Sunday, October 25, 2009

Obama White House Can't Remember Who Blew Up the Marine Barracks in Beirut

Of course, Obama White House Does Not Want to Accuse Any Moslems of this Murder

White House on Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing--Can't Remember Who Murdered 241 Americans

Friday, October 23, 2009

[Please subscribe. There's too much news from the Middle East to miss a single article; and too little good analysis in the media to miss a single analysis.]

By Barry Rubin

The White House has just released a very routine but still quite disturbing declaration by President Barack Obama. And it goes like this:

"On the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, we remember today the 241 American Marines, soldiers, and sailors who lost their lives 26 years ago as the result of a horrific terrorist attack that destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The military personnel serving in Beirut were there to bring peace and stability to Lebanon after years of internal strife and conflict. The murder of our soldiers, sailors, and Marines on this day on 1983 remains a senseless tragedy....In remembering this terrible day of loss, we are at the same time hopeful that a new government in Lebanon will soon be formed. We look forward to working with a Lebanese government that works actively to promote stability in the region and prosperity for its people."

The problem is not so much the wording of the declaration but the context in which it's issued. After all, the president of the United States has access to U.S. intelligence. And U.S. intelligence knows:

--That the bombing was carried out by cadre of Hizballah under the guidance of Syria and Iran.

--Today, attacks are being carried out against U.S. military personnel in Iraq under the guidance of Syria and Iran, and

--Iran is trying to stage such attacks in Afghanistan.

--In addition, Iran's current minister of defense was the head of covert operations at the time that these were killing U.S. citizens.

--Hizballah was involved in other attacks on U.S. citizens and servicemen in Lebanon.

--It is also the anniversary of the killing of three U.S. security agents by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who the Palestinian Authority never punished and Hamas is now protecting. There is no apparent effort by the U.S. government to bring these killers to justice or to press the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to cooperate in doing so or to punish them for not doing so.

All of these forces, however, are left anonymous. No one is named for involvement in that "horrific terrorist attack." And, of course the attack was not "senseless" but part of an Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah campaign to take over Lebanon and drive U.S. influence out of the region. In fact, it was counted as a great victory for these forces since it showed America's vulnerability to being hit by terrorism--an inspiration for September 11?--and did succeed in paralyzing the U.S. effort in Lebanon. Ultimately, this lead to the withdrawal of the peace-keeping forces altogether, paving the way for Syria's turning Lebanon into a satellite state for two decades at a great financial and strategic profit. .

None of these attacks were perpetrated by al-Qaida, the only group that remains a target of this administration's version of a war on terrorism, a phrase which is no longer used.

It is bad enough the administration doesn't say any of this. Is it aware of these factors at all?

Indeed, the president's advisor on terrorism is on record as saying that Hizballah is no longer a terrorist group, which opens the door for U.S. contacts in future.

This raises the question of the declaration's final sentence. Let's repeat it:

"We look forward to working with a Lebanese government that works actively to promote stability in the region and prosperity for its people."

While negotiations are complex and ongoing, the government being discussed for Lebanon would include a large contingent of Hizballah cabinet ministers and would give Hizballah veto power over government decisions.

Now it could be argued that this would not constitute, in U.S. eyes, a goverment promoting stability and prosperity. But who knows? Without even naming Hizballah as an adversary, however, the implication is that the United States does not oppose a government including Hizballah, which is one more step to having such a government.

Consider just one such additional case. Colonel William Richard Higgins, kidnapped by Hizballah men while serving with UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon in 1988, horribly tortured, turned over to the Iranians and murdered. Does the White House remember him?

So 241 U.S. servicemen died 26 years ago. Who killed them? Will the murders be punished in any way or will the groups and states that stood behind the attack be rewarded? On this, the declaration is silent.

PS: After I wrote this, Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, one of the commanders of the Marine force in Beirut, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post pointing out that the current and previous Iranian defense minister were involved in the attack: Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar (defense minister, 2005-2009) was head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps force in Lebanon and in charge of carrying out the attack while his successor, General Ahmad Vahidi, was involved in planning the attack.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

New Book: Barry Rubin, Guide to Islamist Movements...

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Fitzgerald: The "New" Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

NOTE: This article and Bill Warner's will give you a full understanding of why building up Islamic nations will NOT stop the jihad.

Reprinted from How to Stop the Islamic Jihad
Originally published at Jihad Watch

The "New" Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The policy announced for Afghanistan and Pakistan depresses. It’s all about training the locals. It’s all about helping them. It’s all about giving them aid, and still more aid, from the depleted, practically cupboard-is-bare coffers of the Americans, and other Infidel taxpayers. Far from reflecting "new thinking," it is the mixture as before. It is the mixture, that is, that ignores the nature of Islam, the texts of Islam, the tenets and attitudes and atmospherics that naturally flow from those texts. Instead, those making policy (see, for example, my article "A Tribute to Bruce Riedel") are still believers that "prosperity" among Muslims will do wonders. But did the “prosperity” brought by oil wealth make Saudi Arabia, make Iran, make any Muslim country, less of a threat than it was before it possessed that oil wealth? Or doesn’t economic prosperity simply allow for the leisure time to devote to spreading the doctrine of, and perhaps directly participating in, Jihad?

Those who fashioned this policy, or who are continuing, rather, the Bush policy of bringing this “prosperity” and “unity” to fictions called “the Iraqi people” and “the Afghani people” and “the Pakistani people,” when each of these countries is riven by ethnic and sectarian divisions, refuse to realize that the task of making Muslim states "prosperous" through the lavishing of Western aid (and that includes military aid and training) will not bring prosperity. It will not remove the ethnic and sectarian divisions. Above all, it will do nothing to decrease hostility toward Infidels, for that is in the Qur’an, the Hadith and the Sira, and no amount of aid can erase what remains, immutable, in the Qur’an, the “most authentic” of the Hadith, the Sira.

Furthermore, it is Islam itself that stands in the way of long-term prosperity for all Muslim states and societies. Look around the world. Where, among Muslims, is there prosperity? In the Muslim oil states, the prosperity, or rather fantastic unearned wealth, is the result of an accident of geology. What amazes is not the wealth, but rather that despite the fantastic unmerited wealth, which since 1973 alone has amounted to more than twelve trillion dollars, not one of these states has built a modern economy, and not one of them shows any signs of being capable of doing so. And in the non-oil Muslim states, such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, large sums have been and are being spent by Infidels, in torrents of Jizyah-aid (that is, aid that is given, and never reduced, by fearful Infidel donors, to Muslim recipients who exhibit no gratitude, and pocket the aid as their due from Infidels), without any sign of the kind of economic activity that, for example, the countries of East Asia have engaged in to pull themselves, without any such aid, out of poverty.

Then there is the disguised Jizyah, within Muslim countries, whereby wealth is extracted from the non-Muslim, industrious and entrepreneurial part of the population, as with the Bumiputra system in Malaysia that transfers wealth from the Hindus and Chinese to the Muslim Malays, while the real "sons of the soil" -- the christianized or pagan tribes, the true indigenes -- are ruthlessly driven off their ancestral lands by the Muslim Malays, and when they try to resist, are simply killed. In Turkey, the creation of a modern economy has been the result of the reforms put in by Ataturk, involving the systematic sidelining of Islam. And though today, in Turkey, one finds even some successful Muslim entrepreneurs, the general attitude, and the diminished role of Islam, has created the possibility for economic development even by Muslims as well as, more naturally, by the secular, more advanced, Turks.

Islam makes prosperity less likely -- compare Singapore with Malaysia, or India with Pakistan -- because of the general inshallah-fatalism, which discourages the kind of work that creates modern economies, but also because the more general discouragement of free inquiry, of any kind of questioning (for Allah Ta’Allah, Allah Knows Best), and the collectivism of Islam, all act as a brake on entrepreneurial activity, on new ways of manufacturing, or new ways of distributing goods or offering services. There are, in India, some entrepreneurs who call themselves Muslims. But they benefit from living in a country that is 90% non-Muslim, and where, furthermore, they are freer to take their Islam a little less seriously. But the odd Muslim billionaire is an exception, not the rule -- except where the billions come from oil.

Furthermore, the new American policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan naively assumes, as did the previous, Bush-administration policy, that peoples in Muslim countries share the same view of what constitutes political legitimacy. They do not. Legitimacy for Believers in Islam is to be located not in the will expressed by the people, however imperfectly, but rather in the will expressed by Allah -- perfectly -- in the Qur'an, as glossed (for Sunni Muslims) by the Sunnah. The dreamy belief that "ordinary moms and dads" would like "freedom" in the Western sense, as Bush so famously said about Iraq, continues in the "new" (but very old) policy just announced for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For Muslims, the chief loyalty must be to Islam. No one has yet been able to show any texts, other than the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, upon which the so-called "extremists" rely, while it is easy to show that it is only by ignoring the texts that "moderate" Muslims can make their shaky case. Islam is more important than, superior to, the claims of the nation-state. Loyalty must be not only to Islam, but to other Muslims, when those Muslims are threatened by non-Muslims or when they are in conflict with them. Members of the Umma are taught that whenever other members of the Umma are in conflict with Infidels, the side of the Believers must be taken.

