#1
99.5% of Afghanistan is Muslim but not Taliban. I agree with McChrystal that the population must see the Taliban as the problem--destroying schools and infrastructure as unIslamic--and fight for their own country. He needs the support of more troops to do that and changed rules of engagement. McCarthy's point that our mission is to destroy the Taliban and other AQ supporters sounds good, except Obama's advisors are saying that mission has been accomplished and we should withdraw. While troops are not there for a social experiment, they must be allowed to accomplish the mission without politicizing issues that prevent them doing just that.
#2
"The good news ... in Afghanistan is that the Al Qaeda presence is very diminished," Jones said. "The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country. No bases. No ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.
"I don't foresee the return of the Taliban," Jones added. "And I want to be very clear that Afghanistan is not in danger -- imminent danger -- of falling."
On Monday, McCain shot back, telling the FOX Business Network: "Anybody who believes that you can hand over the country or significant parts of the country to the Taliban and not have to worry about Al Qaeda returning and working with them and becoming a base for attacks against the United States of America has no understanding of the region or the nature of the enemy."
If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me, I'll personally go there and get in touch with them," Karzai said. "Esteemed Mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?"
...
"If a group of Taliban or a number of Taliban come to me and say, 'President, we want a department in this or in that ministry or we want a position as deputy minister ... and we don't want to fight anymore ... If there will be a demand and a request like that to me, I will accept it because I want conflicts and fighting to end in Afghanistan," Karzai said.
So if we, NATO, stabilize Karzai and win, the Taliban will return to power and, for ideological reasons offer sanctuary to AQ.
If we lose the Taliban will seize power without Karzai and offer sanctuary to AQ.
#4
I think its pretty clear that mullah omar isnt going to sit down and take tea with Kharzai. That was rhetoric, to win points by looking reasonable, not a plan. Talking about doing deals with local Taliban is a way for Kharzai to avoid the fact that the best way to get the less hardcore among Taliban foot soldiers to change sides is to eliminate the nepotism that rots Afghan governance in the Pashtun provinces especially.
The best thing, at this point, would be to abolish the absurdity of Kabul appointed provincial governors, and have provincial elections for governor.
...
It is not, as our presidents vaguely invoke, a war against "terrorism," "radicalism" or "extremism"; and it is not, as the current hearts-and-minds-obsessed Afghanistan commander calls it, "a struggle to gain the support of the (Afghan) people." It is something more specific than presidents describe, and it is something larger than the outlines of Iraq or Afghanistan. The war that has fallen to our generation is to halt the spread of Islamic law (Sharia) in the West, whether driven by the explosive belts of violent jihad, the morality-laundering of petro-dollars or decisive demographic shifts.
...
But we would "lose face" in leaving Afghanistan, supporters say. News flash: We lose face every day in Afghanistan executing a costly, impotent policy based on massive state bribery, the public devaluation of American life ("population protection" trumps "force protection"), and deference to Islamic custom, as when women Marines are ordered to wind head scarves under their helmets for missions. And the point of this mass American supplication? To win a local popularity contest in which the only competition is the Taliban. Earth to military geniuses: The people are already with you, or they're against you.
...
In other words, it's time to toss the policy of standing up Sharia states such as Iraq and Afghanistan onto that ash heap of history. It's time to shore up liberty in the West, which, while we are stretched and distracted by Eastern adventures, is currently contracting in its accommodations of Sharia, a legal system best described as sacralized totalitarianism.
...
#2
So the rightwing Islamophobe side of the call for withdrawl is underway.
"the public devaluation of American life ("population protection" trumps "force protection")"
Back when we used to win wars, accomplishing the mission trumped force protection. In this case, population protection is part of the mission.
"Earth to military geniuses: The people are already with you, or they're against you."
So this pundit, thinks the generals who are in country, fighting the war, in daily contact with US officers leading missions on the ground, are to be mocked as "military geniuses".
If some lefty idiot were saying this sort of thing, we would be shredding it, and rightly so.
#3
I think this is more than a simple left-right issue.
This article seems to look at the war from a "Jacksonian" perspective (one of Meade's 4 schools of American politics), and if Meade is basically correct then it indicates major trouble since he postulates that Jacksonian support is a necessary, though not sufficient condition for any US war effort.
#4
Jacksonianism is kinda stragically immature. They hit us, lets hit them, but damned if we are gonna follow through to do the things necessary to actually win.
Afghanistan is the Left's UN approved PC war. Leaving would mean ditching the UN and leaving the bad neocon Iraq won, while Afghanistan is a shambolic lost war that was never winnable in the first place.
#1
Actually, I'd love to have roubini tell me every morning, "you're gonna die." He'll be right sooner or later, but it looks increasingly like it's gonna be later (in the case of his advice.)
