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I think one important thing to remember is that we don't get all the facts back home. The fact that the war has already been going for 9 years without victory doesn't mean victory is impossible - it might just as well mean the people in charge have been plodding idiots. After all, that's characterised the rest of the Bush administration. While it seems hard to believe to people without experience of military bureaucracy, it's not at all impossible that no one important considered that the best way to defeat the insurgency might be counterinsurgency tactics. Witness for example the very liberal use of airstrikes, which is a sure sign of doing it wrong. Now that McChrystal is in charge, things are already changing fast, and given that we've already been there for 9 years we might well give him a few more to let his new tactics be implemented and yield results. It would after all be pretty silly to surrender now, just to later understand we were at the brink of victory. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I did not claim victory would mean the same as it did in WW2 neither. Creating a reasonably stable Afghan state (or de facto states) that can control its own territory sounds fine by me. Is that impossible? Maybe. But we don't know until we've actually tried, and until now we haven't really tried. We've just dropped bombs on targets, which tends to rile up the locals. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Another myth American strategists subscribe to is that of nation-building, based on their delusional and self-serving belief that they are responsible for Japan's and Germany's post-WWII progress. Japan and Germany were highly civilised and sophisticated places to begin with and all the American did was weed out the fascists and provide material assistance for reconstruction. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Well, that was something significant I'd say, even considering that it was half-done and looked haphazard on the ground. But what American strategists today subscribe to is 'nation-building' on the cheap, or just as PR measure; and that coupled with occupation on the small scale (with much less troops than after WWII). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
American Blitzkrieg: Loving the German War Machine to Death
Throughout our history, many Americans, especially frontline combat veterans, have known the hell of real war. It's one big reason why, historically speaking, we've traditionally been reluctant to keep a large standing military. But the Cold War, containment, and our own fetishizing of the German Wehrmacht changed everything. We began to see war not as a human-made disaster but as a creative science and art. We began to seek "force multipliers" and total victory achieved through an almost Prussian mania for military excellence. Reeling from a seemingly inexplicable and unimaginable defeat in Vietnam, the officer corps used Clausewitz to crawl out of its collective fog. By reading him selectively and reaffirming our own faith in military professionalism and precision weaponry, we tricked ourselves into believing that we had attained mastery over warfare. We believed we had tamed the dogs of war; we believed we had conquered Bellona, that we could make the goddess of war do our bidding. We forgot that Clausewitz compared war not only to politics but to a game of cards. Call it the ultimate high-stakes poker match. Even the player with the best cards, the highest stack of chips, doesn't always win. Guile and endurance matter. So too does nerve, even luck. And having a home-table advantage doesn't hurt either. [...] Unlike a devastated and demoralized Germany after its defeats, we decided not to devalue war as an instrument of policy after our defeat, but rather to embrace it. Clasping Clausewitz to our collective breasts, we marched forward seeking new decisive victories. Yet, like our role models the Germans of World War II, we found victory to be both elusive and illusive.
Reeling from a seemingly inexplicable and unimaginable defeat in Vietnam, the officer corps used Clausewitz to crawl out of its collective fog. By reading him selectively and reaffirming our own faith in military professionalism and precision weaponry, we tricked ourselves into believing that we had attained mastery over warfare. We believed we had tamed the dogs of war; we believed we had conquered Bellona, that we could make the goddess of war do our bidding.
We forgot that Clausewitz compared war not only to politics but to a game of cards. Call it the ultimate high-stakes poker match. Even the player with the best cards, the highest stack of chips, doesn't always win. Guile and endurance matter. So too does nerve, even luck. And having a home-table advantage doesn't hurt either. [...]
Unlike a devastated and demoralized Germany after its defeats, we decided not to devalue war as an instrument of policy after our defeat, but rather to embrace it. Clasping Clausewitz to our collective breasts, we marched forward seeking new decisive victories. Yet, like our role models the Germans of World War II, we found victory to be both elusive and illusive.