But at the same time, if the Muslim nation-state remains for its own Muslims an unnatural, novel, and still doubtful idea among Muslims (and the Infidel nation-state is owed no loyalty at all, for such loyalty would not, islamically, make sense), the real loyalty, aside from the loyalty to Islam and the Umma, is at the smaller level, the local level, the level of family, of clan, and of tribe. For the loyalty to clan, and murderousness toward members of other clans, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel (the Dogon, the Isaq, the Osman Mahamud of Somalia). For loyalty to tribe, see Anbar Province, or see the war, settled only by war, between the Al-Saud and the Al-Shammar), or see the wars of the Uzbeks and the Tadzhiks and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan, or see the Baluchis fighting in Pakistan, or see, see, see (fill in your own examples here). In other words, loyalty for Muslims is either to a concept greater than the nation-state (Islam and the Umma), or smaller than the nation-state (family, clan, tribe).

There is nothing in the announced policy that shows that those behind these policies have understood that the threat of Islam is worldwide, and that it is not based on novel texts, but on the immutable texts -- Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira -- of Islam. The concept of Jihad fell into desuetude over the last few centuries because, within the backwater of Islam, there was little ability to conduct Jihad. The last direct Muslim assault in Europe was by the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. From then on, the decline of Ottoman power led to a series of defeats. In the Mediterranean, Muslim corsairs (often carefully listing their intended Christian targets or at least their intended hunting-grounds for such Christian shipping) preyed on the ships, and enslaved the seamen, of Christian powers, until the American Republic showed that military force could work. But that lesson wore off, and the French took control of Algeria in 1830 in order to put paid, once and for all, to such
attacks). The heyday of Muslim would-be "reformers" was in the early decades of the 20th century, when Muslim power seemed, and was, at its lowest point. The most intelligent Muslims began to see that Islam itself might have to be "reformed" to rescue Muslims.

Another kind of Muslim reformer was Kemal Pasha, that is Ataturk, who attributed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to Islam itself. In order to avoid complete catastrophe for the Turks, in order to allow them to take part in the modern world, Ataturk -- himself a Turkish war hero at Gallipoli, and a man ruthless enough to destroy mosques and imprison or kill clerics who opposed him -- set out to systematically divorce the practice of Islam from the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs. He commissioned a Qur'an in Turkish, with accompanying tafsir or commentary in Turkish). He gave the vote to women. He passed the Hat Act, banning the fez and encouraging the wearing of Western-style caps that made prayer a little more difficult. He outlawed the wearing of the hijab by women in state universities, and created, in the army, an outpost of secularism, where any man seen reading the Qur'an too devoutly could be, and was, cashiered. He created a system of law that no longer took the Shari'a as its model, and in theory at least -- and increasingly even in practice, though the attitudes of Islam long survive even among supposedly "secular" Turks -- non-Muslims were given legal equality.

The Return of Jihad, as a practice, with goals that now seem to many Muslims within reach, has not been the result of a new doctrine or new texts. It has been, rather, the result of changes in the perceived power of Muslims. Incapable of becoming rich through industry and enterprise (because Islam discourages innovation, bida, including new ways of approaching economic problems, or societal needs that might be met by economic progress, as well as, because of inshallah-fatalism, acting as a brake on economic activity), Muslims have nonetheless been the recipients of the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. The Muslim oil states, and their grasping rulers, have received since 1973 alone more than twelve trillion dollars. They have not shared their wealth with the truly poor, but instead have allowed those poor (the greatest victims of the rise in oil prices), in Africa and elsewhere, to sink. They have not even shared their wealth with fellow Muslim states, except when they feel directly threatened (thus, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the U.A.E. did give sixty billion to Iraq, in order to support its war against even more dangerous, Shi'a Iran). They were perfectly content to allow the Infidels of Europe and America to shell out tens or even, over time, hundreds of billions, to support an impoverished Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and of course everyone's favorite object of Infidel charity, the soi-disant "Palestinian people." That people was invented precisely to repackage in acceptable camouflaged national-liberation two-tiny-peoples form, the Arab and Muslim Jihad-without-end against truly tiny, and imperiled, Israel.

In Washington, it seems that among those still at the top, the understanding of Islam, even the grasping of the need to responsibly study what Islam inculcates, is still horribly, expensively, absent. No one has yet seen fit to define what "victory" in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, would or should mean. What it should mean is this: an end result, in which the Camp of Islam is weaker than it was before. That is not the same thing as merely defeating, through killing the leaders or members of, Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is merely the name given to one group, the one that was most successful in its efforts at using terrorism as its main weapon against Infidels. But if every single member of Al Qaeda were to disappear, that would not change the nature of Islam. Nor would it change the doctrine, and central duty, of Jihad, defined most correctly as "the struggle to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam all over the world." Terrorism is merely one instrument of Jihad, and in the most important theatre of war, Western Europe, not the most effective instrument. In Western Europe, the Jihad is mainly conducted through the deployment of the Money Weapon, carefully-targeted and well-financed campaigns of Da'wa among the Infidels (especially those who are economically or psychically marginal), and demographic conquest -- the sheer numbers of Muslims, who have managed even now to outbreed, on the Infidel taxpayers' dole, the locals, and as a consequence, have been pressing their demands and pressuring politicians every which way. And no matter how often they may be rebuffed, they keep coming back, and will continue to do so until such time as they are made to recognize that the legal and political institutions and social understandings of Infidel societies are not open to being changed in order to satisfy the arrogant upholders of the divine right of the Shari'a, that in every important respect flatly contradicts, in letter and spirit, the advanced Western democracies.

The inattention to Western Europe is the most disturbing feature of American policy toward Islam. Whether Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, sink into the natural misrule and misery and anarchy that Muslim states, without a local despot, or despotic ruling family, often endure, hardly matters for the future of the West. With the Muslim despot, or the despotic family, the misrule and injustice remain, but not the anarchy and the free-for-all. What matters most is whether Europe, where the West originates, and where its cultural monuments are mostly to be found, will endure, without the threat from within of an Islamic population, allowed to grow ever larger, mainly on the Infidel taxpayers’ dole, and allowed to receive financial backing from the sinister Saudis and other rich Muslims from outside of Europe. Americans may think they can do without Europe, that the islamization of Europe does not matter much to them, but they are wrong. The United States cannot survive, without moral and cultural collapse, the continued islamization of the nation-states of Western Europe. The loss of access to universities, museums, to the places where Western civilization was made and that made Western civilization, would be devastating. The loss of Europe’s modern armories to the control of Muslims would be dangerous. The likelihood, in any case, of civil strife within Europe, when the indigenes finally ignore their too-passive or too-appeasing governments and begin to take back their own countries from the hostile invaders, will be unavoidable. And the United States will have to take sides – the right side. There is no hint that anyone in Washington is thinking ahead beyond the next few years, nor any hint that the future islamization of Western Europe is being discussed, even behind closed doors.

Only those able to recognize the Islamic threat are likely to take those minimal measures that are perfectly justified to deal with an unprecedented threat from within that is only now, and only in places, being fully grasped and correctly analyzed. The exaggerated attention given first to Iraq, and now apparently to be transferred to Afghanistan and Pakistan, means that the confusion and delay in recognizing the relative insignificance of these places, and the importance of Western Europe and the Jihad being conducted there, will continue. That is unacceptable.

It is fascinating to consider what those in the State Department whose responsibility it is to monitor the situation in Europe are reporting to others. Do they see what advanced Europeans see? Do they recognize the threat? Are they, within the State Department, attempting to raise the alarm about the islamization of Western Europe? Do they talk about the instruments of Jihad in Western Europe, such as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest? Do they speak their mind, or are they afraid of offending, or coming into conflict with, the desks of those who cover the Muslim countries, and so often are staffed by apologists (both non-Muslim and Muslim) for Islam? If they are doing their duty, there should be a war on, right now, within the State Department and in the Pentagon. It should be between those who have grasped the ideology of Islam and those who have not. There should be at least some there who have studied the history of Islamic conquest over the past 1350 years, and have understood what conditions in the modern world have put into practice what for a while, in the circumstances of obvious Muslim weakness, had remained merely doctrine, the immutable doctrine of Jihad.

