In 2007, wasn't it? It's just the the Newspaper of Record, the venerable New York Times herself, only just got around to noticing.
by the US of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan valued at around $1 trillion has led many to conclude that Afghanistan could emerge as one of the world's most important mining centres. It is equally likely Afghanistan might fall prey to the 'resource curse' the idea that natural riches often create more problems than they solve. In any case, this is the only bit of good news to have come out of Afghanistan in the last few months.
There are growing signs that Barack Obama's surge strategy, announced with great fanfare in March 2009, is in real trouble. The US Congress is seeking explanations as to why the Afghan government is not assuming greater share of the burden and trying to assess if the president's July 2011 deadline to commence troop withdrawal is feasible. And the disdainful comments of General Stanley McChrystal who has been dismissed since about Obama and his civilian policy team have exposed enduring fault-lines in Obama's strategy and underlined the sense of peril pervading the corridors of powers in Washington.
Senior US military leaders openly talk about the Taliban regaining momentum. The US-led offensive in Marjah, the showcase of the new counter-insurgency strategy, has achieved only limited gains. Absence of governing institutions in Marjah has brought the offensive on the verge of failure. Because of difficulty in winning local support, the much-anticipated campaign to secure Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, will begin after several months and proceed more slowly than planned. Much-needed training of the Afghan army is not going anywhere with NATO short of trainers on the ground and the difficulty in figuring out how to replace Canadian and Dutch troops that will withdraw this summer.
Relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the White House are at an all time low. Karzai lost no time in dismissing two high-profile ministers interior minister and intelligence chief from his cabinet who were most closely allied with the US. These were men Washington had insisted Karzai include in his cabinet after his re-election last year and they were resisting Karzai's attempts to negotiate with the Taliban.
Obama lost credibility with Karzai when he started publicly rebuking him for various governance failures.
It can't be so, when all the world hailed Barack Obama as so much more subtle and charming than his presidential predecessor. He must have a secret plan to suddenly bring everyone round to the right way of thinking.
True, Karzai has spectacularly failed in constructing modern governmental machinery and seems to have little interest in building provincial and local governance institutions. But for better or worse, that's the hand Washington has been dealt in Afghanistan. Obama has tried to belatedly handle Karzai with greater sensitivity but his problem was compounded by the fact the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, didn't see eye to eye on strategy with the now-replaced top military commander, General McChrystal.
The perception that the US will withdraw from Afghanistan come what may
Thank you, President Obama.
has created a situation where the Taliban has every incentive to hunker down and wait out US assaults, Karzai has every incentive to keep dragging his feet and US military commanders have every incentive to keep producing easier solutions as opposed to achieving harder and longer-term results. Karzai has lost confidence in America's commitment to win the war and is seeking to strike deals with the Taliban and their Pakistani patrons.
Needs must, and all that, poor man.
The biggest strategic mistake the Obama administration made was announcing a pullout date starting next summer. While pouring in more troops is politically no longer feasible, pulling out altogether will be a shot in the arm for the Islamist extremists.
There is complacency in certain quarters in India that America cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan. While this may indeed be the case, America's Afghanistan strategy is facing a crisis. India will have to preserve its own vital regional interests. The Indian foreign secretary has recently articulated a set of principles underlining India's Af-Pak policy. They include accepting reintegration of the Taliban rank and file if they give up violence, a regional framework to complement an internal peace process, adherence to the principle of non-interference in Afghanistan's affairs, and ensuring that Afghanistan emerges as a regional trade and transit hub.
This is a laudable set of principles but can India translate it into reality? It reads more like a wish list than actionable policy, especially in the regional context where Pakistan's security establishment relishes the double game it is playing in Afghanistan. Pakistan's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan continues to be sanctioned at the highest levels of government with the ISI even represented on the Quetta shura, the Taliban's war council to retain influence over the Taliban's leadership. Taliban fighters continue to be trained in Pakistani camps. The ISI does not merely provide financial, military and logistical support to the insurgency. It retains strong strategic and operational control over the Taliban campaign in Afghanistan.
Despite launching offensives against militants in North and South Waziristan, Pakistan's military continues to look upon the Taliban as a strategic asset. Asif Ali Zardari has visited captured Taliban leaders, assuring them support. Pakistan's security establishment is manipulating the Taliban's political hierarchy so as to have greater leverage over future peace talks.
India's urgent task is to move beyond mere articulation of wishful principles and carve a policy response that can reduce the damage to Indian national interests from the Afghan war's mismanagement by the Americans.
