Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time. In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.
The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." He wrote this long before Barack Obama became President of the United States. But this administration epitomizes the "concessions and smiles" approach to countries that are our implacable enemies. Western Europe has gone down that path before us but we now seem to be trying to catch up.
Still, the release of a mass-murdering terrorist, who went home to a hero's welcome in Libya, shows that President Obama is not the only one who wants to move away from the idea of a "war on terror"-- as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us. The ostensible reason for releasing al-Megrahi was compassion for a man terminally ill. It is ironic that this was said in Scotland, for exactly 250 years ago another Scotsman-- Adam Smith-- said, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America as well, where so many people seem to have been far more concerned about whether we have been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terrorists themselves. Tragically, those with this strange inversion of values include the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. Although President Obama has said that he does not want to revisit the past, this is only the latest example of how his administration's actions are the direct opposite of his lofty words.
It is not just a question of looking backward. The decision to second-guess CIA agents who extracted information to save American lives is even worse when you look forward. Years from now, long after Barack Obama is gone, CIA agents dealing with hardened terrorists will have to worry about whether what they do to get information out of them to save American lives will make these agents themselves liable to prosecution that can destroy their careers and ruin their lives. This is not simply an injustice to those who have tried to keep this country safe, it is a danger recklessly imposed on future Americans whose safety cannot always be guaranteed by sweet and gentle measures against hardened murderers.
Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law. There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot-- and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.
So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you. That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
[G]etting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.
#1
Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time.
But the Scottish government had a plan, and a justification for releasing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi to a hero's welcome in Libya. How dare anyone "snipe from the sidelines".
So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you. That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
#3
Adam Smith also nailed it. That is, the liberal behavior, and its unintended consequences:
Marcy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
In this case, mercy for a killer, supposedly dying of cancer was a cover for oil and gas deals. It is not even liberalism, it is crass greed and corruption. The British govt leaders knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/01/2009 11:22 Comments ||
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It's that clever George Will, writing in the Washington Post.
WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
Yes, do let's keep faith with those who gave their all by making it worth nothing.
U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions.
And what part do opinion pieces claiming "Afghanistan is another Viet Nam," by writers like George Will have to do with that impatience, pray tell?
The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
The way it works with anything is that you pay with money (troop numbers, when it's a war) or you pay with time. We paid World Wars I and II with money, which people like George Will has worked to make sure is impossible. Therefore our only choice is to pay with time.
U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and "'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.'"
Afghanistan's $23 billion GDP is the size of Boise's.
According to Wikipedia, the Afghan economy grew 3.5% last year and is forecast to grow 9% in 2009. That's much better than the U.S., f'r instance.
Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?
Sisyphus wasn't able to double cereal production in the past six years. Presumably cereals are more suited to the Afghan climate than endive.
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections,
I do not understand what the Washington Post thinks they getting when they pay this man to explain his thoughts.
Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean.
A series of successful elections reinforces the idea that the government is of the people, not over the people, which eventually leads people to choose politics as the way they affect their rulers rather than terrorism or coups de main. It also reinforces the idea in those who would be the rulers that it's an awful lot more fun to win an election and have your opponent writhe in impotent defeat than just send out an assassination squad or go to war.
Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but The Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."
The Israelites following Moses around the desert yearned sometimes for the fleshpots of Egypt, too. No doubt Mr. Wills years for the days before those pesky weblogs fisked everything he wrote, and found it empty. The universe moves on, and his writing would improve immensely were he to try to keep up.
Adm. Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx.
No. It took decades to realize the old methods weren't working. The change went fairly quickly once they stopped doing it wrong.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?
A good question. The Somalia jihadis are getting a great deal of help from Pakistan. Given that a win in Afghanistan depends on bringing the Pakistani Taliban and their ISI enablers to heel, there is a real probability that the wild dogs in Somalia would subsequently calm down a bit. It turns out supporting a gang of jihadis is fairly expensive, even when they aren't successful at doing anything more than painting the architecture when their bottoms explode.
U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000.
Golly, that sounds like a surge. How long did the Iraqi surge take to work? Perhaps we should consider giving the Afghan one about the same time before labelling it a failure.
About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.
So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore,
A bit difficult in a land-locked country...
using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.
Poor Mr. Will definitely does not see genius looking back at him from the mirror.
#1
You can't grow alternative crops in places that for the most part don't even have electricity. If you were to manage to get the province to grow wheat, where would you put it and how would you get it there?
