puts his safety in their hands ?
Or am I naive beyond belief ?
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Professor,
you are and American icon, and this site is an Institution.
God bless you.
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where I live, ordinary folks get permits and carry concealed firearms in their purses and in holsters under their jackets. Don't read too much into a guy carrying a knife.
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I am surprised to see someone on this site naming themselves "Eee Gay Farben." Do other people think that's funny ?
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Iraqi Parties reject US Power Sharing Proposal
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Let me throw out some harebrained assumptions for the community to refute:
Wasn't the dominant meme of the March election, carried by most parties, to throw the US occupation forces out ? Isn't that what most Iraqi voters voted for ? Isn't that what al-Maliki promised ?
Hasn't the young Sayyid al-Sadr said that the Iraqis cannot govern themselves as a sovereign nation until the last foreign soldier is expelled ?
Hasn't he tacitly encouraged this stalemate as a way to pressure elected officials to ask the US military to please hurry up and leave ahead of the December 2011 deadline ?
Isn't the US free, under the "Security Agreement," to leave before the deadline ? Can't we legally pull out before this Christmas, rather than waiting another year ?
Couldn't al-Sadr break this stalemate by releasing his loyalists to form a coalition ?
Couldn't Chris Hill break the impasse by telling the Iraqis that they can choose their own government ?
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I am reluctant to correct the teacher.
But the notion that 1/3 of the territory of Pakistan is under water strains credulity.
I was hoping an earlier comment would make the appropriate correction.
Riverbeds in Pakistan are wide and shallow, as a rule. When the volume carried increases a little, the width of the river increases more. When the river has to carry flood-level volumes, the Indus, for example, can be more than 5 miles across, in places. So the amount of land inundated by swollen, widened streams and rivers is maybe 100 times or more what is normally covered by visible surface water.
But the map is a little misleading. If there is any flooding in a district, the entire district is shown as flooded. The map shows that districts amounting to 1/3 of the area of Pakistan are at least partially inundated. For 1/3 to really be under water, the entirety of all of these districts would have to be under water, and that's just not the case.
When the actual scope of the crisis is almost beyond comprehension, there is no need to exaggerate. Unfortunately, transparent hyperbole can actually undercut appeals for sympathy and support.
Please retract the statement about 1/3 of the country being submerged.
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Civilian Surge in Doubt
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JT, as a simple man I think in simple terms.
Afghanistan will never be worth the effort needed to do Occupation right, and actually woo hearts and minds, because there is so little possible Return on Investment. Unless we are willing to stay 100 years, and spend whatever it takes, we need a more sustainable approach.
Even if we spent money on Afghanistan at the level we give money to Israel, for example, which I've heard approaches $7,000 per capita per year, when you add it all up, I still doubt that we could persuade them to like us and adopt our values.
Smarter analysts than me have concluded that there is a possibility of coalescing a functional government in Kabul, given enough time and money. Me, I'm skeptical.
But we all know that we can incubate a small number of self-governing, self-protecting small communities that can not only provide for their own security and stability, but can also do a much better job of economic development at a local scale than foreign Expats.
The authentic indigenous local leaders ought to be empowered to protect and develop their own small communities.
There's got to be a way to deliver basic health care with locals as the face of the health delivery system. I'm thinking about a system where the foreigners back in Kabul, or Brussels, coach local Midwives and Nurses over the Internet, in the local language.
Locals should get to decide whether to fix a road or build a school.
Locals should decide who gets micro-loans.
There's going to be graft and skimming, no matter who is handling the money. Wouldn't it be better if folks in the small villages were getting the graft, rather than the big wheels in the national "government ?
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If our vision of what we can accomplish is too expansive, pie in the sky, and we burn through all that money trying to develop a national governance structure that won't ever work, that poor dirt farmer 25 miles from the nearest road won't have any reason to be grateful to us.
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Jason Motlagh wrote in the TIME article you linked to:
"Once allowed to operate with a degree of immunity, aid workers now face a dramatically increased threat of kidnapping and assassination."
Taliban and ordinary locals used to regard unarmed Westerners in civilian clothing and civilian vehicles as benign, or even as a benefit to their communities.