#1
Add to this lovely picture the efforts of our friends in Iran, who continue to actively support unrest in the region in a successful effort to drain US military resources away from the Iranian border areas.
#2
India needs to liberate a 100K corridor through Pakistan occupied Kashmir, which would give a direct route to the Northern Alliance's territory. Afghanistan problem solved.
Brief Synopsis w/free download of paper (176 pages .pdf)
Domestic public opinion is frequently and correctly described as a crucial battlefront in the war in Afghanistan. Commentary by media and political figures currently notes not only the falling support for the war in the United States but also in many of its key allies in Europe and elsewhere, making it all the more difficult for the Obama administration to secure the help it believes it needs to bring the war to a successful conclusion.
This study is an extensive examination of the determinants of domestic support for and opposition to the war in Afghanistan in the United States and in five of its key allies--the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, and Australia.
Tracing the trajectory of public opinion on the war from the original invasion in 2001 to the fall of 2009, this paper concludes that the combination of mounting casualties with a declining belief that the war could be won by the Coalition is the key factor driving the drop in support.
Other factors, such as the deployment of numerous and shifting rationales by the political leadership in various countries, and the breakdown of elite consensus have played important but secondary roles in this process.
People seem to forget that President Hamid Karzai's negotiations with the Afghan Taliban are alienating more than half the Afghan population and only serving to infuriate the ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazara who fought the Taliban under the banner of the Northern alliance. From The New York Times:
The dispute is breaking along lines nearly identical to those that formed during the final years of the Afghan civil war, which began after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989 and ended only with the American invasion following the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 100,000 Afghans died, mostly civilians; the Taliban, during their five-year reign in the capital, Kabul, carried out several large-scale massacres of Hazara civilians.
"Karzai is giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban, and he is opening up the old schisms," said Rehman Oghly, an Uzbek member of Parliament and once a member of an anti-Taliban militia. "If he wants to bring in the Taliban, and they begin to use force, then we will go back to civil war and Afghanistan will be split."
The deepening estrangement of Afghanistan's non-Pashtun communities presents a paradox for the Americans and their NATO partners. American commanders have concluded that only a political settlement can end the war. But in helping Mr. Karzai to make a deal, they risk reigniting Afghanistan's ethnic strife.
Talks between Mr. Karzai and the Pakistani leaders have been unfolding here and in Islamabad for several weeks, with some discussions involving bestowing legitimacy on Taliban insurgents.
The leaders of these minority communities say that President Karzai appears determined to hand Taliban leaders a share of power -- and Pakistan a large degree of influence inside the country. The Americans, desperate to end their involvement here, are helping Mr. Karzai along and shunning the Afghan opposition, they say.
Mr. Oghly said he was disillusioned with the Americans and their NATO allies, who he says appear to be urging Mr. Karzai along. "We are losing faith in our foreign friends," he said.
Amrullah Saleh, the former chief of the National Directorate of Security, resigned weeks ago in part because of President Karzai's desire to share power with the Taliban. Here is what he had to say about negotiating with the Taliban. From Quqnoos:
I will mention a political program held by Lemar TV in which a Kochi lady from the northern Balkh province was talking. I agree with that lady's comments, in which she said that President Karzai must not destroy the determination of the majority of Afghan people by pleading to a small group of terrorists. We must hold a Jirga that will respond to the will of 97 percent of Afghans. We must not hold a Jirga in which the will of 97 percent of Afghans will be dealt with for a small group. Karzai became president with the people's votes. Why does the president force this nation to weaken its determination? Why doesn't the president use force? This is the point of my disagreement with the president and I am not keeping it secret. There are hundreds of other reasons for my disagreements with the president, which I do not want to talk about now. The second main reason for my disagreement with the president is that he ordered the remission of the Taliban under a decree. I cannot forgive the murderers of the martyred Dr. Abdullah [Mr Saleh's colleague], and I also cannot work in a government that forgives the Taliban.
And Saleh's statement on negotiations with the likes of the Taliban speaks for itself:
I think this policy will not bring honourable peace. Showing a soft stance with a murderer who has killed more than a thousand does not seem like an honourable peace. Even I do not think that this soft stance results in peace. This soft behaviour makes the enemy's intention even stronger and makes the confidence of friends shaky.
It is not only that I say this now, after stepping down, go to your archives and see.
