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General Mcmoreland in Vietistan
Late last month, five U.S. troops died within 24 hours in southern Afghanistan. Taliban militants have killed more Americans and other troops deployed by NATO this year than in any of the previous years since President Bush ordered the invasion in 2001.
Will President Obama supplement the 21,000 soldiers sent to Afghanistan during the summer? If he heeds the experience of the Vietnam War, he'll find a gracious way to leave the place and save his presidency.
But Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces, whose career should have ended when he admitted participating in the cover-up of the "friendly fire" killing of football star Pat Tillman, has reportedly asked Obama for up to 45,000 new troops. That would bring the total number of U.S. troops to 100,000, equaling the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan at the height of their failed occupation. "I think that in some areas that the breadth of the violence, the geographic spread of violence, is a little more than I would have gathered," the general admitted on 60 Minutes. How can that be? Didn't he read Pentagon reports on U.S. casualties?
In Washington, Congress is debating sending more troops to back a government that engaged in election fraud in the August and has earned the reputation of extreme corruption.
That sure sounds familiar. In 1968, Gen. William Westmoreland assured President Lyndon Johnson that 200,000-plus troops would stabilize a corrupt puppet South Vietnamese government, provide security for the local population, and win hearts and minds. We all know how well that worked out.
This should provoke obvious questions in the White House: Does the enemy have a deeper source of recruits throughout the Muslim world than the United States and NATO? If so, how are we to reach our goals of nation-building and destroying terrorist bases? How long can the United States stay in Afghanistan? How long can the Taliban remain there? They disappeared when U.S. forces arrived Oct. 7, 2001; they reappeared in larger numbers when U.S. troops got "distracted" by Iraq.
McChrystal plans to stay in Afghanistan for years. A New York Times/CBS News poll released last month indicated that approximately half of the country opposes increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. Only 29 percent of respondents thought Obama should increase troop levels.
McChrystal told Obama that U.S. military strategy should focus less on protecting our troops and more on securing Afghan communities. He admitted such a plan "could expose military personnel and civilians to greater risk in the near term." However, the general concluded, successful linking of U.S. troops with the Afghan people would transcend the losses. "Accepting some risk in the short term will ultimately save lives in the long run," he wrote in his report sent to the Defense Department in August. It was leaked to The Washington Post in late September.
The report contains echoes of Westmoreland. Mr. Bush claimed he needed to invade Afghanistan to get bin Laden and the al-Qaeda training camp there. Yet, the 9/11 attackers planned and prepared in Germany and the United States with Saudi (not Afghan) money and backing. Eight frustrating years later, Pakistan seems to have imported the terror war--not war against terror. The real goal, getting al-Qaeda and bin Laden, has been replaced with securing the population and backing the government. This is also known as nation-building.
McChrystal's plan involves NATO committing to long-term military counter-insurgency, ending corruption in the Afghan government and having NATO soldiers eschew body armor and secure bases and instead secure remote Afghan villages. NATO's mission, wrote McChrystal, "cannot succeed if it is unwilling to share risk, at least equally, with the people."
Vintage Mao Zedong and Che Guevara! But in 2006, when Canadian Air Force Capt. Trevor Greene removed his helmet "to parley with the locals...an Afghan brained him with an axe," wrote Thomas Walkom in the Toronto Star. Capt. Greene shared the risk, but the military obviously neglected to educate the axe wielder--and the hundreds of thousands like him.
- Posted in
24 Comments so far
Show AllIf this is somebody's idea of a progressive I am a monkey's uncle.
Paragraph #7 is a bunch of Hooey.
There are no terrorist bases in Afghanistan only Afghans resisting occupation.
The Taliban did not disappear when the USA invaded they were slaughtered. Daisy Cutters, Tanker sized containers of fuel dropped from planes and ignited so as to incinerate hundreds. Thousands suffocated in cargo containers as the CIA and Special Forces watched.