What I don't see is why a Swedish university student should buy into this American fantasy of warfare "as a creative science and art". I guess boys will be boys, no matter what country they live in:
I have a message for my younger self: put aside those menacing models of German tanks and planes. Forget those glowing accounts of Rommel and his Afrika Korps. Dismiss Blitzkrieg from your childish mind. There is no lightning war, America. There never was. And if you won't take my word for it, just ask the Germans.
That text makes absolutely no sense. In a way, it reminds me of the thinking of the American generals and politicians who until recently were in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: the idea that you could deal with the post-"war" phase, the insurgency, as if it was a conventional war. You can't and they failed. They are very differnt things, and the system-wide depression in the US armed forces after the Vietnam debacle didn't result in "lessons learned", instead it was decided that never more would the US fight a low intensity war. All eyes turned to the Fulda Gap.
If we for some reason want to involve the Wehrmacht(?!), the only thing I have to add is that the excellent speedy execution of the invasion of Iraq would have made even schnelle Heinz proud. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
People might feel a certain frustration that these low-intensity wars grind on for years, but the very reason they can do that is because they are low-intensity. A long grinding insurgency will end up about the same cost as a short sharp "real" war. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
It is not enough to have the discourse of empire rehearsed endlessly in the major newspapers and the cable news channels: it must also find expression in the most obscure of non-mainstream blogs. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
Me being a spokesman for the "international community" is quite an hilarious idea, but in that vein, I wonder what forces you're knowingly or unwittingly a spokesman for? No matter which it is, I'm sure they're quite pleased. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
And if you use "we" to refer to the EuroTrib community, I resent your use of this pronoun, since I consider myself to be a member of this community, and have not seen you write anything that I would associate with the values I understand this blog to stand for. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
But I do insist on my belief that us ET'ers do not, as a community, want to be obscure and non-mainstream just for the sake of it. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
The Dutch political process is unfortunately unhinged from the overall war effort. But it won't have too much impact in the face of the US buildup.
Still, there might very well be reasons why certain nations should not be involved in the war effort. If it creates huge political problems at home for the Dutch, they can always go home. It won't mean the end of COIN. I for one think the Swedish deployment in Afghanistan is bad policy, though for completely different reasons than the local peaceniks do. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Chatham House - Conceptualizing AfPak: The Prospects and Perils (pdf)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence." 'Sapere aude'
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
God, you have a fluent familiarity with the most obscure of the Empire's acronyms! What is EuroTrib coming to...
Here is what a British Pakistani has to say about Obama and AfPak:
From Palestine through Iraq to Iran, Obama has acted as just another steward of the American empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors, with the same means but with a more emollient rhetoric. In Afghanistan, he has gone further, widening the front of imperial aggression with a major escalation of violence, both technological and territorial. When he took office, Afghanistan had already been occupied by US and satellite forces for over seven years. During his election campaign Obama--determined to outdo Bush in prosecuting a `just war'--pledged more troops and fire-power to crush the Afghan resistance, and more ground intrusions and drone attacks in Pakistan to burn out support for it across the border. This is one promise he has kept. A further 30,000 troops are currently being rushed to the Hindu Kush. This will bring the us army of occupation close to 100,000, under a general picked by Obama for the success of his brutalities in Iraq, where his units formed a specialist elite in assassination and torture. Simultaneously, a massive intensification of aerial terror over Pakistan is under way. In what the New York Times delicately described as a `statistic that the White House has not advertised', it has informed its readers that `since Mr Obama came to office, the Central Intelligence Agency has mounted more Predator drone strikes into Pakistan than during Mr Bush's eight years in office'. There is no mystery about the reason for this escalation. After invading Afghanistan in 2001, the US and its European auxiliaries imposed a puppet government of their own making, confected at a conference in Bonn, headed by a CIA asset and seconded by an assortment of Tajik warlords, with NGOs in attendance like page boys in a medieval court. This bogus construct never had the slightest legitimacy in the country, lacking even a modicum of the narrow but dedicated base the Taliban had enjoyed. [...] [A]fter vehement denunciations of fraud by the highest functionary in Washington, and a pro forma second round of voting, Obama consummated the farce by congratulating Karzai on a victory more blatantly rigged even than Ahmadinejad's two months earlier, on which--in top Uriah Heep form--the US President had spared no stern words. Unlike the regime in Tehran, which retains an indigenous base in society, however diminished, what passes for government in Kabul is a Western implant that would disintegrate overnight without the NATO praetorians dispatched to protect it.