People have no idea how primative most of Afghanistan is. There are no "gas stations", no rural electrification, no hard surface roads. It is like the US at the turn of the 20th century except with satellite phones and radios. Most energy production in Afghanistan comes from wood burning. More energy is produced from wood than from coal, oil, and gas combined. I don't believe there is even an oil refinery in Afghanistan.
We are going to have to "clear and hold" for a couple of generations. Our country developed pretty quickly between 1900 and 1950 ... but it took 50 years to do it. First you need to teach the population to read. That is going to take several years just doing that.
#2
According to Wikipedia, Afghanistan used to supply natural gas to the Soviet Union, and the wells are still there, capped when the Soviets left. And cereal production, as I just noted in the in-lines above (not written when crosspatch posted -- sorry about that) has just about double since we got there. And while the unemployment number bandied about is a horrid 40%, Afghanistan has absorbed 4 million returning refugees in the last few years. Granted that some were thrown out recently by Pakistan, most returned willingly, meaning they are willing to bet their lives and the lives of their children that things will continue to improve.
The oil/gas and most of the wheat, and most of the modernization and progress, seem to be in the north of the country in the majority Tajik and Turkomen regions, the former stronghiolds of the Northern Alliance. Lets call them Afghanistans Kurds.
Will America cut out on Afghanistan? In a report leaked to the Guardian, the American commander of forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, states that our current strategy in that unhappy land is not working. As he wrote in the report, "The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort." That sounds suspiciously like General-speak for, simply, what we're doing isn't working, so we need to do something else, something else that we're not doing and don't know how to do right now.
Some in the blogosphere and media, left and right, are questioning whether this means that we will or should abandon Afghanistan. While blessedly few pray for a repeat of helicopters flying from the roof of the American embassy in Kabul, there is, to borrow an old New York Times phrase inappropriately applied to President George Bush in late 2001, "a stench of failure" surrounding our current strategy. The Taliban are launching new attacks in areas previously considered to be out of their reach. There are more, and more frequent, western military casualties. Civilians continue to die. The economy, such as it is, remains a wreck in those areas that the Taliban can control or threaten.
Some suspect President Barack Obama will pull us out of Afghanistan, despite his 2008 campaign rhetoric arguing that it was Afghanistan, not Iraq, that was central to our effort to defeat terrorism. Liberal Democrats such as Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold are now calling for a "flexible timetable" for a withdrawal, and current public opinion polls show increasing concern over events in that unhappy country. The more trouble Afghanistan becomes, the more likely Obama is to wash his hands of the affair, blaming it (along with most every other troubling issue before him) on his predecessor.
Before we castigate President Obama for a withdrawal, however, a question must be answered:
What's the goal in Afghanistan?
Answer that and you know whether or not we are failing. Answer that and you know what to say to General McChrystal.
George Bush, that misunderestimated man, articulated our goals for our operations in Afghanistan in late 2001 --
First, to destroy as much of al-Qaeda as we could and deny them the use of Afghanistan as a base of operations for their large-scale terror and insurgency campaigns.
Second, to remove the Taliban from power as a punishment for supporting al-Qaeda.
We did destroy much of al-Qaeda, and while we didn't capture Osama bin Laden (a fact that Democrats subsequently seized upon as an American "failure"), he doesn't have the ability today to use Afghanistan as a base of operations. We removed the Taliban from formal power and reduced the territory they hold from 90% to, today, about 20% of the country. We certainly cannot claim "Mission Accomplished" in its entirety but we did what George Bush set out to do, and seven years later we have the responsibility to determine what to do next.
So what is the goal in 2009?
Are we there for "nation building"? Good luck with that; Afghanistan is firmly rooted in the 10th Century (AD or BC is a fair question) with the thinnest veneer of 20th century life in the cities. The people there are more tribal than on just about any patch of land on the planet. There is no nation to build. If nation-building a single Afghan republic within the current borders is our goal, we have already failed and will continue to fail for the next century. Having gone through our own nation-building in the Americas and Europe over the last five centuries we many times fail to understand that large swaths of Asia simply are not, and will not be for a long time, inhabited by people with a sense of national identity.
