January 28, 2008
Afghanistan Update - Whither Waziristan?
There may be some good news across the border, for the government of Pakistan may be getting ready to start a major new offensive into South Waziristan, the lawless area of that country where so many al Qaeda and Taliban are holed up. Stanley Kurtz reports that it's all terribly complicated, though, because of the significant sympathy for the Taliban and al Qaeda in the government, and indeed thoughout Pakistani society. On the one hand Musharraf wants to defeat the terrorists, but on the other if he is too blatant about military operations he could lose control of his country. Unfortunatly, too many here in the United States do not seem to have an appreciation for the percariousness of Musharraf's rule. Kurtz concludes by noting that
The recent meetings between Adm. William Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, and the head of Pakistan’s army fit nicely into this picture. America would like to take on the Taliban in its home base in Pakistan before the Taliban’s spring offensive in Afghanistan begins. Musharraf’s political weakness may actually have created precisely the conditions we need to see a serious offensive in Waziristan. Musharraf is trying to prove to us that we need him, and that he can deliver. The Pakistani army’s successful assault on Swat was clearly a confidence builder, and even the Anbar tribal strategy is seeing a kind of revival in a Pakistani context.
Key to defeating our enemy will be ridding them of a sanctuary. The entire situation in Pakistan is impossible and there are no easy answers. Let's look at a few maps
This first one is a general map of the region
This next one focuses on the Wazirisan area of Pakistan
And in this last one we see Tora Bora pinpointed. This, of course, was where Osama bin Laden was likely hiding for a time before fleeing into Pakistan.
As I think we all know by now, the Taliban and al Qaeda have a de facto sanctuary in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. Given enough time, determination, and resources, we can eventually get Afghanistan to the point where it can adequately defend itself against cross-border infiltration by the above. But it would be a whole lot easier of we could deny our enemy their sanctuary.
The problem is that this area of Pakistan has never been effectively governed. When Pakistan was formed in 1948, the government essentially did a deal with the local tribes; we'll let you alone, and in return you don't declare indepenence or harbor those who try and overthrow our government. This worked up until al Qaeda and the Taliban fled to the region, where they found sanctuary. When the government of Pakistan tried to go in and get them it was defeated. On Sept 5, 2006, the Pakistani government signed the Waziristan Accords with the tribes in which the government effectively cried uncle.
The United States cannot simply "go in" and get the Taliban and al Qaeda in Waziristan. There are three primary reasons why this is so.
One is simply that Pakistan will explode if we attack their country. Osama bin Laden is popular, even if people don't necessarily want to be ruled by him. Even since the rulf of General Zia ul-Haq (1977-88), radical madrassas have injected Islamist beliefs into the population to the point where the West in general and the United States in particular are unpopular, and radical Islam is favored. Look again at the maps; if Pakistan falls we can't even get to Afghanistan anymore. Peopl, like Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, who suggest that we should attack into Pakistan, need to consider this likely consequence.
Second is logistics. The region is vast and hard to get to. Road networks are spotty and rail largely nonesistent and certainly unreliable. We can't even get to Afghanistan without going through Pakistan, and there is simply no way that the latter will allow our transit if they think it is to attack their own country. Further, getting enough troops to the Waziristan region to do enough good is logistically impossible. Remember, troops must be supplied and supported. Parachuting them in is all very cool, but unless they are properly supported we'll have another Operation Market Garden on our hands.
Third, even if we sent troops to Waziristan it's not likely they'd find Osama bin Laden. They could do some damage to al Qaeda and the Taliban, but would suffer many cansualties themselves. Would all those who insist that we "get bin Laden" continue their support in the face of mounting casualties? The civilian population would suffer, all of which would be highlighted in the media.
This is not to say that there is nothing we can do. We can supply the Pakistanis with intelligence and other forms of support so that they might be more effective in future invasions. Simply giving them moral support will count.
The second thing we can do is probably what we're doing now; trying to buy off the tribes. This would not be done with Special Forces, but black ops, more like the Vietnam era SOG teams than anything else.
Either way, there are no good options for dealing with this situation. Winning in Afghanistan is going to take years, if not decades, of determined effort. It will be hard and there will be many bad days. Afghanistan is not even as coherent a country as Iraq, so getting it's government and army off the ground are even more difficult. Our "allies" in Europe and Canada are showing signs of wanting out. We'll likely have to fight this with reduced assistance before long. Whether we can stick it out will determine whether the terrorists get their country back.
Posted by Tom at 8:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 26, 2008
Afghanistan Update - Our Allies
Let's first set the stage with a quick primer on organization.