There is no mystery about the reason for this escalation. After invading Afghanistan in 2001, the US and its European auxiliaries imposed a puppet government of their own making, confected at a conference in Bonn, headed by a CIA asset and seconded by an assortment of Tajik warlords, with NGOs in attendance like page boys in a medieval court. This bogus construct never had the slightest legitimacy in the country, lacking even a modicum of the narrow but dedicated base the Taliban had enjoyed. [...]
[A]fter vehement denunciations of fraud by the highest functionary in Washington, and a pro forma second round of voting, Obama consummated the farce by congratulating Karzai on a victory more blatantly rigged even than Ahmadinejad's two months earlier, on which--in top Uriah Heep form--the US President had spared no stern words. Unlike the regime in Tehran, which retains an indigenous base in society, however diminished, what passes for government in Kabul is a Western implant that would disintegrate overnight without the NATO praetorians dispatched to protect it.
Tariq Ali: President of Cant A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
Tariq Ali: The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom
Needless to say, I find your attitude very primitive, although I am not surprised by it, given the naive views of the American military adventure in Iraq you expressed earlier.
"Person x is a y (Anti-Semite, Trotskyist, ...) so I don't have to bother providing you with any arguments for why x's position on z is wrong" is a line I associate more with DailyKos than with the EuroTrib, but it could be the case that having a less crude representative of the Empire as US President has lead to a degradation in intellectual rigor at EuroTrib. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
An Advisory Board member for Iraq Occupation Watch, Ali is a supporter of the "resistance" in Iraq and has called for the killing of U.S. troops stationed there. Intimating that the 9/11 attacks had given America a taste of its own medicine, Ali made his goals explicit in the May-June 2003 issue of New Left Review. There, he forecast that "the invaders of Iraq will eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to the occupation regime they install."
[Out of sympathy for Stalinist Saddam Hussein? - Oui]
On February 15, 2005, Horowitz launched DiscoverTheNetwork, a website dedictated to tracking "leftists". It brings the Campus-Watch formula to the wider political arena. In the About Us section of the new website:a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.[4]
a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.[4]
A project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), SourceWatch describes itself as an "encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda." The subjects of these entries are individuals, issues, and organizations whose objectives and ideologies run the entire left-to-right political gamut. SourceWatch also seeks to expose what it calls the "propaganda activities of public relations firms" and the activities of organizations working "on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." These "exposes," which tend to be critical of their subjects, deal predominantly with conservative entities. Founded in 2003 under the name Disinfopedia, SourceWatch (which took its current name in 2005) reports that from April 2006 to April 2007 it received some 73 million page views. As of April 2007, the SourceWatch database contained more than 15,600 entries.
SourceWatch also seeks to expose what it calls the "propaganda activities of public relations firms" and the activities of organizations working "on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." These "exposes," which tend to be critical of their subjects, deal predominantly with conservative entities.
Founded in 2003 under the name Disinfopedia, SourceWatch (which took its current name in 2005) reports that from April 2006 to April 2007 it received some 73 million page views. As of April 2007, the SourceWatch database contained more than 15,600 entries.
So, is there a source that everyone involved in this debate will agree to accept? Somehow, I doubt it. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
And, if you cannot link to an NLR article because of rights or protections please do not hesitate to send me word or email me and I will send or the article. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Since you intend to read Ali's article, here are two other articles available for free at the NLR Web site which give a representative view of how the Left views things:
Perry Anderson, editorial: Jottings on the Conjuncture. This is mostly about the present geopolitical situation. Underlying this account is the view that neoliberalism is a specifically American project, a view which I think is quite correct.
Susan Watkins, editorial: Shifting Sands. This is a review of responses to the current economic crisis and the degree to which it has made people reconsider neoliberalism. In short, it has not, and what everyone is calling for is regulation, something which Watkins observes "is in fact a hard-line liberal economic concept".