I support peace and I'm not an element against peace, but gaining peace through soft behaviour and expressing humility has not brought about results in human history. Any nation that wants to achieve something must speak louder than a whimper.
#1
the Pashtuns need to be smacked hard. Karzai's ROE demands are getting Americans killed.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/27/2010 14:28 Comments ||
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#2
Ditto on the Pashtooons Frank. Karzai needs to kickback and pump those Skymiles up...take a world tour aboard a Russian AN-24. Clandestine night flights, mountain routes, NOE, under cover of poor weather, low ceilings, etc......if you follow my logic.
Spending our way to prosperity is going out of style.
Today's G-20 meeting has been advertised as a showdown between the U.S. and Europe over more spending "stimulus," and so it is. But the larger story is the end of the neo-Keynesian economic moment, and perhaps the start of a healthier policy turn.
For going on three years, the developed world's economic policy has been dominated by the revival of the old idea that vast amounts of public spending could prevent deflation, cure a recession, and ignite a new era of government-led prosperity. It hasn't turned out that way.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Keynes may be wrong about government spending as a direct economic stimulus. As an indirect stimulus, it may yet work (for a little while) - if fear of inflation motivates people with savings to spend. The key is that spending must be backed by assets or earning capacity to have a net stimulative effect. So far the fear of deflation is still enough to offset the fear of inflation.
#2
Keynes maintained that governments could mitigate the effects of recessions by counter-cyclical policies. Ie, running surpluses during expansion periods and then spending the surpluses during recessions.
The only Western government in recent times to have done this is John Howards govermment in Australia which paid off about 100 billion in debt in the 10 years prior to the GFC. The (Labor) government could then spend during the post GFC period without racking up big government debts and Australias recession was mild. So maybe Keynes was right.
#4
I believe it was Joseph who advised Pharoah to save up during the seven fat years for the coming seven lean years.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2010 11:47 Comments ||
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#5
Keynes wrote in the Forward to the German Edition of his General Theory "The theory of aggregate production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons that justifies the fact that I call my theory a general theory."
No more need be said about Keynesianism and why collectivists love it.
#6
The reason there is no growth in the economy is very simple. Regardless of how much money is thrown at the problem and even if the money was given directly to small businesses the overlaping tiers of regulation are so time consuming and expensive businesses cannot expand. I manage a small business in California. I bought a pre engineered pallet rack that exceeded all required specifications (load, seismic and sprinlers, etc.) in the US. It took almost a year to get a building permit to install the rack system. If I were to buy a larger building I would need to install another pallet rack system. I can not afford to buy a building and have it sit for a year while I deal with endless regulations that were already satisfied by the manufacturer. If you count escrow and other delays the cost of the building with improvements will sit for 15 months before I get any use from it. The financial reality is I cannot expand my business and hire more workers because of the government.
Posted by: Dave ||
06/27/2010 16:50 Comments ||
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#7
The financial reality is I cannot expand my business and hire more workers because of the government.
Leave California.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
06/27/2010 18:09 Comments ||
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#8
Leave California.
Given that the Federal Register runs in excess of 75,000 pages/year that's a *VERY* temporary solution.
If there is one virtue that eludes many of the world's biggest economies, it is fiscal restraint. That is why Canada is the ideal host for the G20 summit, taking place this weekend in Toronto. Canada is a shining example of how to avoid not only the 2008 U.S. bank crisis, but also the current European sovereign debt crisis. It is the perfect place to illustrate how out of step the U.S. is with the rest of the G20 members.
In his letter to the membership, President Barack Obama said, "Our highest priority in Toronto must be to safeguard and strengthen the recovery. ... This means that we should reaffirm our unity of purpose to provide the policy support necessary to keep economic growth strong."
Contrast this with Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper's letter, "... advanced countries must send a clear message that as their stimulus plans expire, they will focus on getting their fiscal houses in order. This requires credible plans for fiscal consolidation to dispel the uncertainty and financial volatility that can impair our future growth prospects."
Canada advocates reducing deficits and putting finances on a sustainable path. The U.S. advocates additional spending to ensure global recovery continues. Who's right, and what does it mean for the markets?
Let's state the obvious; no one is going to grow their way out of their deficits. Given that the sovereign debt crisis shut out Greece from the capital markets, every country with a deficit is nervous that it could be next. Worse, the crisis has forced the markets to re-evaluate whether the entire structure of the European Monetary Union is valid and sustainable. It's this near-death experience that has brought Europe to the church of fiscal rectitude.