CENTCOM is the overall US command for the area, and has responsibility for the region. Adm William Fallon commands CENTCOM, and reporting to him are Gen Petraeus of MNF-Iraq. The structure in Afghanistan is a bit more complex than that in Iraq:
There are two separate Allied operations in Afghanistan right now. There is Operation Enduring Freedom, led by the Americans with British participation. And there is the International Security Assistance Force, which is a NATO operation and manned mainly by Europeans and Canadians....Operation Enduring Freedom ... has a more robust mandate and stronger rules of engagement.
Here's the website for ISAF, and here's the one for OEF. Here's more on the differences between the two, from the Australian News article (via The Belmont Club) that was quoted above:
ISAF has a long list of Taliban personnel it is prepared to target. These are the so-called high-value targets. However, at times the restrictions on its rules of engagement are ridiculous. If ISAF coalition forces discover a house with two Taliban high-value targets, and four other Taliban fighters who are not on the list of ISAF approved targets, it cannot attack the house. This is not a scenario of protecting civilians but of protecting Taliban targets who are just not specifically on the list. ...Most European nations that do deploy in Afghanistan do so in the much more relatively peaceful north , rather than the violent south where the Australians are.
That's not encouraging.
Earlier this week I discussed the situation with regards to Canada, and how the public up north was souring on the war. Today we'll cover some of our other allies
There's a brief history of OEF on their website, and it's worth quoting from it a bit just so we have the organization straight
Combined Joint Task Force-82 (CJTF-82) is a U.S.-led subordinate command of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). CJTF-82 serves as both the National Command Element for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, reporting directly to the U.S. Central Command commander, and as ISAF’s Regional Command – East.CJTF-82 is headquartered at Bagram Airfield.
The 82nd Airborne Division has been leading this effort since February 2007.
The ISAF website identifies 39 countries that are participating in some way:
NATO Countries (26) Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada , Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United StatesNon-NATO Countries (13)
Albania, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Finland, The Former Yoguslav
Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and Jordan
The number of troops from each country is not listed, and I do not have time to search the website of each country individually. If anyone has that information please leave it and a link in a comment.
On with the Story
First up; the Gates controversy. From The Belmont Club last week
When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accused NATO forces in Afghanistan as being untrained and unready to conduct counterinsurgency warfare it set off a spasm of transatlantic recrimination. British conservative lawmaker Patrick Mercer called Gates' comments "bloody outrageous". But Gate's remarks were a subsidiary part of a much larger accusation that he made before the House Armed Services Committee in December, 2007 which tellingly evoked not outrage but silence. "I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements -- about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters, and three infantry battalions -- Gates voiced "frustration" at "our allies not being able to step up to the plate." Gates was baldly accusing the NATO allies of reneging on their commitments. To make the criticism even more stinging, these statements coincided with an announcement the US was about to send 3,200 Marines to cover the 7,500 man shortfall in the NATO deployments. The answer to that criticism wasn't outrage but rationalization. The NATO troops, the European allies countered, were bearing the brunt of the fighting against the al-Qaeda/Taliban forces. Bill Roggio looked at the validity of the British claim.
Long story short: Roggio didn't buy it. But follow the link and judge for yourself.
The LA Times has additional information on the committments of our allies. In a story titled" Going It Alone Because We Have To"
The tragedy is that he had to rob Peter to pay Paul because Britain can't maintain 7,000 troops in Iraq and 7,000 in Afghanistan.... Look at Afghanistan, where NATO is always having trouble dredging up an extra helicopter or another infantry battalion to throw into the fray. The British and Canadians are doing more than their share; their willingness to fight hard and take casualties sets them apart from most NATO countries, which prefer to send troops to safe parts of Afghanistan rather than to the front lines in the south and east. But 5,500 British and 2,500 Canadian soldiers can cover only so much ground, even with another 1,500 Brits thrown in. As usual, the United States, with more than 27,000 troops in Afghanistan, is left to carry the lion's share of the burden.
Meanwhile, over at The Corner, John Hood links to a story that shows European public opinion turning against the war in Afghanistan
[F]our years into NATO's mission - the alliance took over ISAF in 2003 - mounting troop and civilian casualties, the latter often caused by airstrikes used when soldiers have been lacking, are turning public opinion.A survey in Canada in August showed that solid majorities of people in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy thought the ISAF-mission was a failure, while almost one in two Canadians agreed.
A poll in Germany, which has lost more than 20 troops since 2002, found that almost two out of every three people want the government to withdraw its 3,000 troops, even though they are deployed in relatively stable areas.
The Netherlands, which one official said is "punching above its weight class," is expected to renew in coming weeks the mandate of some 1,500 Dutch troops deployed in the southern province of Oruzgan.
Surveys suggest the majority of Dutch people are against an extension.