There are many in the West whose educations in history and literature have been insufficient to provide them either with the ballast of fact (which the study of history provides) or its necessary complement, the air-balloon of the imagination (which the study of literature can provide, or at least a bookish nature), and yet who have risen high, and are now making policy. They do not know, and therefore do not appreciate, and are insufficiently grateful for, the development of advanced Western democracies, with their solicitude for the rights of the individual. They do not know the conditions that make freedom of artistic expression possible, or free and skeptical inquiry. Nor do they understand how deeply antithetical these are to Islam, and to Muslims who take their Islam seriously. Unschooled in history or political thought, often having acquired not an education, but a mere degree, which need not signify an education, they are not able to rise to the historic occasion. (There are those who think that those now dealing with the economic degringolade suffer from the same insufficiencies.) Knowledge of the history of the Western world, and of American history, would encourage self-confidence about the West, while those who know nothing or little are most easily pushed around by the assorted chomskys and churchills of our world, and by the sly apologists for Islam who are not only adept at hiding what Islam teaches, past masters of taqiyya, but also dab hands at the rhetorical everyone-does-it-we-are-all-equally-guilty of Tu-Quoque. The less those who make policy know about the history of the development of the Western world, the more likely it is that they will be unable to grasp the size, and full horror, of the threat that Islam poses to Europe, to its art, its science, its freedoms.

The right study of history provides that indispensable ballast of knowledge that helps ensure Western self-confidence, and the certain result is an intelligent alarm about the present imperilments. The right study of literature -- the not-unduly-professional study, by teachers with sufficient allure -- strengthens the muscles of the imagination (what could happen? What would an Islamized Europe look like?), and encourages a vigilance with words that enables one better to detect blague in the pronouncements of others, and to express one’s own thoughts with clarity, in a way more likely to convince. It used to be a given that the old ruling elites looked to Europe. They had studied, and could read, French. They travelled to Europe, and spent summers there. They may not have been members of the English-Speaking Union, but they understood the civilizational connection, one that had nothing to do with trade or other economic activity. Theodore Roosevelt (impressing Lord Grey of Falloden with his knowledge of English birds) and FDR and others learned European history in high school. They studied subjects likely to reinforce their interest in and knowledge of Europe. This included immigrants who learned not multiculturalism, whatever that may mean, but about the History of the West. One did not have to attend Groton, as did FDR, or have rooms on the Gold Coast at

Harvard, or read French easily, as so many Boston Brahmins did. Anyone who studied history would see the link, the necessary link, between Europe and America. The political elite in this country no longer consists of those who feel that connection to Europe. A few years ago I suggested at this site that possibly American academics, enjoying summer houses in Brittany or Provence, in Tuscany or Umbria, and forced to talk to their neighbors, and forced to learn about the tumbril-rumblings of Islam growing louder, might return from their Old-World villegiatures to start spreading the alarm about things they learned of in Europe. Even those summer houses might help to do the trick.

The military alliance that matters most to the United States remains that of NATO. The civilizational connection that matters most is that with Europe. Our history is connected most to the peoples and states of Europe. Now imagine if the Americans who make policy continue to ignore the Muslim threat in Western Europe. Imagine if they ignore the effects of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, demographic conquest. Imagine if peoples and politicians in Western Europe wake up, and feel that things must be done to halt and reverse growing Muslim power, and the Muslim presence, in Western Europe. The people will wake up in this way out of a recognized instinct for self-preservation that will overcome the false Idols –“multicultural diversity” – of the Age. Will the Americans be ready to help them, to encourage them? Or imagine that Europeans do not wake up in sufficient numbers. And imagine an islamized Europe, one where a self-confident, aggressive Muslim population, even before it becomes an absolute majority, can work its will (look at the demands made by Muslims now, when they are less than 5% of the population everywhere but France). Imagine that this minority puts political pressure, through the acquired vote, to force the governments and peoples of Europe to remove every remaining obstacle to the spread and dominance of Islam, to distance itself from the United States, to end any military alliance with the United States, and to work to force what by that time will be Fortress America to follow the example of Western Europe and to meet Muslim demands, for changes in laws and customs that conflict with the spirit and letter of the Shari’a.

Those who think that “prosperity” and “reconstruction” or “construction” in Afghanistan or Pakistan can mean much of anything in modifying the hostility that Islam inculcates are wrong. Those who think, after the horrific example of Iraq, that squandering more men, money, materiel, and morale, now in such places as Pakistan and Afghanistan, will somehow help to diminish the threat that Islam poses, and not, pace policymakers, Al Qaeda or other “extremists” pose, is just the ticket, will eventually be disabused. The facts will force it. But why must there be such fantastic waste? All it takes is a little more fearlessness in analyzing and grasping the nature of Islam. Then, having grasped it, policymakers must figure out how to use features of Islam itself, and the pre-existing fissures among Islamic peoples (sectarian, ethnic, and economic), to divide, demoralize, and weaken the Camp of Islam (a camp that exists only in relation to Infidels, but is fissiparous once the Infidels are not immediately present), in order to buy time while the Western world and the rest of the Infidel world comes to its senses.

Posted by Hugh on March 30, 2009 7:50 AM

Bill Warner's "The Higher You Go, the Less They Know," can be found at  http://islamicdangerfu.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-war-against-jihad-higher-you-go-less.html

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Pakistan's Double Game

By Bruce P. Cameron
October 18, 2009
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/101709b.html
via Shadow Warrior http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/10/pakistans-double-game.html

The core challenge to President Barack Obama’s Afghan War may not be the Taliban, nor even al-Qaeda, but rather Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence service, the ISI, with its dual loyalties when it comes to fighting Islamic extremists.

Indeed, the success of Obama’s Af-Pak policy may depend on whether Pakistan’s ISI – officially named the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate – can be neutralized or dismantled.

If the ISI remains intact, Obama may never know exactly what side of the street the Pakistani government is really working, given ISI’s historic role in organizing many of the miltant Islamic forces that are now challenging U.S. interests in the region.

During the long-simmering dispute with India over Kashmir, ISI-backed Pakistani Taliban were deployed to bloody up Pakistan's bitter rival, Hindu-ruled India. In the mid-1990s, the ISI-organized Afghan Taliban were used to establish an Afghan regime closely tied to Pakistan.

Those groups of ISI-trained militants are now at the center of the Af-Pak conflicts, with the Afghan Taliban fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban seeking to dislodge the Pakistani government, which the ISI ostensibly serves.

These dual loyalties also are not confined to the ISI. In Pakistan, which defines itself as an Islamic republic, a substantial minority if not a majority of military officers believe they should not fight fellow Muslims but should save most of their resources for the main battle against India and to a lesser extent the United States.

Many of these officers will play a double game, appearing to side with the Americans to get needed resources, but it is just that, a game.

Strong sympathy for the militants pervades 20 percent of the officer corps that is of Pashtun ancestry and thus has tribal loyalties to the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.

The ISI’s role in organizing and nurturing the Afghan Taliban forces also has created strong personal as well as institutional bonds. The ISI’s own rise from a minor part of the Pakistani intelligence community to its most influential element tracked with its work organizing those paramilitary militant forces.

The Covert War

In the 1980s, Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq assigned the ISI to handle the billions of dollars in aid pouring in from the United States and Saudi Arabia to help the Afghan mujahedeen fight a Soviet army that was propping up an Afghan communist regime.

ISI officers were steeped in Zia’s mindset which promoted Islamic fundamentalism as a way to advance the cause of securing Kashmir for Pakistan and dominating Afghanistan. President Zia pushed this militant Islamic vision from 1977 until his death in 1988.

As the war with the Soviets raged in Afghanistan, the ISI also helped set up madrassas for young male Afghan refugees inside Pakistan, teaching them a fundamentalist form of Islam.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989 and the communist government fell in 1992, chaos reigned in Afghanistan as warlords fought for control. To establish order – and ensure a pro-Pakistani regime in Afghanistan – the ISI fashioned the refugee students into a well-disciplined military force called the Taliban.

In 1996, the Taliban wrested control of Afghanistan, driving out a rival force, the Northern Alliance, which Pakistan suspected of having ties to India. That defeated group, led by Tajik mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, took refuge in the far north.

With the Taliban’s victory, the ISI was no longer just an adviser to the Afghan militants; it was a full partner in the new government.

The ISI also organized a network of Pakistani Pashtuns to assist the comings and goings of al-Qaeda, a band of Arab extremists who first arrived in Pakistan to assist the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and later turned their anti-Western fury on the United States.

That Pakistani network merged with the Pakistani militants who had been part of the Kashmir struggle, creating a powerful Pakistani Taliban movement that is now spreading rapidly across the country.

Post 9/11

The double game played by the Pakistani military and intelligence services came into focus in 2001 when Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf found himself in a tight spot after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

President George W. Bush gave Musharraf an ultimatum: join the international community and fight al-Qaeda or face the whirlwind. Musharraf agreed to assist in the “war on terror,” as did the ISI – at least publicly.

Behind the scenes, however, the ISI immediately created and funded an organization -- mainly staffed by retired ISI officers -- to assist and fund the Afghan Taliban in their resistance to the Americans. [See Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos, p. 222.]

Some ISI agents even balked at leaving Afghanistan when ordered to do so, choosing instead to stay behind and help the Taliban during the U.S. invasion in October 2001.

Most of these ISI operatives were caught along with other foreign fighters (including many Arabs) when the Northern Alliance surrounded Kunduz.

Musharraf intervened with Bush to gain permission for an airlift that transported the Pakistanis and some foreign fighters to safety.