Are we there to prevent the Taliban from seizing power again? If so the mission is to train those in that country who would oppose the Taliban. We are currently doing that by training the "Afghan National Army". But as just noted there is no nation, and so a "national army" is simply a first-derivative idiocy. If we had generations of time and a background of a more enlightened society, one could build a national army and nation just as our own country built West Point and, over time, a nation. That begs the question of whether there is a nation to build and a sufficient number of people who believe in it to provide critical mass. In Afghanistan today there is not.
What might work instead is training the tribal militias so that they could, alone or together, fight the Taliban. That is what the various Tadjik, Uzbek and Herara tribes tried and failed to do before 9/11, but what we helped them to do successfully in the months afterwards. We could re-implement that strategy so as to have them fend off the Pashtun-based Taliban. The risk to that strategy is that these tribes might fight each other as much or more than the Taliban.
Such a proposed policy not only rankles our own sense of how the world should be but also puts us in the position of favoring one tribe over another with the potential for blood on our hands. It also reminds us that tribal favoritism was a favored strategy of European colonial powers, perfected in places like the Congo, Rwanda, Burma and the Ivory Coast. But a more enlightened policy of favoritism would be a substantial carrot to dangle to the northern and western tribes in Afghanistan, and one that over time might build a series of proto-nation-states. One could couple military and civil aid to tribes that not only form a bulwark against terrorism and terror-friendly tribes but also commit to peace with tribes that do not threaten them (or us) and, over time, to more Western ideals. Such a strategy would require an intimate knowledge of the people and customs but is not beyond our ability.
A realistic policy then would be to work with, train and arm the tribes that are friendly to us and are willing to side with us against terrorists and terror-friendly tribes in Afghanistan. That would require us to abandon the notion of an Afghan nation-state but would allow us to spend our time hunting down al-Qaeda elsewhere in the world. This might require an international mandate: someone would have to speak for the tribes at the international level. A protectorate might be established, much as the one established to look after Micronesia after the Second World War with its many islands and tribes. A NATO mandate would involve enough partners to ensure that no one nation, particularly Pakistan, took advantage of the Afghan tribes. Loose ends might remain: how one might regulate trade in the region, for example, and what one might do about opium poppies grown within the traditional regions of the participating tribes. Over time those problems could be managed as relative peace and prosperity took hold. A confederated government of tribes might stand for the tribes in international affairs. The role of neighbors such as Pakistan and Iran, both of whom would undoubtedly oppose such arrangements, would have to be settled, if necessary by threat of force.
No solution is possible until we recognize that Afghanistan as we presently know it is not, and will never be, a nation-state. If we are not willing to acknowledge that cold reality, then we will end up leaving Afghanistan with our self-image and prestige in tatters, much like after Vietnam, and we will contend with yet another generation of thugs, tyrants and terrorists who, unlike us, have learned another lesson about the United States and the West.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/01/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Or you could treat it as a pit that you'll have to go into to clean out every few decades, but which won't ever be friendly. It isn't a tidy solution, and the survivors will always be thinking that they won since they "drove out" the Americans last time.
Posted by: James ||
09/01/2009 0:43 Comments ||
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#2
You can't change the nature of a People. So, no democracy ever. You can convince them not to mess with you---but not given the current idiological climate. Maybe, in post Obamid world...
I am most in favor of glazing/irradiating the most pustulent areas, and repeating as required. A-stan is worth no American troop lives, period. The country is a pest hole, and the people and their 'cultures' are by and large utterly repugnant.
Nation building in a cesspit is insanity. Treat it like a recurring sore, nothing more.
Same for Somalia and the rest.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
09/01/2009 6:40 Comments ||
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#5
I firmly agree Whiskey Mike. Phase-II of your 'get out, mind our own business and stay at home' scenario, the following Course of Actions (COA) would follow:
COA-A. If you create a situation for the US akin to PamAm 103, 9/11, etc, we will without warning or further discussion, END your civilization and those of your 'immediate 'downwind' neighbors.
COA-B. If something dreadful happens to Israel, or anyone else we so designate either specifically or implied, COA-A shall apply.
#6
The Obama Administration is blaming Bush for the current problems in A'stan - because he neglected that part of the war by his wrongful invasion of Iraq.
Eventually we may come to understand what I have been saying since we first invaded Iraq - we did so because we 'could' (we had a legal excuse) and it was a better place than A'stan to conduct a war against the Islamofascists. It allowed us to, effectively, declare victory in A'stan and get out. It's not exactly the kind of thing a government can openly state but I believe it is yet one more example of where America's 'elite' mis-underestimated GW Bush.