Incidentally, Watkins, who has been the editor of the NLR since 2003, is the wife of Tariq Ali. (I only learnt that after I read this piece of hers in the current issue.) Perry Anderson was the editor directly before her. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
And how does being Punjabi somehow relevant? The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Furthermore his claim of pre-war Afghanistan and Taliban's legitimacy 'as dedicated base the Taliban had enjoyed'. As an historian this article has plenty of creativity and freedom of impression.
Of course, Tariq Ali is a person with a special background as I read in wikipedia. Another link gave more personal information from an interview in May 2003: Islam, Empire and the Left: Conversation with Tariq Ali. Ali only discusses foreign policy in terms of empires and imperial wars. His heritage is the Punjab, divided between Pakistan and India after slaughter of wars. This must have been very personal and he chose a career of political activism, yet escaped death by traveling to Britain for his education. India and Pakistan haven't been able to iron out their differences over decades. Both nations lack stability due to internal terror groups, or in terms of Tarig Ali: freedom or resistence fighters. I guess when the US retaliates after some freedom fighters committed the terror acts of 9/11, the US is accused of "imperial aggression." Reading the biography and the activism of his mother, yes I can believe in the struggle for workers rights in Pakistan and the communist support for an independence.
[Links provided to put Ali's one-sided rant in a bit of perspective, especially his view of the Taliban as 'freedom fighters' and the US as 'imperial aggressors' - Oui]
EARLY LIFE Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly-independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab in 1937).
Ali's parents "both came from a very old, crusty, feudal family". His father had broken with the family's conventions in politics when he was a student, adopting communism, nationalism and atheism. Ali's mother also belonged to the same family, and became radicalized upon meeting his father. However, Ali was taught the fundamentals of Islam in order to be able to argue against it.
EMERGING ACTIVISM While studying at the Punjab University, he organized demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship. Ali's uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union, in 1965.
CAREER His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies, and emerged as a figurehead for critics of American foreign policy across the globe. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy.
Separation of India and Punjab
Obama resetting the sights of drone attacks
Not all Pathans are as this. And not all Pakistanis of course are Pathans.
And especially, not all Muslims are as this. Having spent a lot of time there I too have to fight this. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
During Bush 2's presidency, America came to be openly described as an empire across the political spectrum, and not just negatively:
In my days as a student activist in the 1970s, the use of the term "imperialism" to describe US policy was generally used only in the antiwar and international solidarity movements, the writings of left-wing academics or the newspapers of small socialist splinter groups. Three decades later, the notion of American empire is gaining a degree of mainstream respectability, this time promoted by a strange convergence of right-wing unilateralists and humanitarian interventionists who see unbridled American power as the last, best hope for building a more stable world. The most egregious recent example of this trend was the glaring red, white and blue cover story in the New York Times Magazine of January 5, "American Empire (Get Used to It)," in which Michael Ignatieff suggests that Americans are in "deep denial" over their country's imperial role and are therefore ill equipped to understand a central reality of our brave new post-9/11 world.
The most egregious recent example of this trend was the glaring red, white and blue cover story in the New York Times Magazine of January 5, "American Empire (Get Used to It)," in which Michael Ignatieff suggests that Americans are in "deep denial" over their country's imperial role and are therefore ill equipped to understand a central reality of our brave new post-9/11 world.
Not just Tariq Ali, but just about anyone who gets published in the New Left Review considers America to be an empire. So do liberals like Chalmers Johnson and Sheldon Wolyn, whose concept of inverted totalitarianism was diaried here recently.
And why do you find the phrase "aerial terror over Pakistan" "extraordinary"? Why do you think the unmanned drones are called "Predators" and what they fire called "Hellfire" missiles? The Pentagon's own names are meant to evoke terror.
I really find it hard to understand where you're coming from. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
WHy, getting us into Afghanistan. Divide-and-rule with bilateral treaties. Telling 'partners' which way to go in NATO. It's not working that good recently, though -- even if the Europeans practise sabotage instead of some own policy.
spend more on defence so we don't have to
Nothing the US military spends on is something we would have to: most of it is total waste, the rest imperial folly for adventures not serving defense or even counter-acting it with the blowback. This is just talk to get the vassals more pliant. And give more orders to the Mil-Ind complex.
any influence over internal European affairs
So why had separate EU military structures to be opposed so steadfastly? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
It is not obvious that US defence spending makes the EU anty safer; in fact, one could say, given the instablity the US causes with its military, due to its actions near our (not their) borders, quite the opposite is the case.