This event, which Pakistanis call the “Great Escape,” convinced many in the Pakistani army that they could continue to play their double game with the United States, confident that some officials in the Bush administration remained sympathetic.

(The airlift likely saved the lives of those fortunate enough to get out, since the Northern Alliance suffocated many of their captives by locking them in trailers.) [See Rashid’s Descent into Chaos, p. 91.]

The Pakistani army also contributed to what might have been President Bush’s worst military blunder when he counted on the Pakistanis to block escape routes from Tora Bora as U.S. warplanes pounded al-Qaeda’s base camps.

When Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants fled to Pakistan, they evaded the Pakistani army which proved ineffective in preventing key al-Qaeda personnel from reaching safe havens in Pakistan.

Dubious Loyalties

Though Pakistan maintained a surface cooperation with the United States – helping to capture a number of second-level al-Qaeda operatives holed up in Pakistan – suspicions remained about the true sentiments of the Pakistani government and especially the ISI.

Six years after 9/11, NATO officers serving in Afghanistan blamed U.S. failure to get tough with Pakistan as a key impediment to defeating the Afghan Taliban, which operated from bases along the Pakistani border.

When the Pakistani army did mount an offensive in the border region two years ago, it suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban. Western analysts suspected that the army officers didn’t have their heart in fighting their former allies.

Even today as the Pakistani army finally has stepped up its attacks on the Pakistani Taliban – after the group launched a campaign of terrorist attacks designed to destabilize the Pakistani government – Pakistani officials still are unwilling to engage the Afghan Taliban.

In July, Pakistani officials complained to the Obama administration that a U.S. Marine offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan was driving more militants into the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

“Pakistan does not have enough troops to deploy to Baluchistan to take on Taliban without denuding its border with its archenemy, India,” the Pakistanis told the Americans, according to New York Times reporters Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez.

“The Pakistani account made clear that even as the United States recommits troops and other resources to take on a growing Taliban threat, Pakistani officials still consider India their top priority and the Taliban militants a problem that can be negotiated.

“In the long term, the Taliban in Afghanistan may even remain potential allies for Pakistan, as they were in the past, once the United States leaves. …

“The United States maintains that the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammed Omar, leads an inner circle of commanders who guide the war in southern Afghanistan from their base in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.

“American officials say this Taliban council, known as the Quetta shura, is sheltered by Pakistani authorities, who may yet want to employ the Taliban as future allies in Afghanistan.” [NYT, July 22, 2009]

Stark Choice

With the Pakistani military still playing its old double game – and still obsessed about India – the Obama administration faces a stark choice: either shower Pakistan with aid money in hopes that the situation will improve, or pursue a policy of isolating Pakistan and giving only limited amounts of humanitarian and development aid.

The first course is the current policy as reflected in the $7.5 billion civilian aid package signed by Obama on Thursday. Despite the American largesse, the aid bill raised hackles in Pakistan because it included conditions like greater civilian control over the military and a demand that Pakistan stop supporting militant groups.

Pakistani officials criticized the conditions as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty, prompting a White House statement that sought to smooth the ruffled feathers.

The second approach, isolating nuclear-armed Pakistan, could have two likely results:

The Pakistani people, in a voluntary act of the exercise of people’s power, might overthrow the ISI and related army generals and form a new government of national reconciliation with prospects for democracy and a healthier civil society.

Or more likely, there would be a coup against the democratically elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, who would be replaced by a pro-Taliban military officer. Given Pakistan’s possession of a small nuclear arsenal, that prospect terrifies many U.S. officials.

However, despite the risks, I regard an isolation strategy as superior to current policy because it would clarify the truth about the Pakistani military – that it continues to coddle violent extremists as part of its strategy to undermine India.

In time, I believe the Pakistani people would act like the people of Iraq and find a way out of the current chaos.

In Iraq, it was the Sunni tribal leaders’ rejection of al-Qaeda extremism and the unilateral cease-fire by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia forces – not the actions of Gen. David Petraeus – that contributed the most to the relative peace in Iraq today.

Similarly, Pakistani-based terror attacks like the one on Mumbai, India, and against the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan – as well as the spread of harsh Taliban control over parts of western Pakistan – could cause the Pakistani people to rise up against the extremists and their ISI allies.

In my view, the United States will never have a fruitful partnership with the Pakistani government until the ISI is gone, their personnel dispersed and their buildings razed.

The Afghan Theater

Afghanistan represents a different, though related, problem, with the pressing issue there the level of U.S. troops – now at about 65,000 – with Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommending about 40,000 more.

But the more fundamental problem is the lack of qualified Afghan officials and a functioning Afghan government. By and large, Afghanistan has been without a professional cadre of bureaucrats since the communist government collapsed in 1992. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Afghanistan Really Fell Apart.”]

While President Hamid Karzai’s administration is frequently denounced for corruption, it also deserves condemnation for ignoring the tedious work of building a skilled government bureaucracy.

And it makes little sense for a beefed-up U.S. military to occupy unsecured areas and provide government services when Afghanistan lacks the civil affairs personnel to take over those jobs.

This summer, after 4,500 U.S. Marines routed Taliban forces from parts of Helmand Province, U.S. officials were struck by the shortage of trained Afghan troops to augment the force and the unwillingness of Afghan officials to provide government services in a relatively remote and dangerous area.

Rather than a second wave of Afghan bureaucrats providing civilian services, the Marines were followed by a small international “stabilization team.”

U.S. and British officials said “several factors, including a lack of qualified and educated workers in the remote province, a shortage of housing and office facilities for professionals from larger cities like Kandahar or Kabul, and a series of tensions and rivalries among various Afghan agencies, were impeding the kind of follow-up needed to convince residents that the Afghan government is credible, committed and a better alternative than the Taliban,” reported the Washington Post’s Pamela Constable.

"What we need is to put visible Afghan government in these areas," said John Weston, a U.S. civilian aide in Helmand who also had worked in Iraq. He added that without a solid Afghan presence, "we will have a lot of well-meaning Americans doing good things, but it will be a trap." [Washington Post, July 18, 2009]

So, in Afghanistan, the key issue is not specific U.S. troop levels, but the desperate need to build up the Afghan army and to create a bureaucracy of competent civil servants.

Military Role

Meanwhile, the greatest U.S. military imperative will be to do no harm.

While pulling out U.S. troops entirely could be devastating to democratic elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is little good that would likely come from new military offensives, outside of limited counter-terrorist strikes and defensive operations.

Rather than trying to extend U.S. and NATO military control everywhere, a wiser course might be to concentrate on areas of Afghanistan that are relatively friendly. The ethnic map lends itself to such a retrenchment, which would involve shifting away from the Pashtun heartland in the east and south.

The U.S., NATO and Afghan government forces could base themselves around Kabul and in northern areas dominated by the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen. Coalition forces also should be able to establish themselves in the Dari-speaking Shia Muslim (Hazara) areas to the west of Kabul.

In these secure areas, the coalition could accelerate reconstruction, including development of a decentralized bureaucracy to provide an array of government services.

Schools can be built outside Kabul for students who have shown promise. Health agencies could lower infant mortality, ameliorate chronic diseases such as malaria, measles, polio and tuberculosis, and stem outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever and cholera.

The goal would not be to create a paradise, but even modest progress would be welcomed by Afghans who have experienced only poverty and misery during three decades of violent interventions by both international and regional powers – including the Soviet Union, United States and Pakistan.

These U.S./NATO reconstruction efforts would advance slowly, only moving into districts that the U.S. military is confident it can hold and where development can be painstakingly promoted.

The Afghan Taliban are well financed with a hand in the drug trade valued at $3 billion to $4 billion and with untold millions of dollars flowing from sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.

However, the United States and its allies are in a position to compete by providing valuable goods and services.

Despite McChrystal’s alarming report about a possible “mission failure” if more U.S. troops are not deployed, it should be remembered that even after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Afghan communist army managed to beat back rebel offensives.

At that time, the mujahedeen were receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid, including sophisticated U.S. military equipment. But the communist regime didn’t collapse until 1992, after the new Russian government of Boris Yeltsin cut off support.

The tribal nature of Afghanistan, accentuated by the rugged terrain, makes military conquests difficult whether by a high-tech super-power or a lightly armed guerrilla force.

So, even if the United States must settle for a temporary stand-off with the Taliban – while an Afghan government infrastructure is assembled and negotiations with more moderate Taliban are tried – the likelihood is not for a sudden collapse.

By tamping down the violence and showing some patience with reconstruction, President Obama might find that time is on his side and that calls for an urgent military buildup are misguided.

Too often, the American reaction to a problem has been to use force. Sometimes, the United States has been lucky in the outcomes even when a military intervention was a bad idea. Other times, vast quantities of blood have been spilled for no good reason.

This time, a U.S. escalation would surely kill many of the enemy – along with civilians and American soldiers – but such a slaughter would not likely achieve victory and would surely alienate many more Afghans.