Sadly, we will probably repeat Vietnam in A'stan. I am not confident we have the means to conduct a winning campaign in that logistical nightmare of a place and I am certain we don't have the will to do it.
#7
One key issue is whether, indeed, Obama has the will to stay. Another is whether he has the intelligence to listen to the smart people who are there or have been there and develop a new strategy. That's what Bush had to do in 2006 and to his credit, he did it.
Dan Riehl (no link, sorry) makes that point this morning as well. Obama needs political room to manuever at home and dearly wants to ram a liberal, progressive progressive agenda through the Congress. That isn't going well (understatement) and he can ill-afford to alienate the Kos Kiddies further by hanging tough in A'stan.
He might draw to pull out real soon and "Blame Bush". If he does, A'stan becomes ripe for plucking by the Taliban -- it's unlikely Obama would keep Special Forces in-country and B-2 bombers on-call. That in turn lets the TTP and al-Qaeda have the safe haven they need for future operations.
And that takes us back to Spring, 2001.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/01/2009 10:16 Comments ||
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#8
Whiskey Mike: I disagree. Iraq firmly established a principle, that every rotten system the US tried to preserve, out of "cultural sensitivity" was a failure, and every system we introduced from scratch had a better than average chance of success.
But we discarded this discovery with Afghanistan, trying to make an inherently repugnant, archaic, and most of all, inefficient form of what passes for government, work.
Instead, the very first thing we should have done is take every child from a peaceful part of the country, and put them in (US military government) state run boarding schools, with a western curriculum.
Then take every educated Afghan we could find and send them to school to learn how to run a modern government. Then, because of the tiny national wage, we could have literally hired every unemployed adult male in the country for massive government projects.
Their wages would have been about $1B every year, because the wages are so incredibly low, and entire towns and cities could have been rebuilt, along with water projects, farm restoration, etc.
The country would have been led by an imposed, MacArthur constitution written for them, and to hell with Sharia law and tribal government.
Any Taliban or al-Qaeda caught in mischief would be hung by the neck with little formality, the passable parts of the border would be heavily fortified by US forces, and anyone caught crossing anywhere else would be shot on sight.
Yes, it would be a US military dictatorship for about a decade, but when it was over, those left in power would know how to run a government, there would be a young generation capable of modernizing their nation and protecting its security, and their economy would be growing at a tremendous clip.
#10
Yeah, but it's like raking leaves, until you cut the tree down, it's a never ending job.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/01/2009 13:43 Comments ||
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#11
Afghanistan cannot be 'won' so long the west continues to define victory by WWII standards. A success of ridiculous proportions if there ever was one.
In my opinion, success is long attained. Victory is already secured. The only question now is how to not lose all the ground that was fought for. How to do that without imposing some western type standards or institutions is something I can't answer.
It seems to me that we will eventually have to get the Afghans on board with some westernizing or warloards will turn it right back to what it was.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/01/2009 14:16 Comments ||
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#12
it would be a US military dictatorship for about a decade, but when it was over... Your estimate seems far too optimistic. It would take 2 full generations of this kind of dictatorship/colonization to turn a pesthole like Afghanistan around, and neither the USA nor any other power has the stomach to do that.
By Ahmad Faruqui
Some of the writing about the Indo-Pakistan war of September 1965 borders on mythology. It is no surprise that generations of Pakistanis continue to believe that India was the aggressor and that one Pakistani soldier was equal to 10 Indian soldiers.
A few have argued that the war began in August when Pakistan injected guerrillas into the vale of Kashmir to instigate a revolt and grab it before India achieved military dominance in the region. That was Operation Gibraltar.
When it failed to trigger a revolt and drew a sharp Indian riposte along the ceasefire line, Pakistan upped the ante and launched Operation Grand Slam on Sept 1. Infantry units of the army backed by armour overran the Indian outpost in Chamb, crossed the Tawi river and were headed towards Akhnur in order to cut off India's line of communication with Srinagar.
In the minority view, the Indian response on Sept 6 across the international border at Lahore was a natural counter-response, not an act of aggression.
I asked Sajjad Haider, author of the new book, Flight of the Falcon, to name the aggressor. He retired as an air commodore in the Pakistan Air Force. A fighter pilot to the bone, he does not know how to mince words: 'Ayub perpetrated the war.'