For 9 years, the US Army, the brutal and hated occupation force, has employed "civilians" or civilian-looking personnel as an adjunct to kinetic military operations. Genuine civilian aid efforts were compromised by Louis Berger, RTI, DAI, Chemonics, abt and the rest of the USAID 'development-industrial complex' camouflaging themselves in the guise of civilian aid in order to covertly serve as a force multiplier for the warfighter. Whether mapping human terrain or appointing local government officials, these "civilians" in the service of the military mission were bound to be found out. And now they've spoiled it for the authentic civilians, security-wise.
I disagree with the Obama implication that sending in unlawful combatants and calling them civilians somehow changes that character of the unwanted Occupation. Taking folks out of ACU's and putting a bush jacket and boonie hat on them doesn't make them "civilian."
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I have a strong bias in this matter, and sometimes you have to simply ignore me. Perhaps this is one of those times.
I think the Reuters report misstates what President Karzai probably said about quasi-military armed forces, because I think he is worried about two separate problems that the wire service conflated into one.
First, there is the problem with Western Private Military Companies, who employ Western Expatriates to supervise Third World Mercenaries. He isn't so concerned about sexual hazing. Karzai is concerned about para-military organizations whose SOP for convoy ops includes "anticipatory enfilading fire," sometimes imitating Sherman's march to the Sea. The Westerners in this category are down to about 15,000, I think, including PSD's and Diplomatic Security. The Fijians, Gurkhas and Salvadorans, among others, are down to less than 20,000 by now, I should think.
But "President" Karzai is also deeply concerned about the number of Afghanis that the US Army has under arms as ASG's. That number was around 30,000 to 40,000 some months back, but the Army is adding 5 - 10,000 every single month. Almost all of the Commanders of US FOB's and COP's in Afghanistan now have their own little private army, manned by locals, for perimeter security and other combat-related missions. Their numbers are available from public sources, but the aggregate numbers may be classified, so I won't estimate. But figure enough people to man all guard towers on all US posts, camps and stations. These forces are also equipped, trained and commanded by cadres of Western Expats. They are not accountable in any way to any Minister of the Afghan "government." They could become local militias or worse, Karzai fears. From reading the professional journals of our warriors, I get the distinct impression that our battlefield commanders are not 100% on board with leaving everything related to local security up to bureaucrats back in Kabul.
I think this arming of local Afghanis and organizing them into quasi-military forces is of more concern to Karzai than a bunch of former US soldiers acting out homoerotic taboo on tape. He would rather that all indigenous fighting forces came under a Ministry of the Kabul GoIRA. Who knows where local, autonomous control can lead.
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I admit that I don't know much about maritime warfare, whether littoral or blue water.
But I do not believe that US Navy vessels are really vulnerable to speedboat suicide bombers. There's a layered defense around any US Navy vessel in the Hormuz Straits, from AWACS down to the Aegis mini-gun.
I'm pretty sure that the only ways that the Guards of the Revolution can strike these vessels are either with missiles, which can be made hard to shoot down, or command-detonated mines on the seabed. The US Navy can detect almost any mine floating between the seabed and the surface.
Problem for the Pasdaran maritime forces is that ships can sail in and out of the Gulf and never come within 250 feet of the seabed. I don't know of any mine that can damage a ship 250 feet above, and some distance to the side.
IF they're thinking of suicide mini-subs, those can be detected from the air pretty easily.
So they are pretty much limited to attacking commercial vessels, it seems to me.
p.s.: I thought that only US Intelligence Agencies referred to them as the "IRGC." That acronym stands for "Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps," which is not that similar to their name.
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The purpose of terrorism is to achieve or advance some political goal. The method is by scaring the civilian population. Shock and Awe.
The US Government tacitly acknowledged that the opening attack of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a terrorist attack.
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Are there direct links to “Can You Pass the Israel-Palestine Quiz,” “Can You Pass the Iran Quiz,” and “Can You Pass the Hamas Quiz ?”
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I presume that all these homes and villages were built in the Indus River flood plain, which appears to be several miles wide for most of its length.
Were flood control structures like the Tarbela Dam overwhelmed ?
Is Karachi threatened ?
