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Long Wars and Peace Prizes
by Jeff Huber, October 13, 2009 at Antiwar.com
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has become the point man for the long-war mafia, delivered his ultimatum to President Barack Obama on Friday, Oct. 9. As has been his practice over the past several weeks, McChrystal proxy-leaked details of his demands through the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other sources. The Journal says one of McChrystal’s proposed options calls for 60,000 additional troops, and "several officials" say the "maximum variant" is even larger.
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Long Wars and Peace Prizes
by Jeff Huber, October 13, 2009 at Antiwar.com
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has become the point man for the long-war mafia, delivered his ultimatum to President Barack Obama on Friday, Oct. 9. As has been his practice over the past several weeks, McChrystal proxy-leaked details of his demands through the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other sources. The Journal says one of McChrystal’s proposed options calls for 60,000 additional troops, and "several officials" say the "maximum variant" is even larger.
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(This won't solve the Taliban problem, unless you are seriously talking about invading Pakistan proper, and dealing with them in Baluchistan, and the NWFP, which the Pakistan army will never do themselves, and can never do, and nor will they countenance American intervention......otherwise, therefore the Taliban "problem" will always linger........AND if you are thinking about invading Pakistan then you will require a heck of a lot more troops than a mere 60,000 more, unless after this escalation is granted you subsequently shout for more troops and more..............if later the American recession begins then your options for troop escalation and sustaining them will be limited anyway)
(This won't solve the Taliban problem, unless you are seriously talking about invading Pakistan proper, and dealing with them in Baluchistan, and the NWFP, which the Pakistan army will never do themselves, and can never do, and nor will they countenance American intervention......otherwise, therefore the Taliban "problem" will always linger........AND if you are thinking about invading Pakistan then you will require a heck of a lot more troops than a mere 60,000 more, unless after this escalation is granted you subsequently shout for more troops and more..............if later the American recession begins then your options for troop escalation and sustaining them will be limited anyway)
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How odd it will seem to future historians that the world’s sole superpower seriously considered escalating a war in a country that is not a threat to anyone. The most insane tenet of McChrystal’s proposals is to train up 400,000 Afghan security forces. 400,000 armed and trained Afghans is the last thing we want. Five years from now we’ll have to deploy 60,000 troops to defend Iran from Afghanistan. Won’t that be a kick in the cup?
How odd it will seem to future historians that the world’s sole superpower seriously considered escalating a war in a country that is not a threat to anyone. The most insane tenet of McChrystal’s proposals is to train up 400,000 Afghan security forces. 400,000 armed and trained Afghans is the last thing we want. Five years from now we’ll have to deploy 60,000 troops to defend Iran from Afghanistan. Won’t that be a kick in the cup?
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(Afghanistan given its level of governance, management, corruption, economic size and national resources can at best sustain a 100,000 military, and an additional 100,000 police and paramilitary; total 200,000; the projected 400,000 is way too unrealistic, and unsustainable.....creating more problems rather than actually solving anything in Afghanistan. Investing huge amounts of money on security when the money could be better spent on the Afghan people, and nation through infrastructure projects, education, health care, agricultural subsidies.....which permanently ingratiates them to America)
A "senior military official" says McChrystal is concerned that some of Obama’s advisers are telling him the Taliban are not a threat to the United States. That would be tantamount to Obama’s advisers telling him the sun doesn’t rise in the West. The Taliban want us to leave their country, that’s all. They may or may not get back control of Afghanistan if we leave it, but why should we care? Afghans have been controlling their own affairs for thousands of years, and not once have they invaded Poland or France.
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A "senior military official" says McChrystal is concerned that some of Obama’s advisers are telling him the Taliban are not a threat to the United States. That would be tantamount to Obama’s advisers telling him the sun doesn’t rise in the West. The Taliban want us to leave their country, that’s all. They may or may not get back control of Afghanistan if we leave it, but why should we care? Afghans have been controlling their own affairs for thousands of years, and not once have they invaded Poland or France.