Nation building is not what we are doing, nor do we care the least bit about Afghans, it's nation controling.
Yakking about a corrupt government is disingenuous considering their government is no more corrupt than the USA.
The USA has Cubans in prison for observing South Florida terrorists, yet lets israeli's go free for the same spying crime that a USA citizen is imprisoned for.
If the USA left tommorrow not one more stormtrooper would die from a brave Afghans bullet.
Obama has more troops deployed in war now than Bush ever had.
To quote BO: " I am interested in looking forward not backward ". That has to be one of the most idiotic and disingenuous statements I have ever heard, but then what do you expect from a MIC puppet. The definition of war insanity: doing the same thing you did in Vietnam and what the Russians did in Afghanistan and expecting a different result! BO, you had better start looking backward, or you are destined for another Vietnam fiasco in Afghanistan!
Well said, Paul Revere: Those who don't learn from history are destined to commit history's mistakes.
The past is anathema to Brand Obama - gazing ahead is what Obama is all about, boldly leading the world into a new and better future. The past is full of so many nasty things, like bad wars and torture and G. W. Bush, whereas "change" can only be found by looking ahead, in a future unmuddied by past mistakes...
"There are no terrorist bases in Afghanistan only Afghans resisting occupation"
Exactly: when they were working for the CIA, we called these Pashtuns (along with their Arab expat supporters) "mujahadeen" or "freedom-fighters". Now that they are not cooperating with the new imperial occupation, we call them "Teleban" and "Al-Quaeda".
So, if you work for the Empire, you are a "freedom-fighter", if not you are a crazed terrorist.
Funny how most of the US/NATO bases correspond with the proposed TAP pipeline. Hmmm.
McChrystal needs to be fired before he and the people behind him finish the slow burn on Obama. He is a Necon and will drag us down (even further) with this fools game in a country which is not a country but a tribal area. The Afgans only unite to boot out invaders. Right now they are happy to be collecting our money. When the cash runs out they will run us out.
The Afghans are receiving very little money ( most of it goes to international corporations and warlords). The Afghans would very happily give up every red cent of aid in exchange for the withdrawal of the murderous invaders.
Afghanistan has been a nation for over 100 years.
Tribal people can form nations.
The USA is not superior to Afghanistan.
Corporate nations have been slaughtering tribal people, for their resources, for 600 years.
However, the general concluded, successful linking of U.S. troops with the Afghan people would transcend the losses.
This is such rubbish, such garbage! How stupid do you have to be to believe this swill?
Wouldn't it be something if the first extra troops sent to Afghanistan were those war-loving politicians, military personnel, armament-makers and dealers, with their families thrown in, as an example to the rest of the US, and the world, to show how easy it all is? The problems in Afghanistan wouldn't take long to be solved, I guess.
Oh, one last thing before I fade away:
A Letter To All the Hypocrites Regarding 9th Anniversary Afghanistan Invasion/Occupation DC Protest 10/05/09
WHERE WERE YOU THE PEOPLE WHO TALK ABOUT HOW WRONG THESE OCCUPATIONS ARE?
Yes, I know I was there, and it broke my heart--the American peace movement is all but dead--there was no doubt in the minds of the people who want peace that that day was the day we could let our voices proclaim the high ground of ending the occupations and they would be heard--guess what, the few who came out were just enough to bury the entire movement--and confirm to the evil powers that control most of the peoples minds--that indeed they have nothing to fear--they won--the soul of America is lost beyond repair as I compare it to the small beginnings of the Vietnam war rallies. How horrendous is it that the sexually deviant and the tea-bag crazies that have no real truth can muster tens of thousands for their selfish causes--yet for the noble effort of PEACE and JUSTICE we can’t see 500? WHAT MESSAGE DOES THAT CONVEY ABOUT THIS NATION AND IT”S PEOPLE?