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/05/2009 1:08 Comments ||
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#2
the recovery is not rapid and V-shaped, but more like U- shaped
I predict a W-shaped recovery and we are pretty close to the middle of the W right now.
#3
The only people I know who haven't figured out that the stock market's rise this year was a sucker's rally are Obama voters looking for any factoid they can to maintain the narrative of his messiahness.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
10/05/2009 6:49 Comments ||
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#4
I'd predict more of a L shape till you had people on the switches in Washington who understood small business and the cost of Soviet central planning on them.
#6
Tech bubble on predicted profits that never materialised.
House Price Bubble on Interest rates and reserves manipulated to offset Tech Bubble.
Stock Bubble on Printing Money to offset Housing Bubble.
These double Downs by the state don't look too hot in hindsight. Someone's bet your farm, and lost.
Economics teaches, of course, that there are no free lunches. A key force driving such calculations is that alternative-energy production or energy conservation are fairly labor intensive relative to, say, the oil industry. But if the alternative-energy sector were really economically more efficient than other forms of energy, it would create all the wonderful jobs all by itself, without the assistance of Uncle Sam.
If, even after all the subsidies that government already provides to green technologies, we have to also subsidize training for workers in that industry, that suggests we are throwing money at an industry that cant pass the market test.
The notion is that we make ourselves better off by transferring resources from one sector, which is fairly efficient, to another, which isnt. Such an assertion might be correct if we account for the damage done by greenhouse gases. But with regard to job creation, the argument is nonsense.
Rickshaw Express
Heritage Foundation economist J.D. Foster recently wrote that the same logic would recommend an even better and greener plan: the federal government could require that we all move about in rickshaws.
The logic is sound, is it not? It will take many environmentally friendly rickshaws to replace the passenger miles currently devoted to travel in cars and buses. With unemployment so high, a rickshaw program could reap huge economic benefits.
"This is not a war of choice," Barack Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 17. "This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people." But that was nearly seven weeks ago. Now, it appears that Obama is about to ignore the advice of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whom he installed as commander in Afghanistan in May, after relieving his predecessor ahead of schedule. McChrystal, who came up as a Special Forces officer, is an expert in counterinsurgency. Not surprisingly, in his Aug. 30 report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he recommended a course that seems certain to require a substantial number of additional troops.
During the first three weeks of September, Obama held one meeting on the "war of necessity." Then, on Sept. 20, Obama appeared on five talk shows to push his health plan. The next day, Bob Woodward published a story in The Washington Post based on a copy of McChrystal's report, which the newspaper later posted in redacted form. Woodward made it clear that McChrystal would request more troops. When questioners pressed him about the war, he said he was rethinking his Afghanistan strategy.
The rethinking looks a lot like a rejection of his general's recommendations. McChrystal said last week that he had spoken to Obama exactly once since he was appointed. But many people, notably Vice President Biden, seemed to be speaking against his recommendation in a three-hour meeting Obama held with advisers on Thursday, Oct. 1. According to The Washington Post, "senior advisers" challenged some of McChrystal's key assumptions. "One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, 'A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions -- were exposed to the light of day.'"
Sounds just a bit condescending, doesn't it? Among the assumptions, wrote the Post reporters, is "that the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaida." That's the same assumption Obama made in his speech to the VFW 44 days before.
On the day of the White House meeting, McChrystal was in London to speak to a foreign-policy group. He was asked whether Biden's approach, to downsize the number of troops and focus on killing selected terrorists, could work. "The short answer is no," McChrystal said. "You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a shortsighted strategy." The next day, on his hastily scheduled trip to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics, Obama managed to squeeze in 25 minutes for McChrystal. Presumably McChrystal defended his "I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions."
What to make of all this? First, Afghanistan was never a "war of necessity." It was, like all our wars, a "war of choice." Franklin Roosevelt could have avoided provoking Nazi Germany and imperial Japan; eminences like Joseph P. Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh were arguing that we could survive, perhaps uncomfortably, in a Nazi-dominated world. But Roosevelt chose to risk war in order to rid the world of evildoers. Declaring Afghanistan a "war of necessity" was a way for Obama and other Democrats to attack George W. Bush for choosing, in their view unwisely, to wage war in Iraq. But now when it comes time to wage the "war of necessity" in the way that our carefully selected general recommends, it turns out not to be so necessary any more. Not when Democratic politicians and Democratic voters are shying away from it.
It's not clear yet that the "senior advisers" who were mocking McChrystal's assumptions will prevail. In his 25 minutes on Air Force One, McChrystal may have used his knowledge and experience to convince Obama that his judgment was better than that of the armchair generals that the president had listened to for three hours the day before. Maybe Obama will choose to wage his "war of necessity" in the way the general he selected believes is necessary for us to succeed. But I wouldn't bet heavily on it -- not any more, in fact, than I would have bet on Chicago's chances of hosting the 2016 Olympic games.