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I believe that the Iraqi Blocks are trying to negotiate who will be PM, and everything else waits for that.
So what's the holdup there ?
Based on March election results, the Parliament is trying to select someone who meets with the approval of Moqtada al-Sadr, since he is the most respected and popular leader in all of Iraq today.
But the US occupation force demands that al-Sadr be ostracized and ignored for his pro-Iraqi leanings. IIRC, the US Government still has a standing order to shoot him on sight.
I think the Iraqis have been biding time until the end of August, when some of them believe that the US will quit bossing them around. After all, there will be a NEW DAWN on 1 September, and the US combat units will transform magically into advisory and training units. Then, these Iraqi politicians hope, then they can appoint/ select whoever they want. We shall see.
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In mid-2003 former President Bush signed a PDM authorizing the assassination of the Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr. Has that been revoked or overturned ?
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This is an estimate/ MSU data. If someone has better numbers, have at it.
I estimate that there were about 160,000 contractor personnel in Iraq working for the US military & State Department, as of the end of June 2010. Just over half are Iraqis. About 25,000 are Westerners. Many of the rest are from poor countries.
I estimate that around one third of those contractor personnel will be gone by the end of October, no longer needed because of the departure of American units.
I estimate that there were about 65,000 contractor personnel at the end of June whose main purpose was to shoot and kill people, Iraqis mostly, if they didn't follow orders, such as to stay away from key installations or to stop at checkpoints. These contractor personnel operated roadblocks/ checkpoints, guarded key infrastructure and military bases, and patrolled built-up areas.
I am reluctant to use the vernacular "Mercenaries" because some correspondents will quibble over the definition of the word as used in the Geneva Protocol dealing with Mercenaries. Some would argue that, regardless of circumstance or conduct, if a particular quasi-military armed soldier/ unlawful combatant on the US Army payroll is an Iraqi, or an American or a Brit, then they cannot be a Merc.
In November, once the US settles into occupation largely by proxy, I assume that there will be about the same number of civilian soldiers, 65,000. There appears to be a rapid transition from third world Mercenaries to Iraqi armed guards. But as long as they work for American companies, carrying loaded rifles and occasionally shooting other Iraqis on the orders of Americans, well, the est of the Iraqi population will continue to think of them as collaborators with the US military occupation.
Note that I include some of the Sunni Sahwa militias in these numbers. If you had the impression that the US Army was paying the salaries of 80,000 to 100,000 of these militiamen, I am under a different impression. For the most part, the US quit paying those units at the end of 2008, and the Iraqi government promised to take over. I am including businesses hired to guard pipelines in Saladin Governate and those hired to maintain roads free of IED's in Diyala Governate.
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Constitutional Crisis Unfolds
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Does the US still insist that al-Sadr not have any seat at the table, and that the 40% of the population that he represents must remain without a voice in the Iraqi government ?
If so, there will not be any reconciliation or brokered alliance until the US occupation of Iraq is completely ended.
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not this Christian.
One dividing line among the various Christian sects is how the visions of the Prophet John of Patmos inform their doctrine and dogma. This John was not an Apostle and never met Jesus in the flesh, having been born after Jesus' bodily Ascension into heaven. A hermit living alone in a cave on the Greek isle of Patmos, John had a number of visions of Jesus appearing to him and telling him what the future held.
John of Patmos wrote down his recollection of these visions in the Book of Revelations, as it is now called. This is where most "Christian" teachings about end times, the Millennium, Christian Triumphalism, Armageddon, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Rapture, and more, come from. This is where most teachings about the Second Coming come from. Most of these teachings are not related to the teachings of Jesus to his Apostles.
The Jesus who walked the Earth taught that what was important in one's spiritual life was what a person chose, and what they did. The Jesus in Revelations taught that what is most important is the Divine Magic performed by God, relieving believers of any responsibility.
These quite different versions of Christianity appeal to very different sorts of Christians.
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I was surprised to see Rachel Maddow dressed so immodestly in Afghanistan. I thought she was smarter than that.
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5 NATO Troops Killed
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my very first reaction to the note that some locals had busted their neighbors out of jail
was to recount the motto of US Army Special Forces: de opresso liber.
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