So it is with a sad heart that I now make plans to leave this pigsty amerika, to live out the few remaining years I might have left, somewhere else--it's very hard for me, my families have been here from before the Real Revolution, and yet I see no other way--nobody cares anymore--it must be, I'm sorry--but you have to know when to fold them--it was pitiful to watch how docile the whole scene was--and the morale was really lousy. I hope I'm wrong but I think this country is doomed by their hatred and apathy--I for one will not live in a state without Peace, Justice, and love. Goodbye cruel nation over God.
PS Ask how many of those protesters found a $30.00 parking ticket on their cars? They got us all to help feed the monster--this government is just too bad--and their reward is soon coming--thank God!
"sexually deviant and crazies"???
Rally organizers can be a pain in the ass.
It is the millions of small things that will save the planet.
That last paragraph was a bit inspiring. Maybe they can find that Afghan to talk to McChrystal (sans helmet)...
All anyone needs to be convinced of the absurdity of this war is see a few minutes of film of a 20-something American in full battle regalia, in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan, trying to tell a local elder that he (the elder) should tell the Taliban to stay far away.
Absurdity does not even begin to do justice to the pure nuttiness of this scene, repeated, I'm certain, a hundred times a day.
Landau is pretty much right about everything EXCEPT his repetition of the Govt Fairy Tale about where the attacks at WTC were planned.
I mean, maybe they WERE planned in Germany, but they were NOT planned by who the govt says planned them.
My guess is they were planned in general terms for many years.
Saul, God love you, we're there for the gas lines. Not like Vietnam (plenty of rice, no gas).
Will we we leave the gas lines behind and go our merry way? (Only Exxon knows for sure.)
Ann Jones observes in her "Kabul in Winter" that we funded the mujahadeen to repel the soviets; in doing so, we eventually replaced a godless enemy with a godly one.
In the Afghanistan amoungst the mountain lands,
dwell the tenacious Taliban and Tribal bands.
If bred and born and thrived in this place,
then one must be truly belong to a nature hardened race.
In the western cities where the oil is still furiously burned.
A billion people live on this energy that was never earned.
Even harder rich Corporates scheme to continue the scam
To get the scarser oil, to cut out the toughest middle man.
The Taliban did not heed heavy Corporate pressure.
They all want the best deal from the worlds richest treasure.
The oil starved corporations and nations still want their own way.
To war goes billions of wealth and armies hoping to make force pay.
Why does such expensive military might of western civilized trouble,
care so much about poor tribesmen in a land of mountainous rubble?
Ask any western war leader as to why they still seek such glory.
They will toss the spurious reply, and make up any old fatuous story.
We say these dirt-poor peasant tribes , far too many for their land,
who thwart our energy plans and we are so, so, incredibly, deservingly grand:
Their ignorant religious beliefs will lead others to terror incite!
Their repression of women is going against our human right!
The latest excuse is the funniest thing anyone has yet heard,
That after years continued folly, with past excuses so absurd,
That if years of our incited violence and torture stopped suddenly.
This would be a huge moral boost for the enemy. Really, funnily.
Never mind numbing moral, intellectual and personal costs we pay.
Falsity we have to tell each other, to sin with war another day.
Because still the western rich can wager on, and will not feel any war pain.
We the most stupid of nations will continue even more of the same.
From Moon of Alabama website ("And must have whiskey-- Oh you know why"):
"The Soviets had some at maximum 100,000 troops in Afghanistan but there were also some 300,000 more or less reliable Afghan forces available. In total they had the 400,000 soldiers the leaving NATO commander recently said were needed in Afghanistan. They still lost the war. The 'west' now has some 70,000 troops in Afghanistan and the Afghan army has about 80,000 soldiers. That's hopeless."
Very true, but what the whore press never tells you is that according to reliable estimates, there are conservatively at least 40 million Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan that are of the same religion and sympathize with the Afghan freedom fighters. Obomba says he does not want to look backward---well buddy, you had better look back in Afghanistan as the last army to conquer that country was Alexander the Great and he only held it for 3 years!