#2
it turns out not to be so necessary any more. Not when Democratic politicians and Democratic voters are shying away from it.
Obamas dithering is not about votes or deliberation. Prior to holding the office of POTUS Obamas only job was self-promotion. Even in his position as Senator (Both State and US) his resume reads as one of a ladder climber. This is a career path well suited for an unabashed elitist and a narcissist. People of this character do indeed covet victory but their primary motivation is in their loathing of personal failure. This dynamic can be especially problematic when policy and persona have been so inextricably tied. Obamas arrogance will allow him to be associated with an increasingly unpopular war. However, it appears that his ego has paralyzed him from making the tough decisions.
Obama is willing to anger China on tire tariffs but not on Tibet.
In nearly nine months in office, President Obama has found time to meet with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Vladimir Putin. But this week he'll have no time to see the Dalai Lama, a peaceful religious leader who has for decades been a friend to the United States and an advocate of human rights for China's six million Tibetans.
Mr. Obama's slight is the first time a sitting president will not meet with the Dalai Lama during a Washington visit since President George H.W. Bush met with him in 1991. No meeting was ever formally on the agenda for this week, but the exiled Tibetan leader's trip to Washington had been planned for years, and earlier this year he had expressed his hope to meet with the President. Last month, White House aide Valerie Jarrett and Maria Otero, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, traveled to Dharamsala to confer with the Dalai Lama. The next day, the Dalai Lama's office announced his hope that he might meet with Mr. Obama after November, when Mr. Obama will visit Beijing.
As a White House official explained it: "Both the Dalai Lama and we agree that a stable and positive U.S.-China relationship will help advance progress on the Tibet issue, and that a meeting after the President's trip would further the likelihood of making progress on Tibetan issues." In other words, not offending Chinese President Hu Jintao is a higher U.S. priority, at least on Tibet. By contrast, Mr. Obama was more than willing to risk offending China by imposing tariffs on Chinese tires last month to please his union supporters.
This is of a piece with Mr. Obama's other human-rights backsteps, in particular his muted support for democracy in Iran. The Dalai Lama has met with the sitting U.S. President a dozen times, as well as with Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle (including a certain Senator Obama in 2005). Although Beijing complained about these meetings, there were no serious costs to the U.S.-China relationship. George W. Bush met with the Dalai Lama in May of his first year in office, in advance of his first trip to China, and thereafter made clear that meetings with him were nonnegotiable.
These Presidential meetings are important because they affirm the religious and democratic freedoms America stands for, while setting a precedent for the rest of the world. China routinely assails countries whose leaders meet with the Dalai Lama, targeting France and Germany in recent years by cutting off diplomatic exchanges, canceling conferences and the like. Perhaps the Administration is hoping for a return favor from Beijing for snubbing the man Chinese leaders label a "splittist" and a "wolf in sheep's clothing." But rewarding China's bullying only encourages such tactics.
On Wednesday in Washington, the Dalai Lama will honor the late Julia Taft, who spoke out against Chinese abuses in Tibet as coordinator on Tibetan issues in the Clinton Administration. He'll also meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and perhaps he can wave at the White House on his way to Capitol Hill. It's becoming clear that Mr. Obama's definition of "engagement" leaves plenty of room to meet with dictators, but less for the men and women who challenge them.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/05/2009 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
The Dalai Lama is not a s0cia1ist tyrant dictator, so his agenda is of no interest to the big O.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/05/2009 0:32 Comments ||
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#2
China's anger with the Dalai Lama has more to do with the Dalai welshing on the deal Tibet signed back in the 1950s than any issue.
#3
Why should the "smartest man in the world," per the maim scream media, listen to anybody else? That'd be the "smartest etc." who beat out the previous smartest people ever to come to Washington (you know, th' clintons, heh, heh.)
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/05/2009 1:12 Comments ||
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#4
The Burg had a posting on the Dalai Lama several months back with his observation that pacifism doesn't work with terrorists because their minds are closed. Maybe that hasn't set well with others who's minds are also closed.
#8
ION WAFF > INDONESIAN VIGILANTES PREPARE FOR BATTLE IN MALAYSIA. "PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC DEFENSE GROUP" aka "BENDARA" Group demands Indonesia should kill Malaysians - Iff Indones Govt won't declare war agz Malaysia, they will; + TURKEY PREPARES FOR COMING UNAVOIDABLE WAR WITH GREECE AND FRANCE.
* ION WAFF link > JAKARTA GLOBE - RUMORS OF ANTI-CHINESE DISCRIMINATION SPREAD IN PADANG QUAKE ZONE [Emer Aid = "only 40 boxes of packaged tea" recieved as quake aid]; + INDONESIA QUAKE RECOVERY WILL "TAKE YEARS".