Sweden may not spend much on its defence. Here in France, we spend plenty. Speaking of larger Europe rather than just the EU, the Russians spend plenty, as does the UK. Not everyone is a free-rider ;-) The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
I don't find any of those extraordinary -- you are in denial.
* Steward of the American empire: as nanne wrote, Obama is an American exceptionalist like any other.
Renewing American Leadership | Foreign Affairs After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew...
After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew...
* 'aerial terror over Pakistan': how else do do you call 'targeted assasinations' with heavy civilian toll in a country not even officially at war? And it's not just Pakistan, just the other day:
Nato airstrike kills 33 civilians in Afghanistan - Times OnlineInitial reports indicated that Nato attacked a convoy of three vehicles on Sunday as they travelled towards Kandahar. The dead included four women and one child and 12 others were injured. Amanullah Hotak, head of the Uruzgan provincial council, said that the people had been travelling in three mini-buses through a pass in the Char Cheno district. Zamari Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said: "Isaf troops were suspicious that several civilian vehicles contained insurgents and bombed them." The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, saying it was "unjustifiable".
Initial reports indicated that Nato attacked a convoy of three vehicles on Sunday as they travelled towards Kandahar. The dead included four women and one child and 12 others were injured.
Amanullah Hotak, head of the Uruzgan provincial council, said that the people had been travelling in three mini-buses through a pass in the Char Cheno district.
Zamari Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said: "Isaf troops were suspicious that several civilian vehicles contained insurgents and bombed them."
The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, saying it was "unjustifiable".
Being a Punjabi would colour his worldview as regards Pakistan only insofar as he did not likely have, like a Baluch or a Pathan, any clan or family relationship to Afghanistan. The same would be true were he to have been a Sindhi or to a bit less extent a Kashmiri. But this is to say he is more objective as regards Afghanistan, not less; were he to have been an Afridi from the Mardan area I would worry more that his intimate relations and interests in Afghanistan would colour his view of the conflict, than being from Punjab where he would not have a similar interested viewpoint.
The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Okay, with the ad-hominems out of the way, how is what he says wrong on the facts? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
...which could barely cover up the realisation of FUBAR. They don't really know what to do...
Barack Obama 'to reject Afghanistan war options in favour of plan with clear exit strategy' - Telegraph
According to US reports, it is not the first time he has asked for the four options thought to have been presented to him to be rewritten and he is putting up considerable resistance to the strategy put forward by the Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US Nato commander in Afghanistan, to increase troop numbers by 40,000 for a counterinsurgency drive. Other options on the table include sending between 10,000 and 15,000 troops who will focus on training Afghan forces. The latest development came as it emerged that the US Ambassador in Kabul, Gen Karl Eikenberry, has told Mr Obama that a surge of troops was "not a good idea" unless the Afghan government suceeded in reining in the corruption which spurred the Taliban insurgency.
According to US reports, it is not the first time he has asked for the four options thought to have been presented to him to be rewritten and he is putting up considerable resistance to the strategy put forward by the Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US Nato commander in Afghanistan, to increase troop numbers by 40,000 for a counterinsurgency drive.
Other options on the table include sending between 10,000 and 15,000 troops who will focus on training Afghan forces.
The latest development came as it emerged that the US Ambassador in Kabul, Gen Karl Eikenberry, has told Mr Obama that a surge of troops was "not a good idea" unless the Afghan government suceeded in reining in the corruption which spurred the Taliban insurgency.
The notion that setting a timeline for withdrawal would give the enemy an incentive to just lay low for a while has already done the rounds in the US debate over this 'transition' in 2011. It's silly. If the Taliban would lay low they'd help the central goverment build up its capacity and legitimacy. So I don't think they'd have an incentive. I also don't think it's their mentality to relent. Or to put that differently: that they'd have the strategic coherence to pull it off.
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