With great expectations on their shoulders, the first US troops of a 17,000-strong surge are headed to Afghanistan.
But to do what?
Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has admitted that these soldiers are being sent without a clear strategy. Several missions have been proposed to turn back a Taliban resurgence. How will 17,000 more troops accomplish any one of them -- let alone all?
The beefed-up effort has been fueled by the belief that the successful surge in Iraq can be replicated in Afghanistan.
It can't.
I speak from experience: For a year, I was the operational commander for all coalition forces in Afghanistan. Later, I was the deputy director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. The conditions that favored success in Iraq are conspicuously lacking in Afghanistan.
That doesn't mean success there will be impossible -- just very difficult. It will require a custom strategy that takes account of hard, local realities.
Toronto, ON, Canada, -- It appears that the headquarters of global jihad has moved from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, where the country's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has taken over the reins.
The mastermind of jihad -- the resilient Osama bin Laden -- initially directed his "holy war" against the Americans. However, with the United States hot on his trail, it now appears that he has turned over the management of jihad to the ISI and is resigned to act only as an inspirational figure for jihadis.
The ISI's main interest is India. It is less focused on hurting the United States, Britain or other Western powers. Since 1991 it has been recruiting and sending terrorists into India. From 1991 to 2000, the ISI tried to upset the applecart in Indian Kashmir, but failed. Unwilling to concede defeat, it has turned to the rest of India for revenge.
The Mumbai carnage last November is a recent example of the type of attack carried out at the ISI's behest, although the spy agency denies it. At the ISI's prodding, Pakistan's civilian government called the operation's perpetrators "non-state actors." This was intended to absolve the ISI of any involvement.
Yet dozens of previous attacks in India, which killed innocent civilians, were carried out at the ISI's behest.
#3
Paul2, the Saudis also financed the Pakistani bomb.
Benazir Bhutto, then Prime Minister, was denied access to Kahuta because of national security concerns (she being non-military). Saudi Prince Turki had no such problem touring the nuclear facility.
The Pakistanis got the Saudis to buy a bunch of Al-Khalid tanks to equip a regiment. The Saudis have the best tanks (M1 Abrams) and have so many that they are mothballed. They do not need Pakistani made copies of Chinese copies of obsolete Russian equipment.
That regiment is manned by Pakistanis. Now the Paks aren't exactly the first choice as mercenaries. And a single regiment won't stop the Iranians. So what are the Paks doing in Saudi?
Guarding Pak "assets". Guess what those assets are that justify an armored regiment to protect them.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/16/2009 14:47 Comments ||
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#4
Seems to me that shutting down the ISI and rebooting the Pak government is pretty much the same thing.
#5
Always funny how "nation building" in Afghanistan or Iraq evokes sneers from so many, but "fixing" Pak or KSA is "just what the doctor ordered." Feh...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/16/2009 22:51 Comments ||
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The bias is even embedded in mapping conventions: Mercator projections tend to place the Western Hemisphere in the middle of the map, splitting the Indian Ocean at its far edges.
What? Not in any version of the Mercator projection I've ever seen, or am currently able to google. The Mercator usually breaks at the international date line in the west Pacific.
And Burma isn't particularly instable, as far as I can tell. They've got a pack of minor insurgencies, but so does every one of their neighbors other than China.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/16/2009 13:28 Comments ||
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#2
In general, the article seems sound in its basic theme, but distressingly shoddy in its details. The combination of not-quite right lightning-buggishness and rather grand strategical prescriptions makes me doubt the underlying logic of what Kaplan's pushing.
And what he's pushing sounds pretty much like a cats-cradle UN Navy - no navy, no United Nations. It reminds me an awful lot of the UN Navy of SF anime, with their avuncular American admirals and American equipment and multi-national, multi-ethnic casts starring improbably young Japanese leads.
In short, an improbable fiction.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/16/2009 13:59 Comments ||
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#3
North and South American maps place the Western Hemisphere in the center. European maps place Europe in the center and so on.
Posted by: ed ||
03/16/2009 19:26 Comments ||
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#1
"the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea."
The Essenes nor anyone else of that period were the "authors". The authors were prophets hundreds and thousands of years before. And when you copy things, you don't sign YOUR name to it.
#4
Thats not her argument, however right or wrong she may be. She says that these were probably part of a library from Jerusalem taken and hiden away by an exiled clan of priests. That does not reduce their authenticity or religious significance.
She does not impugn the authorship of the texts, she just claims that there was no Essene community because there are no texts in the stash that refer to the internal affairs of the Essenes - no minutes of meetings, community rules, bake-sale fliers, etc.
#5
Except that haven't the archeologists recently found the common latrines they used, just as described in scrolls containing rules of behaviour... including the remnants of the intestinal worms passed around because they left their outside? (Ick) This is about as valid as those who claim that Jesus Christ never existed because the only mention of him outside the New Testament is a statement in Josephus that was clearly inserted by the early Church Fathers.
Absence of evidence in never evidence of absence, which no doubt drives intelligence types to the edge of madness at times.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Eric T. Olson