The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country. (Telegraph)
Just in time for the Winter Campaign? Home by Christmas, yeah, you betcha.
"Will President Obama supplement the 21,000 soldiers sent to Afghanistan during the summer?"
As of 1/14, when this was written, 0bama had already issued the order.
Not even the critics can keep up with the carnage.
mot
Mc Chrystal is a psycho killer.
Try to get background on this Genocider.
As they say: "You're done like a dinner", (with creeps like this)
South Asia
Oct 16, 2009
Taliban have a free ride in Kunduz
By Gul Rahim Niazmand
KUNDUZ - The vehicle is marked Kunduz provincial police headquarters, but the occupants are not necessarily servants of the state.
The Taliban in Kunduz recently captured eight police Ford Ranger pickups in Chahr Dara district, and they use them to move around.
It is not hard to tell the difference, however. When the Taliban are behind the wheel, they blare Islamic and national songs from the loudspeakers mounted on the car's roof; throw their arms around each other's shoulders and laugh.
Sometimes, the Taliban take motorcycles, when the roads are too
narrow or too difficult for the Rangers. They cover their heads and faces with checkered scarves.
A line of Taliban on motorcycles has just roared past on their way to Chahr Dara, soon disappearing in a cloud of dust.
The Taliban have complete control over the district. They have established their own brand of Islamic rule, and they can move around the villages and bazaars openly, with no fear. There is no government authority here.
"We have control only over the governor's office," said the district governor of Chahr Dara, Abdul Wahid. "Outside those walls we have no jurisdiction at all. People do not come to the governor's office to solve their problems - they go to the Taliban."
Four other districts are in approximately the same situation. Kunduz city, the capital of the province, is surrounded by areas from which government control has all but disappeared.
Archi, 50 kilometers north of Kunduz, is, like Chahr Dara, totally under Taliban governance. Ali Abad district, 25 kilometers to the south, is largely dominated by the fundamentalists. Government control is almost totally absent in Imam Saheb, 70 kilometers north, and in Khan Abad, just 25 kilometers to the east, the government just holds the district center and a few nearby villages.
Kunduz province only a year ago was considered stable with business booming and residents hopeful.
Afghan and foreign officials are scrambling to explain the change. The reasons and explanations offered are as varied as they are fanciful. Everyone has a theory, but no one seems to be able to offer proof.
The governor of Kunduz, Engineer Mohammad Omar, blames Pakistan for the emergence of the insurgents.
(article continued)
Until quite recently, most supplies for international forces came into Afghanistan through the country's southern neighbor, which netted Islamabad vast amounts of money in taxes and tariffs.
But with increasing insecurity along Pakistan's supply routes, some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries are seeking to bring their fuel and other supplies in from Tajikistan, via the port of Sher Khan, on the river between the two countries and Kunduz.
"The logistical supply of NATO through Sher Khan port to Afghanistan will bring economic benefits for the region and the country," said the governor. "This is not acceptable for Pakistan, because it does not want to lose the privileges it receives from NATO. Therefore it is trying to destabilize the situation in this region so that NATO will be forced to ask Pakistan for help in terms of supply routes."
Pakistani officials in Kabul did not respond to requests for comment.
Lieutenant-Colonel Carsten Spiering, spokesman for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kunduz, did not dismiss the notion that the change of supply routes might account for some of the unrest in the province.
"There are several reasons behind the deteriorating security situation in Kunduz, one of which is the switch of NATO and [United States-led] coalition forces' supply convoys through Sher Khan port," he said, without elaborating.
The Taliban, Omar says, have also been encouraged by the scarcity of police in Kunduz. "When the police go into an area, the [insurgents] run and hide," he said. "They are not strong enough to fight face-to-face. But the [insurgents] do not have a fixed location - the police cannot establish a front in the fighting. Instead, the insurgents carry out guerrilla attacks."
