List from the article:
[ForeignPolicy] My list of things to remember I can't say
Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt.
Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.
Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.
Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe
Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.
Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.
The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.
Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.
Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.
Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .
And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.
Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?
The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.
We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.
The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.
#1
"We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning. "
The idea was to let the Taliban share in the terrorists' fate.
But that would have hurt feelings.
Along came operation 'Enduring Freedom', and Colin Powell who told Pakistan and others that the President's statement to a joint session of congress given in the immediate aftermath of an attack on the scale of Pearl Harbor could be safely ignored.
"The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt."
See above, the original objective was to hunt down and kill the Taliban in retaliation for 9/11. "Fight Talk Build" sort of faded in as Bush's red line sort of faded away.
"Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe"
"The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not."
Apparently this is true even after an attack on the CONUS that was anything but incredibly small.
"...Vietnam...Vietnam...Nixon..."
For the US the Vietnam War was a limited war in the context of a global cold war. There's no comparison to the 9/11 war.
It is remarkable that this article about Afghanistan contains multiple references to Vietnam and none to 9/11.
IMO the apparent inability of Western elites to think outside and beyond the Vietnam experience is largely responsible for the dangerous mess we're in.
#2
It is remarkable that this article about Afghanistan contains multiple references to Vietnam and none to 9/11.
IMO the apparent inability of Western elites to think outside and beyond the Vietnam experience is largely responsible for the dangerous mess we're in.
Very well said, Elmerert Hupens2660. The rest of your post, too.
#3
Wat Ricks points to is essentially Vietnamization [a term we used to use for handing the mess over to the host country], as a departure strategy vs a plan for victory. I believe the comparison is all too appropriate. However terrible 9/11, over 70,000 Americans, along with an unknown number of indig anti-communist fighters, Auzzies, and Koreans, were lost in Vietnam.
BTW, Rick's article was passed to me by a recently retired Army two-star. You can bet it's made the back-channel circuit.
Posted by: Paul D ||
09/11/2013 8:09 Comments ||
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#5
Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
It's a cultural thing. You won't find a Pushtun that isn't, by western standards, corrupt.
Should have armed the Northern Alliance et al to the teeth and leveraged them against those who harbored and worked with any AQ or Taliban. Pushing and following them into N.Pakistan if necessary. Reward those who work with you, make those who don't pay dearly. Humans pick up on that sort of thing.
#7
We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam.
By the time we left Vietnam, it was a clear North Vietnam vs South Vietnam fight (see North Korea vs South Korea). The pretense of local forces was literally destroyed after Tet, except in the minds and reporting of MSM. After we 'left', the South stopped the first direct Northern invasion in its track. The South's forces demonstrated it could hold its own. Then the Donk dominated US Congress cut off supplies and funding. That's when the second direct invasion succeeded.
Posted by: Au Auric ||
09/11/2013 9:36 Comments ||
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#10
First rule of counterinsurgency: You never sets a deadline. If you do the insurgents know they have just to lay low enough to survive and collect the country once you leave. If you do formerly friendly people will begin help the insurgents so the insurgents don't kil them once you leave.
Only very stupid or people who want you to lose set deadlines.
#11
We should have put the Northern Alliance in charge instead of an election we knew would put the Pashtuns in power. With the Northern Alliance in power and the US providing air support (and blocking roads into and out of Pakistan) we could have buttoned the place up.
That sort of thing worked for every Empire in existance but we went the Democracy route.
Anyway, I feel the United States did our best to help the unworthy and found them wanting and I have no guilt whatsoever watching them slaughter each other now after so few of them stood up for civilization while they had the chance.
US servicemen are being photographed holding signs to hide their faces. This new form of Anonymous protest is addressed to their president.
"I didn't join the navy to fight for al-Qaeda in a Syrian civil war," read one sign posted on Facebook.
They know that al-Qaeda has become a leading force in the anti-Assad opposition. In Leb, al-Qaeda is poised to overthrow Hezbollah as the Lebanese turn against the "Party of God" for their intervention in Syria on behalf of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ... . In Sinai, al-Qaeda cells are consolidating their hold and are preparing for future action.
Will we wake up to Israel-v-al-Qaeda in in close combat in 2014? While the world's attention is on Syria, al- Qaeda prepares to take over power in Leb, on Israel's northern border.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigade launched a rocket attack against Israel on August 22. Initially, Israel thought this was yet another Hezbollah attack. It turned out that this new terror group was responsible. The Abdullah Azzam Brigade was founded by Saleh bin Abdallah al-Qarawi, a Saudi-Arabian operative of al-Qaeda. He fought in Iraq, and was badly maimed by an American missile in Afghanistan. Though no longer a fighter, he is still stirring up serious interference by forming cells close to Israel.