The bottom line is that there appears little the United States can achieve militarily in this volatile region at least in the near term. So, the best strategy may be to refrain from the temptation to escalate – and instead count on the Afghan and Pakistani people to point the way toward a solution.

Bruce P. Cameron has served as a Washington lobbyist for various governments over the past several decades, including Nicaragua, Mozambique, Portugal and East Timor. He is the author of My Life in the Time of the Contras.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The decline of Obomination?

Obama's Well Organized Community Is Falling Apart: Obama has now become a noose around the neck of every American Democrat!

By JB Williams

It's now official: The average American is not as stupid as Washington DC Democrats and their international leftist friends thought.

Their mystery messiah has already gone from hero to zero after only seven months in power, and Obama has now become a noose around the neck of every American Democrat, and every international fascist who "hoped" Obama could usher in Marxist "change."

Nobody can organize a community like a good old fashioned communist thug can. It worked long enough to put a mystery man in the Oval Office, thanks to international socialists working through CPUSA - SPUSA and DSAUSA, funded by literally hundreds of leftist front-groups operating as special interest 527 organizations. Here's a short list of the BIGGEST leftist front groups:

AFL-CIO League of Conservation Voters
America Coming Together
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
EMILY's List
Employees International Union
Joint Victory Campaign 2004
Media Fund Service
MoveOn.org
New Democrat Network
Sierra Club

Who spends an obscene $1 billion dollars to win a lousy $400,000 per year job, and why? The people behind Obama expect a return on their investment. And they are NOT the kind of folks you want to disappoint: These folks make Capone look like a choir boy.

Before the ink was dry on Obama's fake Certification of Live Birth (not to be confused with an actual birth certificate), Obamanation was off to confiscate control of banking, insurance, energy and auto manufacturing.
Before they knew what was happening, the American people woke up, the proud new owners of Government Motors and $13 Trillion in debt.

But it wasn't until Obamanation tried to confiscate control of 1/7th of the US economy by nationalizing the private American health care industry that the people took to the streets in protest.

On the heels of dozens of angry Town Hall meetings turned public tar-and-feathering parties for countless career DC bureaucrats, Obama and his Democrat partners in crime found themselves in a historic freefall from popularity among average American taxpayers. Eight months into office, Obama has bounced Jimmy Carter from his famous position as America's worst president.

The people behind the puppet in our Oval Office did what leftists always do. They over-estimated themselves, under-estimated the American people, and over-played their hand. They actually thought that
Americans would sit quiet as unbridled leftists trampled all over 300 million Americans.

That was the good news. As Obama becomes an anvil chained around the neck of DC and international leftists, he becomes a liability to their agenda. These folks have an interesting way of dealing with political
liabilities.

Losing control of their agenda and, in a power-slide towards the bottomless pit of political has-beens, Democrats are desperate to keep their international friends at bay. But at the same time, being career
politicians always focused on self-preservation; they must find a way to get re-elected by people ready to lynch them in a Public Square.

Obama has foolishly allowed himself to be pushed into a no-win position, in his unlikely quest to "make history" by becoming the first "black" mystery messiah allowed to sit at the big desk with his finger on the
red button. In short, he's in way over his head, just as many worried would be the case with a freshman politician complete with blank resume.

Nancy //"crazy as an out-house rat"// Pelosi is no help, and Harry Reid is headed for the political boneyard no matter what.

Teddy Kennedy was in no position to lead the young lad out of the woods, and wannabes like Chucky Schumer and Bawny Fwank will soon be looking for an escape hatch of their own.

Time to Bring in the Heavy Artillery and Circle the Wagons.

Since Obama just won't become the "transparent president" he tricked so many voters into voting for, the issue of his constitutional conflict won't go away. $1.35 million in legal defense fees later, the demand to
see proof that he passes Article II requirements is getting louder.

Despite around the clock media efforts to paint every constitutionally conscious American a "right-wing racist Timothy McVeigh," the people seem only further agitated by the leftist suggestion that NO American
citizen has "proper standing" to question their employees (elected representatives) on even the most fundamental questions.

Obama's problem with Americans isn't the mulatto color of his skin. It's the bright RED color of his belief system and agenda. He is undoubtedly making mentors like Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshal Davis and Bill Ayers quite proud. But he is clearly losing the support of many Americans in that effort.

Before the dissent gets any wider spread, they have to do something. Out of nowhere comes Obama's "experts" on national security, the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the time of SPLC's founding, Julian Bond, who currently chairs the NAACP, was named the fledgling group's first President.

On the basis of these folks, Obama's Department of Homeland Security issued a "Right-wing Extremist" threat analysis, labeling every American with a gun or bible, or willing to publicly oppose Obama, a "potential
domestic terrorist."

Yesterday, British newspaper, The Independent, published a story titled, "The right-wing crackpots taking over the mainstream," in which British leftist writer Rupert Cornwell proceeds to assault all American citizens
who are currently speaking out against Obama's "global" agenda, and warns of coming civil unrest, and of course, his authority on the matter is the Southern Poverty Law Center.

From the report, one SPLC official says, "every element is in place for a 'perfect storm' of home-grown extremism. For the first time, the detested federal government is run by a black man." There ya have it!
That was easy! It's all about the "black man!"

"A struggling economy fuels discontent, with illegal immigrants accused of stealing American jobs." Or is it that unemployment has doubled to the highest level since the great depression, under the "black man's" brief administration?

"The military, long a breeding ground of the far right, is sending home veterans in vast numbers." Yes, those crazed military veterans: And don't forget: "Finally there is the internet, which simultaneously
propagates and intensifies the feelings of true believers and the conspiracy theories they devour." The so-called "birthers" have made headlines all over the world?

Clearly, Cornwell received his talking points memo from David Axelrod, who obviously got his from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Observer got the memo too, and they wasted no time attacking every American at odds with Obama's agenda. It's American Patriots against the world, or at least the leftists of the world. Cornwell concludes,
"So might not elements even further to the right enter the fray - 'sovereign citizens' who believe they are above the law, or the new 'Oath Keepers' movement, of soldiers and police officers past and present, who believe their duty is to the constitution, not to elected politicians? Perhaps the healthcare rallies and the SPLC report were no coincidence, after all."

Well, let me just say that I think Obama's life could, in fact, be in danger, but not from Tea Party protesters, Town Hall protesters or so-called "birthers." All of these folks are well aware of the reality that assassinating the first "black" president would be counter-productive to their agenda.

The Obama press has been burning the midnight oil trying to make certain that Hillary Clinton's "right-wing conspiracy" ghosts were set up to take the fall for any unfortunate event that might befall an increasingly unpopular president. No "right-winger" is likely to even break wind in Obama's direction.

His leftist international friends are quite another story however: These are BIG buck, BIG socialism folks who play by no particular set of rules, like George Soros. As Obama becomes more of a liability than an
asset to their cause, it is his own people who are most likely to make a martyr out of the mystery messiah ...

In the British Observer, writer Paul Harris is even more extreme in his column: Fears for Barack Obama's safety as health care debate fuels extremism; and once again, we see the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The stage is being set: If anything happens to Obama, the entire world has been put on notice that Americans opposed to socialism from a "black" nobody president who won't even release his birth records, are
responsible.

This leaves the door wide open for Obama's own friends to commit the crime with impunity, as they have already placed the American patriots' finger-prints on the imaginary murder weapon. It would be the perfect
crime blamed on the perfect right-wing storm. It's brilliant!

The leftist press around the world has already accused and convicted "right-wingers" of the murder. Talk about your grand conspiracy: Nobody does it better than the international leftist cabal.

But who is this Southern Poverty Law Center responsible for all of the recent "hate speech" aimed at constitutionally concerned American citizens opposed to bankruptcy-by-communism in America?

In 2007, SPLC identified 888 separate "active hate groups" in the United States. Despite the events of 9/11 and an ongoing threat of additional terror strikes here and abroad, not one of the 888 "active hate groups"
identified was Islamic. Detroit, Michigan, had more violent killings than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, but none of the groups responsible for those killings made the list of 888.

Only white, capitalist, constitutionalist, Christian, pro-freedom, in other words, "right-wing extremists" made the list. Black on white crime is not "hate." Black on black crime is not "hate." Muslim on Christian crime is not "hate." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, only white, Christian, capitalists opposed to Marxism and attending Town Hall meetings are guilty of "hate." That's what their report says, and everyone from Obama's DHS and FBI to England's press has bought that report hook, line and sinker.

I too fear for Obama's life: But not from any of the people attending Tea Parties or Town Hall meetings in an effort to talk with their elected representatives. I fear that Obama's life is increasingly in danger from the very people who put him in power - The people he is currently failing, as the American people stand up to stop his secular socialist global agenda.

I am 100% opposed to the Obama administration and today's Democrat agenda. But I am here to tell you that the worst thing that could happen in America today is for Obama to be assassinated. Every Obama
opponent knows this. He would be safest if he were guarded around the clock by American conservatives opposed to his entire agenda.