* SAME > NDFB [National Democ Front of Boroland] LOOKS TO CHINA, BANGLADESH TO REALIZE [sovereign] "BOROLAND". Helped Bangla gain independence from India-Pak so its time for Bangla to return the favor.
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > YOUTUBE NEWS: MONGOLIAN FAR-RIGHT GROUP CLAIMS ETHNICITY FACING FOREIGN THREAT [aka CHINA].
The most widely touted outcome of last week's Geneva talks with Iran was the "agreement in principle" to send approximately one nuclear-weapon's worth of Iran's low enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for enrichment to 19.75% and fabrication into fuel rods for Tehran's research reactor. President Barack Obama says the deal represents progress, a significant confidence-building measure. In fact, the agreement constitutes another in the long string of Iranian negotiating victories over the West. Any momentum toward stricter sanctions has been dissipated, and Iran's fraudulent, repressive regime again hobnobs with the U.N. Security Council's permanent members. Consider the following problems:
Is there a deal or isn't there? Diplomacy's three slipperiest words are "agreement in principle." Iran's Ambassador to Britain exclaimed after the talks in Geneva, "No, no!" when asked if his country had agreed to ship LEU to Russia; it had "not been discussed yet." An unnamed Iranian official said that the Geneva deal "is just based on principles. We have not agreed on any amount or any numbers." Bargaining over the deal's specifics could stretch out indefinitely.
Other issues include whether Iran will have "observers" at Russian enrichment facilities. If so, what new technologies might those observers glean? And, since Tehran's reactor is purportedly for medical purposes, will Mr. Obama deny what Iran pretends to need to refuel it in 2010?
The "agreement" undercuts Security Council resolutions forbidding Iranian uranium enrichment. No U.S. president has been more enamored of international law and the Security Council than Mr. Obama. Yet here he is undermining the foundation of the multilateral campaign against Tehran's nuclear weapons program. In Resolution 1696, adopted July 31, 2006, the Security Council required Iran to "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development." Uranium enriched thereafterthe overwhelming bulk of Iran's admitted LEUthus violates 1696 and later sanctions resolutions. Moreover, considering Iran's utter lack of credibility, we have no idea whether its declared LEU constitutes anything near its entire stockpile.
By endorsing Iran's use of its illegitimately enriched uranium, Mr. Obama weakens his argument that Iran must comply with its "international obligations." Indeed, the Geneva deal undercuts Mr. Obama's proposal to withhold more sanctions if Iran does not enhance its nuclear program by allowing Iran to argue that continued enrichment for all peaceful purposes should be permissible. Now Iran will oppose new sanctions and argue for repealing existing restrictions. Every other aspiring proliferator is watching how violating Security Council resolutions not only carries no penalty but provides a shortcut to international redemption.
Raising Iran's LEU to higher enrichment levels is a step backwards. Two-thirds of the work to get 90% enriched uranium, the most efficient weapons grade, is accomplished when U235 isotope levels in natural uranium are enriched to Iran's current level of approximately 3%-5%. Further enrichment of Iran's LEU to 19.75% is a significant step in the wrong direction. This is barely under the 20% definition of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU). Ironically, Resolution 1887, adopted while Mr. Obama presided over the Security Council last week, calls for converting HEU-based reactors like Iran's to LEU fuel precisely to lower such proliferation risks. We should be converting the Tehran reactor, not refueling it at 19.75% enrichment.
After Geneva, the administration misleadingly stated that once fashioned into fuel rods, the uranium involved could not be enriched further. This is flatly untrue. The 19.75% enriched uranium could be reconverted into uranium hexafluoride gas and quickly enriched to 90%. Iran could also "burn" its uranium fuel (including the Russian LEU available for the Bushehr reactor) and then chemically extract plutonium from the spent fuel to produce nuclear weapons.
The more sophisticated Iran's nuclear skills become, the more paths it has to manufacture nuclear weapons. The research-reactor bait-and-switch demonstrates convincingly why it cannot be trusted with fissile material under any peaceful guise. Proceeding otherwise would be winking at two decades of Iranian deception, which, unfortunately, Mr. Obama seems perfectly prepared to do.
The president also said last week that international access to the Qom nuclear site must occur within two weeks, but an administration spokesman retreated the next day, saying there was no "hard and fast deadline," and "we don't have like a drop-dead date." Of course, neither does Iran. Once again, Washington has entered the morass of negotiations with Tehran, giving Iran precious time to refine and expand its nuclear program. We are now even further from eliminating Iran's threat than before Geneva.
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.
Economics teaches, of course, that there are no free lunches. A key force driving such calculations is that alternative-energy production or energy conservation are fairly labor intensive relative to, say, the oil industry. But if the alternative-energy sector were really economically more efficient than other forms of energy, it would create all the wonderful jobs all by itself, without the assistance of Uncle Sam. 