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(The Taliban created by America in 1994, through the Pakistan military, and initially funded by certain Gulf countries was never a threat to the USA....It is a regional insurgency outfit controlled by the Pakistan military to achieve strategic depth viz India in Afghanistan, and envisaged as a force for stability, after the civil war which ensued when the Soviets departed Afghanistan.....The Taliban does not have any globalist pretensions and ambitions, factually stretched embellishments from Neocons aside.
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The Taliban realistically numbers about 10,000 armed with AK-47, operating for the last 15 years in Afghanistan, Baluchistan and the NWFP, areas where significant numbers of ethnic Pashtun dominate. So although an Islamic fundamentalist movement its true root/base is as an ethnic vehicle for the Pashtun community based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.........beyond this limited ethnic theater it has no further ambitions.)
The Times quotes the senior military official (he insisted on anonymity because he’s a sanctioned leaker) as saying, "The real question is, do you want the Taliban to be in power in Afghanistan? If you don’t, then they have to be addressed through a counterinsurgency campaign."
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(The Taliban don't have to be in power in Kabul....the Taliban is an ethnic Pashtun political/military vehicle controlled by the Pakistan military, which represents 40% of Afghans.......or to put it another way 60% of Afghan's are not Pashtun. The Northern Alliance is a credible center of power which is not Taliban, and there must be other centers of power within Afghan civil society which is not Taliban.
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Obviously when you promote murderers, criminals, drug trafficking warlords into the mainstream power structure of Afghanistan under foreign occupation, and project these very same people to ordinary Afghan's as sanctioned allies of American OVERTLY, and when ordinary Afghan's can patently observe and see them for what they really are, pure unadulterated criminals, there will obviously be a certain level of disenchantment which will set in, and a misguided yearning for sections of Afghan society out of sheer desperation to want to wish the old Taliban back into power in Afghanistan....................BUT this does not have to happen, when America leaves eventually....as they surely must.
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America should not waste its time fighting the Taliban, a thankless theoretically endless task given that there are 36 million Pashtun's in Af/Pak (6/7 million Pashtun men of military age?), but rather concentrate politically in grooming alternative credible leaders within Afghanistan who are effective, competent, have a mass support base, and finally who are organized militarily, and can seriously challenge the Taliban......The Northern Alliance shorn of its colorful characters; Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, RAWA and many other groups....America enables "good" moderate Afghans to both run their own country, and withstand the onslaught of the Pakistan military controlled Taliban.
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This does not mean ignoring the ethnically dominant Pashtuns, but finding moderate characters within their community who will work with a new government.
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This does not mean ignoring the ethnically dominant Pashtuns, but finding moderate characters within their community who will work with a new government.
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Finally it must mean ditching Karzai and the sham election circus for a better set of political leaders in Afghanistan. There sheer corruption, ineptitude fuels decisively a significant portion of the insurgency, which is then managed by the Pakistani military)
Poppycock. There are ways to address the Taliban other than through the kind of nation-birthing counterinsurgency campaign that McChrystal and his allies – who include Gen. David Petraeus and Adm. Mike Mullen – are trying to cram up our nose pores. Our counterinsurgency doctrine is a crock of beans. In the case of Afghanistan, it purports that we can transport a culture from the Middle Age to the 21st century by flooding it with teenagers armed with M-16s, Oakley sunglasses, and inferior body armor.
Poppycock. There are ways to address the Taliban other than through the kind of nation-birthing counterinsurgency campaign that McChrystal and his allies – who include Gen. David Petraeus and Adm. Mike Mullen – are trying to cram up our nose pores. Our counterinsurgency doctrine is a crock of beans. In the case of Afghanistan, it purports that we can transport a culture from the Middle Age to the 21st century by flooding it with teenagers armed with M-16s, Oakley sunglasses, and inferior body armor.