Greece plans to cut 30 billion euros from its budget while kept on life support by the loan bailout package from the IMF and European Union. Spain's austerity plan is to cut its deficit from 11.2% down to 3% by 2013 with an increase in its value-added tax (VAT) and its retirement age.
The U.K. is aggressively cutting spending by 25% on their government departments. Also, it is increasing its VAT to 20% from 17.5%. Ireland, Portugal and Germany all have proposed or enacted deficit reduction plans.
By shutting Greece out of the bond market, the markets put the fear of God into these nations to control their deficits or face the same fate
This is why a call for more fiscal spending is completely out of step with the European experience.
Therefore, the call by President Obama to keep stimulating is a best ignored and at worst scoffed at by the G20. But it's worse than that. The U.S. is not only calling for more spending, but it is also failing to reduce its own deficit, which will reach $1.4 trillion in 2010. Now, the question becomes when will this come back to hurt the country?
Immediately. The U.S. loses its leadership position with the G20 when it advocates measures that would harm those countries that followed its advice. Can any European nation risk additional stimulating or even delaying action on deficit reduction without a negative repercussion from the markets?
Soon the global markets will turn their ire back on the U.S. for not addressing the fiscal problem. It is the one G20 country not engaged in cutting its massive deficit. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office has said that the newly enacted health care bill will not help reduce the deficit.
The new U.S. crisis will take the same form that other crises throughout history have taken: It will start with the currency. Yes, it's difficult to see the U.S. dollar losing value at this point with the European sovereign crisis in full bloom. However, we have to think two to three years down the road when fully implemented health care and financial regulatory reform laws will be in effect and nothing will have been done to reduce the deficit.
At this G20, the U.S. is advocating spending while Canada advocates restraint and Europe runs for fiscal cover. At the 2012 meeting the U.S. is likely to be doing the sprinting.
Andrew B. Busch is director of global currency and a public policy strategist at BMO Capital Markets, a recognized expert on the world financial markets and a frequent CNBC contributor.
#1
ION BAMMER, GUAM PDN FORUMS > OBAMA HAS AN INDIAN UPRISING TO ALSO DEAL WITH? US IRS demanding that the Amerindian CROW NATION begin paying proper taxes as per TRIBAL COUNCIL-MEMBER SALARIES, or else risk losing tribal land.
* SAME > THE US MAY NOW RECOGNIZE THE UN INDIGENOUS RIGHTS DECLARATION [under the POTUS Bammer Admin].
[but it won't for many, in fact, the author of this article may be hauled into 'hate speech court']
More than 10,000 people are expected to attend the Journey of Faith Conference in Toronto on July 2, 3 and 4. That may sound benign, but that fact alone should alarm this entire country.
The conference, sold as one of the largest Islamic conferences in North America, headlines speakers with such vile and repugnant views, that to repeat them almost smacks of satire and farce.
The big draw for the event was, until earlier this week, Dr. Zakir Naik, a popular Indian Muslim televangelist, who has -- thanks largely to the alarm raised by Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress -- been denied a visa to come to Canada.
Naik, billed as an expert on the Qur'an on the conference website, has said "every Muslim should be a terrorist," that gays and lesbians should be sentenced to capital punishment, that a man has the right to beat his wife, though he warned his devoted followers to avoid leaving a mark or hitting her on the face, and, surprise, surprise, he says that Jews are the "staunchest enemy" of Muslims. He is, ironically and comically, the founder of Peace TV.
War is peace, black is white, etc. and so forth.
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/27/2010 01:05 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Naik, billed as an expert on the Qur'an on the conference website, has said "every Muslim should be a terrorist,"
Until they begin wearing uniforms or carrying signs, that's precisely how I shall categorize them.
Recently president Obama told Arizona Senator Kyl that if he secured the boarder there, Arizona would have no motivation to support Obama's immigration reform legislation. In other words Obama is playing politics with Arizona and its people to get what he wants. In most circles this is called blackmail. Could the president be doing the same thing with the oil spill in the gulf? Could he be stalling the clean up until he gets what he wants?
The Obama administration has said we can't bring in skimmers from other parts of the country to help with the spill because there might be another spill someplace else. Excuse me my hearing aid must be turned off. Did he say we can't help stop the worst spill in US history because of what might happen somewhere else? The answer is an unbelievable yes he did!