Kunduz police chief Mohammad Razaq Yaqubi, however, links the security problems to smugglers of narcotics in Kunduz. "The Taliban try to increase cultivation and production of opium in this region," he said. "This war in Kunduz belongs to the narcotics mafia, which is operating in the name of Islam."
Yaqubi called on the international forces to do battle with the smugglers. "They need to fight against them," he insisted. "Al-Qaeda gets a lot of its income from drugs and buys military equipment with it."
Kunduz has been declared poppy free for the past three years, but narcotics experts estimate that it is a major venue for smuggling opium and heroin into Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, and from there to Russia and Europe.
Political analyst Ghulam Haidar Haidar believes that foreigners are behind the insecurity in Kunduz. According to Haidar, the coalition forces are training and equipping the insurgents in order to spread insecurity to Central Asia.
"The United States wants a base from which to threaten Russia," he said. "The US political interests in Central Asia are no secret. The United States can achieve its goals only if the Taliban shift to the other side of the Oxus [the Amu Darya River, which forms the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan]. Then American forces can go into Central Asia in the name of the war on terror."
Haidar's version seems to accord with the residents of Chahr Dara district. One resident, who did not want to give his name, insisted that the Taliban were being supported by the US.
"I saw it with my own eyes," he said. "I was bringing my cattle home in the evening, and I saw Taliban getting off American helicopters. They were also unloading motorcycles from these aircraft. Later, a local mullah whom I know very well went to talk to the Americans, and then the helicopter left."
Captain Elizabeth Mathias, speaking for US forces in Afghanistan, denied the charge. "The US is not supporting Taliban militants, nor are we expanding the conflict into Central Asia ... the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and specifically instability within those two countries, is keeping American and NATO forces busy enough," she said.
"As for rumors, I honestly feel it is a natural reaction by people as they try to understand the difficult situations they face ... [Government and coalition forces] continue to combat destabilizing forces in the area and communicate those efforts to the residents of Kunduz."
Another issue that may have boosted the influence of the Taliban is the perception among Pashtuns that NATO and the coalition forces are waging war on only one ethnic group - theirs.
The Taliban are overwhelmingly Pashtun, and the war has been concentrated in Pashtun areas. This has led to a sense of grievance among the Pashtuns, according to Haidar, and a willingness to embrace the insurgents for revenge or for protection.
"Wherever Pashtuns live, there are clashes, and civilians are killed," he said. "This war has been imposed on the Pashtuns, but they do not want war any more."
Incidents such as the bombing in Chahr Dara on September 4, when the German military called in an airstrike on two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban, only deepen local anger.
Several dozen civilians were killed when the bombs targeted a group of people gathered around the vehicles. While the Germans say they thought they were all insurgents, many were villagers trying to get some free fuel from the trucks.
Chahr Dara's district governor, Abdul Wahid, blames the government for not doing more. "In the beginning there were very few Taliban, and the government could have defeated them," he said. "But they ignored the problem. Now the [insurgency] is growing on a daily basis."
Gul Rahim Niazmand is an IWPR trainee based in Kunduz.
(This article originally appeared in Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Used with permission.)
WHY PAKISTANIS ALSO REJECT US "AID".
Wednesday 14 October 2009
by: Ben Arnoldy | The Christian Science Monitor
photo
Barely a quarter of the 2,500 Pakistanis polled believe money earmarked in the Kerry-Lugar bill will improve ordinary lives. (Photo: *Muhammad* / flickr)
New Gallup poll indicates that the Kerry-Lugar bill, already confronting opposition from Pakistan's political and military establishment, faces a wave of popular distrust of the US as well.
New Delhi - The United States is offering $7.5 billion to Pakistan for development - but only 15 percent of Pakistanis support accepting it, according to a Gallup Pakistan survey released Wednesday.
Barely a quarter of the 2,500 Pakistanis polled believe the money earmarked in a bill put forward by Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts and Sen. Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana will improve the ordinary lives of the people.