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(It will create a greater mess)
If the Taliban take back power in Afghanistan, so what? Hamid Karzai, the guy in power whom we’re backing now, is a knock-knock joke (Who’s there? Nobody). We’d have been far better off after 9/11 to tell one-eyed, illiterate Taliban leader Mohammed Omar to cough up Osama bin Laden in return for a shiny new Cadillac. At the cost of many millions of Cadillacs later, we’re no further along in Afghanistan than we were from the outset.
If the Taliban take back power in Afghanistan, so what? Hamid Karzai, the guy in power whom we’re backing now, is a knock-knock joke (Who’s there? Nobody). We’d have been far better off after 9/11 to tell one-eyed, illiterate Taliban leader Mohammed Omar to cough up Osama bin Laden in return for a shiny new Cadillac. At the cost of many millions of Cadillacs later, we’re no further along in Afghanistan than we were from the outset.
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( Mullah Omer head of the Taliban requested evidence of Osama's culpability in 9/11 before they considered handing him over to be tried in a court of law, from the American government........which was not forth coming, and hasn't been produced since; The FBI don't have him as a suspect on their website of the 9/11 culprits......so the refusal to hand him over to America was taken as a no, and America attacked Taliban Afghanistan in October 2001)
Obama’s National Security Adviser James Jones says al-Qaeda now has fewer than 100 fighters, and even McChrystal admits they aren’t in Afghanistan. Someone needs to explain why we should escalate a foreign war to counter a threat that is insignificant.
Pouring more troops into Afghanistan would be a travesty. We need to go back to a global security posture that looks like the one we had before we got into the business of nation-birthing, one in which we strike surgically with naval, air, and special operations forces, and step away. Invading and occupying countries as a national pastime is a grand strategy for fools.
Fred Kagan, the darling of the military-industrial-congressional complex, was a key contributor to McChrystal’s Afghanistan analysis. Neocon Kagan is a professional warmonger who never saw a war he didn’t like or couldn’t justify. (Defense contracts for all my friends!)
Obama’s National Security Adviser James Jones says al-Qaeda now has fewer than 100 fighters, and even McChrystal admits they aren’t in Afghanistan. Someone needs to explain why we should escalate a foreign war to counter a threat that is insignificant.
Pouring more troops into Afghanistan would be a travesty. We need to go back to a global security posture that looks like the one we had before we got into the business of nation-birthing, one in which we strike surgically with naval, air, and special operations forces, and step away. Invading and occupying countries as a national pastime is a grand strategy for fools.
Fred Kagan, the darling of the military-industrial-congressional complex, was a key contributor to McChrystal’s Afghanistan analysis. Neocon Kagan is a professional warmonger who never saw a war he didn’t like or couldn’t justify. (Defense contracts for all my friends!)
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(Ah the Jewish neo-cons......what would we do without them?)
The Pentagon’s blatant media assault on President Obama continues. It began around Sept. 18 when a McClatchy article noted that the military is growing "impatient" with Obama on Afghanistan and cited unnamed "officers at the Pentagon in Kabul" as saying McChrystal will resign if he doesn’t get what he wants. The leak of his analysis to Bob Woodward came on Sept. 21, in a story that warned "More Forces or Mission Failure." McChrystal’s 60 Minutes infomercial on Sept. 27 was a Douglas MacArthur-like act of blatant insubordination. McChrystal followed that with a speech in London to a warfare-centric think-tank in which he repeated his position: if Obama doesn’t give me what I want, it will be his fault when we lose.
Among the latest assaults is an Oct. 11 article from right-wing media maven Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London that heralds "Barack Obama ready to pay fighters to ditch the Taliban." Times doesn’t mention that bribing insurgents is precisely how "King David" Petraeus created the illusion of success in the Iraq surge. The article notes that "Despite five war councils in two weeks, President Barack Obama has so far failed to come up with a strategy for the conflict." The Pentagon has had eight years to come up with a strategy for Afghanistan and failed to come up with anything better than its long-war mantra, a policy that says we can’t win, we just want to keep fighting. Now, the lack of a coherent strategy is somehow the fault of Obama, who has been commander in chief for less than a year.