Only his leftist partners around the world would benefit from his assassination. Their agenda would move forward unchallenged if anything were to happen to Obama or his family. As his agenda meets with serious resistance at home, his puppet masters abroad will lose faith and eventually, their patience.

Only a freshman senator would have fallen for the trap Obama finds himself in today. He can't win: If he's very lucky, he can only live to tell about it one day.

Obama has spent an entire lifetime surrounded by some of the world's worst thugs. If he is unable to move their agenda forward, his life will be at risk from within his own ranks. However, the nation and the world will pay a heavy price, as both are being conditioned to blame it on average Americans who simply oppose all forms of intrusive tyrannical government.

As Obama's agenda is shut down by average Americans, his friends will turn on him... Liberals are already warning him not to back off on nationalized health care. But the people are not going to allow it to go forward.

Even though I oppose everything Obama is and everything he stands for, I pray for his safety. You can bet your last dollar: his well organized community is falling apart as his agenda begins to crumble. They will
be very motivated to ignite a second civil war as they watch their agenda die a brutal political death.

Nothing would ignite a second civil war faster than the assassination of Barack Hussein Obama. I can only pray that the Secret Service does not take their cues from the Southern Poverty Law Center. If they are no
better at understanding political security than British op-ed pages, Obama's life is indeed in danger. Not from so-called "right-wing extremists" angry over Obama's blatant disregard for the Constitution today. But from within his ranks, as those who placed him in power, become saddled with his failures.

This is a powerful article appearing in the Canada Free Press. A lot of analysis here and some scary dialog. JB Williams is a business man and a no nonsense commentator on American politics, American history, and American philosophy. He is published nationwide and in many countries
around the world.


From Prof. Paul Eidelberg
http://www.foundation1.org/

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Marine's View of Afghanistan - Once More with Feeling!


This United States Marine is a veteran, no longer on active duty.  A Marine, however, is always a Marine.  There are no ex-Marines.
 
Although this Marine's Comment to a post at The Captain's Journal has already been reprinted at "Afghanistan: The Gordian Knot of Asia -- how do you unravel it?"  it is the most cogent as concerns the situation in Afghanistan and what is at stake in American lives, and is therefore reprinted here once more--with feeling.

Comment at "Insufficient Numbers of Marines" by Herschel Smith:

Comment

On September 27, 2009 at 11:00 pm, DesertPete45 said:

So if I understand this cerebral text, which I am getting damn sick of, it is that it doesn’t matter how many Marines we have! Am I understanding this text correctly??? If so I partially agree: if our Marines, of whom my son is one in Helmand (in a Marine rifle platoon), are not allowed to kill the damn enemy because of McChrystal’s wimpy position because he is scared to death of AbomiNation and having to retire and not make as much $$$ as he is active then that is correct. We could have ten trillion Marines and the Taliban would continue to sip tea, plant IEDs at night and chill in the ville during the day with the homeboys. What the hell has happened to our military and where the HELL are the men (senior officers) in our military who would resign/retire before committing their charges to such idiocy?? And yes I do mean retire! When the HELL will our military leaders cowboy up and act like real men instead of neutered lackys??? NEVER!!!! I fear America’s glory days are gone forever and I cry over that. Dammit, my dad was wounded on Saipan, I fought in Vietnam and now my son is in A-stan and can’t defend himself!!! Our only hope is the 2010 elections, if we fail if is over and we better get ready for heavy handed govt control by the damn FOOLS inside the beltway and the wimps in this country who want the govt. to provide everything for them (impossible). Damn, can’t believe I am witnessing the dismantling of the United States of America by a neomarxist!!! Where are the MEN, where are the PATRIOTS, where are those of PRINCIPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If we unfetter our Marines and provide them with air and artillery we can win! Several weeks ago 4 Marines were killed because they were denied air and artillery by the damn egghead commanders who are scared shitless by Obama because a civilian might be killed!! What the hell, now we have 4 more dead Marines!!!!! Does no one give a damn??? Where the HELL are the men??? Are they pleased that they were simpatico with the EU, AbomiNation and probably the world court notwithstanding we lost 4 Marines!!! Well hell they weren’t the sons’ of any of those fools!!! Where the hell is the outrage???? Where the hell is the passion?? Where the hell is the anger???? We can have our cerebral discusions after we win in a quiet bar with many beers but that is not for now. Dammit, where is the fire in the belly of those who think we are hanging our guys (and gals) out to dry and they are nothing but cannon fodder for the PC crowd. Obama is uncomfortable with the use of the word victory and not sure that is necessarily the goal in A-stan, Gates doesn’t want a large military footprint, CMC is worried about our carbon footprint and Levin wants us to convince the enemy to switch sides!!!! OMG am I dreaming?? Pinch me please!!! Are these people fools or not and McChrystal says we can’t win the war with 200+ civilians killed in the last year!! What??? What about our guys?? We can’t win the war with 80% of Helmand as Taliban and Taliban sympathizers if we are not allowed to kill them!!! Karzai is a corrupt hill bandit and he has the temerity to hold us responsible for civilian deaths!! That dirty rat!! If he was a man, which he is not, he would hold the Talaban responsible but he doesn’t have the guts. He would be dead meat in 24 hours if we left. Let’s stop the academic bullshit, there is enough of that by McChrystal, CMC, Jones, Gates, Mullen and or course, OBAMA!!! Did I miss anyone???

Respectfully submitted,

Desert Pete
USMC 1964-1968

[COMMENT at
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/09/27/insufficient-numbers-of-marines/ ]

Also, for further comprehensive analysis of the Afghanistan situation and war outlook, see "Afghanistan: The Gordian Knot of Asia -- how do you unravel it?"

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Afghanistan: The Gordian Knot of Asia -- how do you unravel it?

















Afghanistan has changed names over the 23 centuries since, but it's still a land-locked knot of mountains prone to droughts, blizzards, and floods.
Alexander in Afghanistan















Map of Afghanistan

Today bounded by Iran, Pakistan, China, and former Soviet republics, Afghanistan is nearly three times as big as Minnesota and its population is more than five times larger. Alexander in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is not a 'nation' in the sense we're used to, with its four major regions centered around cities that are closer to other countries than they are to each other.Alexander in Afghanistan


And as water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.
--Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Apparently Insoluble Problem that is Afghanistan

Can it be solved as Alexander the Macedonian solved the problem of the Gordian knot?

You know, where there was this knot, so complicated that no one could unravel it--until Alexander came to try and solve that knotty problem.  Did he ponder and ponder to try and figure out how the knot was tied?

He took his sword and cut the knot.

To apply this solution to Afghanistan, the problem of Taliban and al Qaeda, the U.S. would have to stop trying, first of all, to unravel the problem not where the knot only appears to be--in Afghanistan--but do so in Pakistan.

But Pakistan's government is helping us (supposedly, off-and-on, what-have-you), keeping the Taliban in check. What part Pakistan's ISI (Interservice Intelligence) plays in that charade (at least a partial if not wholly a one), can be speculated upon.

So, the only way to solve the problem, if we want to follow the example of Megalos Alexandros and cut the knot instead of agonizing over it, trying to solve an unsolvable problem.  You see, the knot in Pakistan has no ends to take up and start the unravelling process.

The point is that if the U.S. hits Pakistan in Waziristan or the tribal areas [whatever the uncontrolled territories are called], Pakistan could respond (they have nuclear power).

The Alexander-Gordian-knot method cannot be applied, without risk, to theAfghanistan problem in Pakistan.

Hugh Fitzgerald takes a lesson from Tolstoy's War and Peace, from how the Russians dealt with Napoleon and his Grand Armee:

The lesson is: do not be afraid not to fight, but to leave the enemy to disintegrate on his own, either from natural forces, or from man-made ones.

Kutuzov refused after Borodino to engage Napoleon’s forces. And that is the story that Tolstoy tells in the “War” chapters of “War and Peace.” It’s a book not often read through. It’s not a book, as far as I know, on the syllabus at West Point. But the lesson or moral that one can draw from the example of Kutuzov nowadays is one that American forces, and other Infidel military men who were engaged in Iraq, or are now engaged in Afghanistan, might study with profit. The lesson is not: let Winter, or let the Weather, be factored in. That’s too narrow. The lesson is: do not be afraid not to fight, but to leave the enemy to disintegrate on his own, either from natural forces, or from man-made ones.