The poll comes after Pakistan's military and political opposition strenuously objected to various strings attached to the aid, opening a rift in US-Pakistan relations.
Senator Kerry said Wednesday that there are no conditions attached to the bill that "impinge" on Pakistan's sovereignty. But the people of Pakistan, it seems, aren't convinced. The outcome of the poll suggests that the US, which is facing opposition from Pakistan's entrenched political and military establishment, is also confronting a wave of popular distrust of US motivations.
"It's not something that only the Islamabad pols discuss," says Ijaz Shafi Gilani, the Gallup Pakistan pollster. "It's not only about the conditionalities [on the money], but disenchantment with aid as an instrument of development."
The Bill's Controversial Conditions
The conditions on the Kerry-Lugar aid that have proved most controversial include "direct access" to Pakistani nationals associated with nuclear proliferation, ensuring civilian authority over military promotions, and certification by the US Secretary of State that Pakistan is cooperating on counterterrorism.
Additionally, the tone of the whole document is "quite humiliating," says Khalid Rahman, head of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad. The bill states that monitoring and certification requirements can be waived if it's in the American national interest, meaning "it will be the American interests - not the Pakistani interests - that will be served."
Initial efforts by the Pakistani government to declare the bill a success have fueled the outrage, since some of the concessions supposedly won through its lobbying efforts in Washington ring hollow. Congress merely inserted vaguer language, critics say.
"They took out "India," but instead they put in the wording of "neighboring countries." You know and I know we are not neighbors of Tanzania and South Africa," says Sen. Tariq Aziz, a spokesman for the opposition PML-N party.
US Skepticism
Pakistan's Army vociferously objected to the bill earlier this month - after the US Senate passed it. The military's intervention, coupled with a backdrop of past misuse of US funds, lead some US experts to caution against taking Pakistan's objections too seriously.
"The problem for Pakistan is that it knows the Kerry-Lugar restrictions represent legitimate US concerns ... not in the interests of the Pakistani Army and other elites," writes Timothy Hoyt, a regional expert at the US Naval War College, in Foreign Policy magazine. "[R]ather than reject the remarkably generous provision of aid, Pakistan's military will seek a work-around in practice ... maintaining their questionable activities at a sufficiently ambiguous level."
Could US Goals Backfire?
But if one American goal was to champion greater civilian control over the military, this bill will only accomplish the opposite, argues Mr. Rahman.
"There are very few people in Pakistan who endorse military rule, so the Army has already lost that ground, and it knows its limitations," he says. "Greater [public] trust in civilian institutions will not come with American support - that, the Pakistani people will never trust."
A more successful US approach, he suggests, would have been to run the terms of the aid through Parliament rather than working through individual leaders, especially the deeply unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari.
"Ungrateful" Nation
Mr. Gilani, the pollster, admits that Pakistan may come off in his survey looking like "an ungrateful nation" to Americans. But, he says, after decades of American assistance, "there's a growing perception that foreign assistance doesn't deliver development."
There also appears to be a disconnect on whether the aid is all that generous. Senator Aziz figures that, given rapid inflation in Pakistan and the way huge chunks of foreign aid actually pass back to the United States through contractor salaries, the real purchasing power of the aid will diminish to roughly $200 million a year.
Both he and Rahman say the $7.5 billion over five years is a drop in the bucket compared with US taxpayer outlays in Afghanistan. Conservative estimates place the economic losses to Pakistan caused by the war on terror to be $35 billion, notes Rahman.
"Pakistan has suffered a lot in terms of money, in terms of human lives, in terms of law and order, in terms of losses in investments and infrastructure. If, after that, America comes up with $7.5 billion, but you are required to do this and this, I don't think Pakistanis are really convinced," says Rahman.
The Pakistani diaspora sends back $6 billion a year, suggesting to Rahman that his country ought to tap its own people instead for financial help with fewer strings attached.
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