The Pentagon’s blatant media assault on President Obama continues. It began around Sept. 18 when a McClatchy article noted that the military is growing "impatient" with Obama on Afghanistan and cited unnamed "officers at the Pentagon in Kabul" as saying McChrystal will resign if he doesn’t get what he wants. The leak of his analysis to Bob Woodward came on Sept. 21, in a story that warned "More Forces or Mission Failure." McChrystal’s 60 Minutes infomercial on Sept. 27 was a Douglas MacArthur-like act of blatant insubordination. McChrystal followed that with a speech in London to a warfare-centric think-tank in which he repeated his position: if Obama doesn’t give me what I want, it will be his fault when we lose.
Among the latest assaults is an Oct. 11 article from right-wing media maven Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London that heralds "Barack Obama ready to pay fighters to ditch the Taliban." Times doesn’t mention that bribing insurgents is precisely how "King David" Petraeus created the illusion of success in the Iraq surge. The article notes that "Despite five war councils in two weeks, President Barack Obama has so far failed to come up with a strategy for the conflict." The Pentagon has had eight years to come up with a strategy for Afghanistan and failed to come up with anything better than its long-war mantra, a policy that says we can’t win, we just want to keep fighting. Now, the lack of a coherent strategy is somehow the fault of Obama, who has been commander in chief for less than a year.
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(Paying money to Taliban members to stop fighting occupation forces is a loser .....how do you determine which of the 6/7 million Pashtuns of fighting age in Af/Pak is a member of the Taliban?....whats to stop all of them coming forward to volunteer not to fight again as Taliban.........in a region with very low incomes this might work out as a good scam for many impoverished Pashtuns......but, how do you guarantee that once money is taken as a bribe they won't fight again, whats to stop them reneging on their promise....speaking of financial scams this is exactly the sort of thing which allows sticky fingered Pentagon/military officials to make some war profits on the side.........."Monday 2,000 Taliban came forward........we gives them $1,000 each......so total $4 million.......yea yea write that down on the receipt book..........there's Abdul, and Abdul, and Abdul, and Abdul, and his brother Abdul, and his cousin Abdul, and his nephew Abdul, and his friend Mohammed, and .........Tuesday $5 million....Wednesday $10 million big ones...........Woowoa, Mr. President keep it coming, we're winning ."
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If we recall a few trillion $ are unaccounted for in the Pentagon ledger, as stated in 10th September 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld. "al-Qaeda" helpfully killed ALL the accountants in the one room, out of thousands in the Pentagon, looking for those Pentagon zillions, unfortunately the next day on 9/11.
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Seriously.........lets fund Afghan's who are really honest, effective and not corrupt to run their own country instead......lets give these types the money.....they are not difficult to find, because most Afghan's belong to this category.......lets get rid of Karzai finally....then put the squeeze on the Pakistan military to stop funding the Taliban.)
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Obama made an enormous mistake when he called the Afghanistan conflict a "war of necessity." We need to fight in Afghanistan like fish need running shoes. Afghanistan is a discombobulated society that couldn’t work itself out of a paper bag. Al-Qaeda consists of fewer than 100 fighters, and the Taliban, which our intelligence describes as a "franchise operation," has no interest in or capability of invading the United States.
Let’s hope our Nobel winner finds the courage to stand up to the media blitz he’s facing.
Obama made an enormous mistake when he called the Afghanistan conflict a "war of necessity." We need to fight in Afghanistan like fish need running shoes. Afghanistan is a discombobulated society that couldn’t work itself out of a paper bag. Al-Qaeda consists of fewer than 100 fighters, and the Taliban, which our intelligence describes as a "franchise operation," has no interest in or capability of invading the United States.
Let’s hope our Nobel winner finds the courage to stand up to the media blitz he’s facing.