Obama has also refused the help of other nations. Belgium, The Netherlands and Norway have very sophisticated skimming technology, some of the best in the world. Obama won't use them because he refuses to waive the Jones Act. This 1920s law requires that all ships working in American waters be made here and have domestic crews. Interestingly President George W. Bush waived the act in 2005 to help clean up after hurricane Katrina. Obama won't do it. The worse the spill gets the better Bush looks.
That begs the question why? Why would the president of the United States who is sworn to protect the nation, refuse to use all tools at his disposal to help the people and the environment of the gulf. It's the same reason he is blackmailing Arizona. He wants something. That something is Cap and Trade. It's now called some kind of energy bill but don't be confused it's the same old Cap and Trade dressed up in new clothes. OK but how would delaying the cleanup help the president get his Cap and Tax legislation through? The answer is he is waiting for August and September, the peak of the hurricane season.
President Obama is a devoted disciple of the religion of global warming. On September 22nd 2009 Obama said "On shrinking islands families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples, our prosperity, our health and our safety are in jeopardy. And the Time we have to reverse this tide is running out." He is a true believer of the first order. He believes that we can control the climate of the earth just like he controls the climate in the Oval Office. If it's too warm the president just goes over the wall and turns down the thermostat. Similarly if the earth's climate is too warm, he will use Cap and Trade to turn down the amount of carbon dioxide in the air and cool the earth, as well as our economy I might add.
So where do the hurricanes fit in to all of this? The president is waiting for a hurricane to roar into the gulf this season and blow all that oil many miles inland and make a bad situation an order of magnitude worse. He is waiting for an Obamacane.
A hurricane would create a storm surge that would push the spill into the estuaries, rivers and backwaters all along the gulf where it strikes. This hurricane driven surge of water and oil would cause far more damage than has happened so far. It would take years to clean up. The ensuing economic damage to the region could last for a decade or more. Parts of south Florida and New Orleans are still recovering from major hurricanes and those storms were "clean". This Obamacane would be a unique historical event. No hurricane has ever moved over a spill of this magnitude and blown it onto land, not in the history of the world.
Such a calamity, if it occurs would be the fuel (oil) on the fire Obama would need to get Cap and Trade done before the November elections. In the wake of the storm there would be a thunderous outcry from the environmental groups, companies desperate to profit from "green" government subsidies and Obama's own spinmeisters to dump oil. It's the perfect eco-disaster set up. An active hurricane season with a higher than usual chance of a large gulf hurricane and a massive oil spill waiting to be blown into history. This Obamacane would be exploited as the last straw needed to persuade American to "go green" for good and dump ugly oil and its climate destroying carbon emissions.
What do General McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they're both Democratic-party supporters.
Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They'll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The executives of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their "Beyond Petroleum" marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats' favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.
But what do McChrystal's and BP's defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was "a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year." If finding Obama "not engaged" is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?
Continued on Page 49
#1
The left has Weigel, Yglesias, Cole, Klein, Rich, MoDo and Friedman but not one of them can write like Steyn. He's the only one we need to bring sanity to opinion and opinion to insanity.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/27/2010 7:45 Comments ||
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There's only one thing more satisfying than being right. That's when a shrill buffoon you utterly despise dedicates an entire column in a newspaper you loathe to accusing you of being wrong, working himself up into an almost masturbatory lather of slobbering indignation, macheting himself to ever greater heights of ecstatic fervour like some Shi'ite penitent during Ashura, giggling at his jokes, crowing at his own cleverness, earning all sorts of smarmy plaudits from his coterie of sorry eco-fascist brown-nosers and it turns out, after all that, you're still entirely right and the buffoon let's call him Moonbat has emerged looking an even bigger prat than ever.
I love you George Moonbat, no really I do. You've just made my weekend.
Don't think George loves me, though. There's a clue in this par here:
In the Telegraph, James Delingpole, who seldom misses an opportunity to make an idiot of himself, announced that these revelations meant:
AGW [anthropogenic global warming] theory is toast. So's Dr Rajendra Pachauri. So's the Stern review. So's the credibility of the IPCC.'In reality, as we will see, it's Delingpole's beliefs on climate change that the story has reduced to toast. More
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.
Spending our way to prosperity is going out of style. 
by Andrew B. Busch
Recently president Obama told Arizona Senator Kyl that if he secured the boarder there, Arizona would have no motivation to support Obama's immigration reform legislation. In other words Obama is playing politics with Arizona and its people to get what he wants. In most circles this is called blackmail. Could the president be doing the same thing with the oil spill in the gulf? Could he be stalling the clean up until he gets what he wants? 