The group is named after a Paleostinian Arab, Abdullah Yusef Azzam, who was assassinated in Pakistain in 1989, but whose ideology was adopted by the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest... and al-Qaeda. The brigade has a branch in Leb located inside the Paleostinian refugee camps, mainly Ein al-Hilweh near Sidon.
The Lebanese branch also goes by the name of Ziad al-Jarrah Companies, and its mission is to launch attacks against Israel from its positions within the country. It recently announced a jihad against UN peacekeeping forces there. Ziad al-Jarrah may be a familiar name to American intelligence as he was one of the 19 Death Eaters responsible for the September 11 World Trade Center bombing in 2001.
With Hezbollah in disarray in Leb, the Abdullah Azzam Brigade killed one of their leaders near the Leb-Syria border in July. A month prior to that, it released a statement condemning Hezbollah for its involvement in Syria. This al-Qaeda affiliate will become one of the leading players in Leb's domestic conflict that will surely spill over onto the Israel side of their border.
On September 1, Egyptian forces jugged Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! Muhammed Ibrahim, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, in a bloody battle in which he attempted to explode two hand grenades while resisting arrest.
Egypt had previously arrested Ibrahim for the 2005 attack on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh that killed 88 people. Ibrahim managed to escape in a planned major breakout from four Egyptian jails in March 2011, which was part of the 2011 revolution against the Mubarak regime. Many al-Qaeda operatives, including Ibrahim, managed to escape capture and return to Sinai.
Ibrahim is accused of planning the Sinai attack in 2012 that killed 25 Egyptian soldiers.
Lawlessness has increased in Sinai since the removal from power of the Moslem Brüderbund president Mohamed Morsi. Terrorists continue to infiltrate Sinai and join up with rival groups with al-Qaeda being the most prominent.
Israel is happy to have the Egyptian army do battle with them but it knows that, eventually, Israel will be the prime target for a consolidated Sinai-based al- Qaeda. There is little doubt that the terror group is itching to have a go at Israel and an IDF intervention may only be a matter of time.
Despite efforts on the Iraq-Syria border, hundreds of al-Qaeda trained terrorists, and trucks filled with heavy and light weapons, have been flooding into Syria in a repeat of the Libyan scenario. One Iraqi official said that the ancient towns of Nineveh and Anbar have become "land bridges for the transportation of weapons and ammunition from al-Qaeda's huge arsenal built up over its years of existence in Iraq."
The funding of the al-Qaeda operations in Syria comes from Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... and the Persian Gulf state who are increasingly disillusioned with America's lack of leadership on Syria.
The Turkish military are training Syrian rebels many of whom are al-Qaeda operatives. Turkey is also providing heavy weaponry including anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets, mortars and heavy machine-guns.
Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area. That is not a horn growing from the middle of his forehead, but a prayer bump, attesting to how devout he is... , openly urged "the free people of Syria and its mujahideen" to overthrow Assad "the leader of criminal gangs."
Western impotence is allowing al-Qaeda to play an affirmative role in the Syrian opposition to Assad. It is increasingly clear that any victory over the Assad's Alawite coalition will be led by al-Qaeda forces that will not then go silently into the night but will remain in Syria as a spoiler for other conflicts in the region, the prime target of which will be Israel just over the border on the Golan Heights.
Faced with the mounting evidence of al-Qaeda successes in the region can anyone deny that Israel will not be forced to confront al-Qaeda across its borders, or even within Israel, in 2014?
This is a mere excerpt. Offhand, I'd say I don't think he liked it.
[DAILYCALLER] A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators. A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.
A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kidness of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society. This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn't care enough to stop her from getting them...
Stephanie Cutter is feminism mutated into grotesque cartoon. She is the 90-IQ suburbanite Student Council vice president smugly doodling her gel pens in the front row of the class, mixed with the ranting fever dreams of the Smith College lecture halls, doused with half a dash of unearned metropolitan haughtiness and marinated in the despicable shouting matches of post-Carville politicking. She is Carrie Bradshaw without the literacy, Chelsea Handler without the punch lines, Kirsten Powers without the prettiness, gorging her face with the spoils of ill-gotten first-world privilege. How did we allow this American with a Social Security number to power-walk through the halls of our society for 44 years (yes, Stephanie, forty-four) without recognizing the warning signs?
Posted by: Fred ||
09/11/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Nice review. Very evenhanded. No sarcasm intended in this comment...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/11/2013 9:23 Comments ||
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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.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Zawahiri