In April, skirmishes had taken place in the Rann of Kutch region several hundred miles south of Kashmir. In that encounter, the Pakistanis prevailed over the Indians. Haider says that the humiliation suffered by the Indians brought Prime Minister Shastri to the conclusion that the next round would be of India's choosing.
The Indian army chief prepared for a war that would be fought in the plains of Punjab. Under 'Operation Ablaze', it would mount an attack against Lahore, Sialkot and Kasur. Of course, the trigger would have to be pulled by the Pakistanis.
On May 12, says Haider, an Indian Canberra bomber flew over the Pakistan border on a reconnaissance mission. To quote him: 'The PAF scrambled interceptors which got within shooting range of the intruder. Air Marshal Asghar Khan's permission was sought to bring down the intruder. He sought clearance from the president on the newly installed direct line but Ayub denied permission fearing Indian reprisal.' Laments Haider, 'If this was not an indication of Indian intentions, what else could have been?'
Oblivious to what had just taken place in the skies above Punjab, and failing to anticipate how India was gunning to equalise the score, Ayub gave the green light to Operation Gibraltar on the advice of his foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (later president and prime minister). Bhutto had sought out the opinion about Indian intentions from Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi during a meeting at the Karachi airport and concluded from the latter's body language that India would not respond.
Seriously? And they subsequently gave such a scintillating intelligence the country to run? No wonder that for every step forward India takes, Pakistan somehow ends up taking two steps backward.
So Ayub gave the green light to send 8,000 infiltrators into Indian-held Kashmir. These, says Haider, were mostly youth from Azad Kashmir who had less than four weeks of training in guerrilla warfare. The entire plan was predicated on a passive Indian response, evoking Gen Von Moltke's dictum: 'No war plan survives the first 24 hours of contact with the enemy.'
It is also worth recalling what the kaiser said to the German troops that were heading off to fight the French in August 1914: 'You will be home before the leaves have fallen off the trees.' The three-month war turned into the Great War which lasted for four years.
Operation Grand Slam abruptly ground to a halt. An Indian general cited by Haider says in his memoirs: 'Akhnur was a ripe plum ready to be plucked, but providence came to our rescue.' The Pakistani GHQ decided to switch divisional commanders in the midst of the operation. The new commander, Maj-Gen Yahya (subsequently army chief and president), claimed later he was not tasked with taking Akhnur.
I asked Haider whether the Pakistani military was prepared for an all-out war with India, a much bigger country with a much bigger military. He said it was the army's war, since the other services had been kept in the dark. The army was clearly not prepared for an all-out war since a quarter of the soldiers were on leave. They were only recalled as the Indian army crossed the border en route to Lahore, a horrific sight which Haider recalls seeing from the air as he and five of his falcons arrived on the outskirts of Lahore.
Maj-Gen Sarfraz was the general officer commanding of the No.10 Division which had primary responsibility for the defence of Lahore. Along with other divisional commanders in the region, he had been ordered by GHQ to remove all defensive landmines from the border. None had been taken into confidence about the Kashmir operation. The pleas of these generals to prepare against an Indian invasion were rejected by GHQ with a terse warning: 'Do not provoke the Indians.'
Haider notes that the gateway to Lahore was defended by the 3rd Baloch contingent of 100 men under the intrepid Major Shafqat Baluch. He says, 'They fought to the last man till we (No.19 Squadron) arrived to devastate the invading division. There could have been no doubt even in the mind of a hawaldar that an Indian attack would come. But the ostriches at the pulpit had their heads dug in sand up to their necks.'
In the 1965 war, the Pakistani Army repeated the mistakes of the 1947-48 Kashmir war, but on a grander scale. No official history of the 1965 war was ever written even though President Ayub wanted one. Gen Yahya, his new army chief, just sat on the request until Ayub was hounded out of office by centrifugal forces triggered by the war.
I'm sure that last clause means something. I've no idea what.
Pakistan's grand strategy was flawed. None of its strategic objectives were achieved. And were it not for the tactical brilliance of many mid-level commanders, the country would have been torn apart by the Indians. Ironically, in Ayub's autobiography, one would be hard pressed to find any references to the war of 1965. One is reminded of De Gaulle's history of the French army which makes no reference to the events that took place in Waterloo in 1815.
War, as Clemenceau put it, is too serious a business to be left to the generals.
The writer has authored Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.
Posted by: john frum ||
09/01/2009 00:00 ||
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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.
WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