During the Musharraf years, with the billions from America now pouring in, the government and military in Pakistan continued to string the Americans along. There were occasional half-hearted largely feigning attacks, by the Pakistan military, on Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but mainly the Pakistan government and press did everything it could to deny that Al Qaeda was either in Pakistan or being aided by a great many Pakistanis.

see "Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment"
by Hugh Fitzgerald (September 2009)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/46658/sec_id/46658


It was only when the American military was becoming absolutely fed up, and when, too, the local Taliban leaders decided a bit too prematurely to take on the rich zamindars in the parts of Pakistan -- e.g. the Swat Valley -- that they conquered, that the ruling class in both the Pakistani government and military realized that the Taliban were a threat to them. They then turned on the Taliban, not as a favor to the Americans, but in order to preserve the position of themselves and of those like them. That did not make them the friends of the Americans, or of the Indians, or of any other Infidel group. They remain Muslims, in a country almost entirely Muslim, where non-Muslims can be harassed, persecuted, even murdered at will.

he apparently has a great deal of trouble remembering exactly how the government of the United States was betrayed, and betrayed again, by Pakistan, led by the nose, and led by the nose before, and then after, the Pressler Amendment was passed. His statement of August 13th about Pakistan having good reasons to “mistrust” the United States because America “walked away from them twice” -- the sheer utter idiocy of it all, the rewriting not of ancient history but of recent history -- simply amazes. The Pressler Amendment was passed because members of Congress were fed up with the behavior of Pakistan. The long discussion by Senator Glenn that took place at hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992, some seven years after the Pressler Amendment were passed, were prompted by a realization, and disgust, that the American government had not been diligent in enforcing the letter, or being vigilant about the spirit, of the Pressler Amendment.

We did not “walk away” from Pakistan. The government, that is, the military who essentially have always held power in Pakistan, took and took whatever aid they could cajole out of the Americans, and then always came back for more. They took whatever economic aid they could as well, and that economic aid allowed the “failed state” -- always on the brink of bankruptcy -- of Pakistan to nonetheless not only quietly arrange for stealing nuclear secrets from the West, but pay the enormous costs of the nuclear weapons program that led to the building not of one but of dozens of “Islamic bombs,” as they were proudly called, and not only in Pakistan.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/46658/sec_id/46658


What concerns me personally about Afghanistan are those who will bear the brunt of our (Obama's really) Afghan policy. Marines with whom I come in contact every day, the young men who will be going there to fight.  Will they be sent on impossible missions?  To befriend the Afghans in the hope that the population will support Americans (and NATO) against the Taliban?







*****************

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html:

On Afghanistan:

Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us -- physically and psychologically -- from the people we seek to protect. In addition, we run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves.

Comment: Protecting our own forces at the risk of causing "civilian casualties" or "unnecessary collateral damage." We should protect our own armed forces first. Casualty-riddled fighting forces do not impress a local population that look to these forces for protection.

I believe we must interact more closely with the population and focus on operations that bring stability, while shielding them from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion.

***

Better force protection may be counterintuitive; it might come from less armor and less distance from the population.
Comment: One would think that less armor, such as the earlier Humvees in Iraq gives rise to more American casualties. But then, we've gone in for staying off the Afghan roads for fear of IEDs and gone slogging up the mountains and down the dales of Afghanistan. All to "protect the Afghan civilian population."




Marine in Helmand with 120 pounds plus a mortar plate




from The Captain's Journal
. . . a blog that contains facts, analysis, and opinions re the war in Afghanistan

. . . to "protect the Afghan civilian population."  Do you think that such "civilian population" will ever get to love us--our fighting men--the United States?

Does anyone fighting the "insurgents--called INS instead of "Moslems on jihad,'" --does anyone in our government, in our military, fighting Islamic terror and the ideologically-demanded "war against the infidel, the kafur," know what makes Islam tick? Do they--our leaders, military as well as civilian"--know the dictum given by one Mohammed to his followers 13 centuries ago.

If they had, they would have and would now pay more attention to the koran and ahadith to learn what Moslems had in store for us, their so-called "unbelievers."

The author of the Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright takes the title of his book from the fourth sura of the Koran, which bin Laden repeated three times in a speech videotaped just as the hijackers were preparing to fly. The video was found later, on a computer in Hamburg:

“Wherever you are, death will find you, Even in the looming tower.”
____________________________________
*THE LOOMING TOWER
Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. By Lawrence Wright
Illustrated. 469 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. .
_______________________________________

http://islamicdanger2u.blogspot.com/2009/09/plot-against-america.html
from The Plot Against America

Would any in our government, in our military, been able to connect the "Looming Tower" statement quoted by Osama bin Laden with what was to happen to the World Trade Center Towers?  I doubt it.

Bill Warner of Political Islam, in his post "The Higher You Go, The Less they Know," says the following:

Here are two examples of ignorance at the highest levels. General Stanley McChrystal gave his assessment
 of the war in Afghanistan. He gives us exceptional false insights. Insights that should be brilliant because his report included advice from “a multidisciplinary assessment of the situation in Afghanistan”.

It turns out that the “right” name for our enemy is “insurgents”, not jihadists, but insurgents.

A more forceful and offensive StratCom approach must be devised whereby INS [insurgents] are exposed continually for their cultural and religious violations, anti-Islamic and indiscriminate use of violence and terror, and by concentrating on their vulnerabilities. These include their causing of the majority of civilian casualties, attacks on education, development projects, and government institutions, and flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran. These vulnerabilities must be expressed in a manner that exploits the cultural and ideological separation of the INS (insurgents) from the vast majority of the Afghan population.

Where does the military get its multidisciplinary assessment? Certainly they haven’t received information from anyone who knows the doctrine of political Islam. http://www.politicalislam.com/store/category/primary-doctrine-books/

At times McChrystal hints that he might understand what is happening.

“Many describe the conflict in Afghanistan as a war of ideas, which I believe to be true.”

However, no where in the 20,000 word report is there a single sentence devoted to the mind of jihad. The j word does not even occur. You have to read between the lines to fathom that Islam is involved. Instead, we have talk about “culture.” McChrystal is ignorant about Islam and the jihad he is trying to defeat.

An individual (from a private communication) who gives briefings on Islam to the military says that generals do not have any understanding about political Islam, nor do they even want to know. The lieutenant colonels and lower, understand the problem, but not the flag rank.

Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered.
--Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It matters little whether you are from the left or the right, dhimmi-wit leaders rule. The oddest thing is that having knowledge about political Islam means that you will be called a right-winger. Is knowledge conservative? Is ignorance liberal? Why can’t knowledge transcend politics?
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-higher-you-go-the-less-they-know/



Mullah Omar
Taliban Leader

His Taliban and Al Qaeda are both on the same path: That of Jihad
Both Taliban and Al Qaeda Must Be Destroyed!
Without Pakistan's Support, Taliban can be Neutralized as it was after we first hit Afghanistan to make it no longer the refuge for Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda is now in Pakistan territory.  I leave it up to you to figure out how to repeat the first successful destruction of its strongholds
Taliban in Afghanistan is supported by Pakistan's ISI.  Without that support, it remains to repeat the first removal of the Taliban from power by manipulation of internal Afghan centers of power.


BUT Obama had said he wanted to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, not the Taliban. There is a difference, in the two Islamic entities' goals. As Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader said: " . . . they [Al Qaeda] have set jihad as their goal, whereas we [the Taliban] have set the expulsion of American troops from Afghanistan as our target. This is the common goal of all the Muslims.”

"The people themselves have risen up to fight the Americans,” the statement [from Mullah Omar] continued. “Nobody can tolerate this kind of subjugation and sacrilege of their culture and religion. It would be humiliating for anybody to think that the nation does not want to evict American forces. No nation can accept the dictates of a handful of dollar-greedy and treacherous people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/asia/05taliban.html


Taliban Leader Promises More Afghan War

American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/interservices_intelligence/index.html?inline=nyt-org


The Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI (InterService Intelligence) has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24military.html?pagewanted=1


[see APPENDIX for more thoughts about Pakistan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24military.html?pagewanted=1


So where is the crux of the problem? Where do you strike--with a sharp blade--to cut the Gordian knot that is Afghanistan? Surprisingly (to me) Vice President Biden came up with an answer:

"Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

“A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”
Obama Considers Strategy Shift in Afghan War
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/world/asia/23policy.html?


So where is the crux of the problem? Where do you strike--with a sharp blade--to cut the Gordian knot that is Afghanistan?

Where is "The Center of Gravity" in this battle for control of "hearts and minds" of the Afghans?

. . . a center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed.
--Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Where is this "center of gravity?" Biden's strategy appears to be dealing with this problem when he suggests that the "center of gravity" of the struggle can be found in Pakistan.

The entire Pakistan situation, delicately balanced as it is, must be considered if we were to stop allowing the Pakistani government sometimes apparently forceful, other times half-hearted, effort to control Al Qaeda and the Taliban within Pakistan's border.

The answer to the Afghan problem lies in Pakistan. This is where the Alexandrian sword must strike to cut the Gordian knot.

Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Compared

[Sara Palin] weighs in on the need to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, if we succeed in those countries we will have used our blood and treasure to put into place two constitutions that begin with the statement that Sharia law is the foundation of government. Sharia law is based upon ethical dualism and making the kafir submit in all political matters. This is insanity to support since Sharia law should be opposed in all ways at all times by all kafirs.
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-higher-you-go-the-less-they-know/

Looking back at Iraq, where a surge and getting the population on our side appears to have worked (see Anbar Province), the same strategy would appear to offer like success if exported to Afghanistan.

Therefore, when I have won a victory, I do not repeat my tactics but respond to circumstances in an infinite variety of ways.
--Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Was the cost in lives and U.S. treasure worth the Iraq that now exists? Was Saddam an ally of Al Qaeda, who also had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the main enemy of the United States? Or was it Al Qaeda and its Saudi backers (whether governmental or not, the financing for Al Qaeda came and still comes from Saudi Arabia).

As Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch so often suggested, would it have been preferable--after removing Saddam with his constant threats and annoyances to us--to let Iraq implode? The vacuum there could have been entered by Iran. If Saddam had been allowed to continue, he could have been left to provide the counter to an arising militant Iran, as he had done once before.

Letting Afghanistan disintegrate into bands of war lords and tribal divisions might be a strategy. The fear is that the Taliban could assume control of Afghanistan once again and provide safe haven to Al Qaeda.

With Al Qaeda in Pakistan destroyed, however, a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan--on jihad as Mullah Omar maintained the Taliban is--could be confined to Afghanistan and not provide an international danger. COULD, but not guaranteed. If such an Afghanistan were to offer jihad to us, it could be kept in check without massive expenditure of troops that have to worry more about Afghan "population potection" than keeping U.S. casualties as low as possible.

The Gordian knot that is Afghanistan must be cut IN Pakistan.  The sword cut must be swift and decisive. And the consequences must be prepared for. No piecemeal hacking away at the problem.

BUT . . . and it's a BIG but,  we must be prepared for what will happen in Pakistan  If it collapses, then it creates a the possibility of a jihadist state without the ameliorating control of a U.S.-purchased President and government.   A rogue jihadist state with nyclear arms presents a danger.

Might we look towards India?








APPENDIX I

the Problem of Pakistan

General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.

The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.

Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.

A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.

“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”

Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.

Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.

In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.

And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24military.html?pagewanted=2


Pakistan will respond--and they have nuclear power.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/36181/sec_id/36181


The Alexander-Gordian-knot method cannot be applied, without great risk, to theAfghanistan problem.

Hugh Fitzgerald takes a lesson from War and Peace, from how the Russians dealt with Napoleon and his Grand Armee:

The lesson is: do not be afraid not to fight, but to leave the enemy to disintegrate on his own, either from natural forces, or from man-made ones.

Kutuzov refused after Borodino to engage Napoleon’s forces. And that is the story that Tolstoy tells in the “War” chapters of “War and Peace.” It’s a book not often read through. It’s not a book, as far as I know, on the syllabus at West Point. But the lesson or moral that one can draw from the example of Kutuzov nowadays is one that American forces, and other Infidel military men who were engaged in Iraq, or are now engaged in Afghanistan, might study with profit. The lesson is not: let Winter, or let the Weather, be factored in. That’s too narrow. The lesson is: do not be afraid not to fight, but to leave the enemy to disintegrate on his own, either from natural forces, or from man-made ones.

During the Musharraf years, with the billions from America now pouring in, the government and military in Pakistan continued to string the Americans along. There were occasional half-hearted largely feigning attacks, by the Pakistan military, on Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but mainly the Pakistan government and press did everything it could to deny that Al Qaeda was either in Pakistan or being aided by a great many Pakistanis.

from http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/46658/sec_id/46658


It was only when the American military was becoming absolutely fed up, and when, too, the local Taliban leaders decided a bit too prematurely to take on the rich zamindars in the parts of Pakistan -- e.g. the Swat Valley -- that they conquered, that the ruling class in both the Pakistani government and military realized that the Taliban were a threat to them. They then turned on the Taliban, not as a favor to the Americans, but in order to preserve the position of themselves and of those like them. That did not make them the friends of the Americans, or of the Indians, or of any other Infidel group. They remain Muslims, in a country almost entirely Muslim, where non-Muslims can be harassed, persecuted, even murdered at will.

he apparently has a great deal of trouble remembering exactly how the government of the United States was betrayed, and betrayed again, by Pakistan, led by the nose, and led by the nose before, and then after, the Pressler Amendment was passed. His statement of August 13th about Pakistan having good reasons to “mistrust” the United States because America “walked away from them twice” -- the sheer utter idiocy of it all, the rewriting not of ancient history but of recent history -- simply amazes. The Pressler Amendment was passed because members of Congress were fed up with the behavior of Pakistan. The long discussion by Senator Glenn that took place at hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992, some seven years after the Pressler Amendment were passed, were prompted by a realization, and disgust, that the American government had not been diligent in enforcing the letter, or being vigilant about the spirit, of the Pressler Amendment.

We did not “walk away” from Pakistan. The government, that is, the military who essentially have always held power in Pakistan, took and took whatever aid they could cajole out of the Americans, and then always came back for more. They took whatever economic aid they could as well, and that economic aid allowed the “failed state” -- always on the brink of bankruptcy -- of Pakistan to nonetheless not only quietly arrange for stealing nuclear secrets from the West, but pay the enormous costs of the nuclear weapons program that led to the building not of one but of dozens of “Islamic bombs,” as they were proudly called, and not only in Pakistan.
 http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/46658/sec_id/46658
"Robert Gates, Pakistan & The Pressler Amendment"

by Hugh Fitzgerald (September 2009)




APPENDIX II

Insufficient Numbers of Marines
BY Herschel Smith
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/09/27/insufficient-numbers-of-marines/

Comments

On September 27, 2009 at 11:00 pm, DesertPete45 said:

So if I understand this cerebral text, which I am getting damn sick of, it is that it doesn’t matter how many Marines we have! Am I understanding this text correctly??? If so I partially agree: if our Marines, of whom my son is one in Helmand (in a Marine rifle platoon), are not allowed to kill the damn enemy because of McChrystal’s wimpy position because he is scared to death of AbomiNation and having to retire and not make as much $$$ as he is active then that is correct. We could have ten trillion Marines and the Taliban would continue to sip tea, plant IEDs at night and chill in the ville during the day with the homeboys. What the hell has happened to our military and where the HELL are the men (senior officers) in our military who would resign/retire before committing their charges to such idiocy?? And yes I do mean retire! When the HELL will our military leaders cowboy up and act like real men instead of neutered lackys??? NEVER!!!! I fear America’s glory days are gone forever and I cry over that. Dammit, my dad was wounded on Saipan, I fought in Vietnam and now my son is in A-stan and can’t defend himself!!! Our only hope is the 2010 elections, if we fail if is over and we better get ready for heavy handed govt control by the damn FOOLS inside the beltway and the wimps in this country who want the govt. to provide everything for them (impossible). Damn, can’t believe I am witnessing the dismantling of the United States of America by a neomarxist!!! Where are the MEN, where are the PATRIOTS, where are those of PRINCIPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If we unfetter our Marines and provide them with air and atrillery we can win! Several weeks ago 4 Marines were killed because they were denied air and artillery by the damn egghead commanders who are scared shitless by Obama because a civilian might be killed!! What the hell, now we have 4 more dead Marines!!!!! Does no one give a damn??? Where the HELL are the men??? Are they pleased that they were simpatico with the EU, AbomiNation and probably the world court notwithstanding we lost 4 Marines!!! Well hell they weren’t the sons’ of any of those fools!!! Where the hell is the outrage???? Where the hell is the passion?? Where the hell is the anger???? We can have or cerebral discusions after we win in a quiet bar with many beers but that is not for now. Dammit, where is the fire in the belly of those who think we are hanging our guys (and gals) out to dry and they are nothing but cannon fodder for the PC crowd. Obama is uncomfortable with the use of the word victory and not sure that is necessarily the goal in A-stan, Gates doesn’t want a large military footprint, CMC is worried about our carbon footprint and Levin wants us to convince the enemy to switch sides!!!! OMG am I dreaming?? Pinch me please!!! Are these people fools or not and McChrystal says we can’t win the war with 200+ civilians killed in the last year!! What??? What about our guys?? We can’t win the war with 80% of Helmand as Taliban and Taliban sympathizers if we are not allowed to kill them!!! Karzai is a corrupt hill bandit and he has the temerity to hold us responsible for civilian deaths!! That dirty rat!! If he was a man, which he is not, he would hold the Talaban responsible but he doesn’t have the guts. He would be dead meat in 24 hours if we left. Let’s stop the academic bullshit, there is enough of that by McChrystal, CMC, Jones, Gates, Mullen and or course, OBAMA!!! Did I miss anyone???

Respectfully submitted,

Desert Pete
USMC 1964-1968

[COMMENT at
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/09/27/insufficient-numbers-of-marines/ ]

[Bold emphasis mine. lw]


ALSO . . .

Read
What kind of counterinsurgency for Afghanistan?
by Herschel Smith
NOTE: be sure to read the COMMENTS to this article, especially the first and second, by TSAlfabet and
rrk3



and
pakistan: shafting your benefactor 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/world/asia/08pstan.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/10/pakistan-shafting-your-benefactor.html