Responding to this story, Mark Steyn made the obvious but still worth quoting observation:
John, that story on the Nato mission in Afghanistan is very dispiriting. This, after all, is supposed to be "the good war," not like illegal blood-for-oil Iraq. Yet countries that steered clear of Bush's Mesopotamian adventure have no stomach even for a mission with impeccable multilateral bonafides. The Canadians have been taking casualties at a higher rate than the U.S., U.K. or any other nation, but they've also been doing a tough job very well of which their countrymen should be proud. But they're not, not really. Huge numbers of the Canadian public don't support the mission, don't think it's worth it, and want it ended. And so do the Brits and Europeans and most other members of the Nato "alliance."That's how it would go here, too. When Democrats complain that Iraq is a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan, it's worth remembering that's just a shell game. If America pulled out of Mesopotamia and devoted its attentions to the Hindu Kush, Afghanistan would become the new Democrat-media quagmire in nothing flat.
But the bigger lesson is that most western nations have signaled to the world they have no stomach for any fight. And it's not just the Taliban and al-Qaeda who draw their conclusions from that, but the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and all kinds of other folks.
This in turn leads to Jonathan Forman's discussion of the "Information Battle Space" last May in National Review. Although it's 8 months old, his observations are still relevant. Forman reviews several stories that had recently appeared in the Western press, all of them critical of European soldiers, accusing them of various atrocities. All were shown to be false, or at least highly questionable.
For the most part, Taliban claims are assumed to be true. Statements by Coalition spokesmen, on the other hand, are a different matter. Such officials are said to make “claims,” and they are essentially assumed to be propagandists, if not flat out liars, by many correspondents....
The critical part though is nearer the beginning of the piece
Make no mistake, the Taliban and their allies, like the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, know perfectly well that they don’t have to defeat the Coalition militarily; all they have to do is undermine the political will of the Western electorates.
It looks like they're succeeding in reducing the will of our allies.
Next up: Whither Waziristan?
Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 23, 2008
Afghanistan Update - Who's Winning?
In the wake of their being squeezed out of Iraq, al Qaeda has been "redeploying" assets to Afghanistan. To help counter this, the United States is sending 3,000 additional Marines. Even so, the troops we already have there inflicted a significant defeat on them and their allies, the Taliban, last month.
It's devilishly hard to know who's winning in Afghanistan, because individual battles may prove illusory. At the end of October Michael Yon wrote a pessimistic piece in which he said point blank that "there are many indicators that the Afghan campaign is at this date a complete failure." He discussed many reasons for his conclusion, not the least of which was the ever-increasing drug trade. "Approximately half of Afghanistan’s economy is based on opium", and much of the profit goes to the Taliban and al Qaeda. As with Central America, it's hard to stop at the supply end. And, indeed, this years opium crop was the largest ever.
Eradicating the poppy crop isn't easy as it it sounds. It might not even be desirable, at least in the short run. While some in the Bush Administration are apparently bent on destroying it, others point out that
Poppy eradication is a double-edged sword. Afghanistan provides nine out of every ten grams of heroin sold on the streets of Britain, and officials are determined to stamp out poppy growth. Yet a successful campaign would leave many unemployed as potential recruits for the Taleban. Afghans, ever the pragmatists, have devised their own solution. “We leave some fields without destroying the poppy so everyone is happy . . . otherwise they will go and support the Taleban,” said Aminullah, 21, a policeman with the eradication force in Helmand. "
Yon also points out that although "there is a widespread notion that Afghanistan is safer for our troops than Iraq... Coalition and NATO combat deaths in Afghanistan are per capita nearly identical to those in Iraq."
But then again, there are other credible reports that suggest just the opposite
Back in August Ann Marlowe had a piece in the Wall Street Journal subtitled "Don't believe the naysayers. Afghanistan is doing as well as anyone has a right to expect." She concluded that "on my eighth trip to Afghanistan (last month) I saw that the trend lines are up, not down."
Christian Lowe reported in The Weekly Standard in November that while the fighting was up in Afghanistan, the battles were very one-sided, with the Taliban taking huge losses. While Michael Yon, in his piece linked to above, ominously quoted retired Gen Barry McCaffrey's 2006 report which said that the Taliban were massing in larger formations to attack, Lowe cites an American officer with a different perspective
"In this type of war, when you mass against forces like us . . . without firepower, we're able to destroy them quite easily and we've shown that over the last six to seven months," said Col. Thomas McGrath, the American commander in charge of training Afghan security forces near Kandahar. "They're bringing in cohorts of young men who really don't know any better and it's been a colossal failure for them."
I'm not sure whether to put this next one in the "good news" or "bad news" column, but the U.S. Army has - finally - decided to establish a counterinsurgency school in Afghanistan. Better late than never, I suppose.
So who's winning? I don't know. Noone probably does, and we won't know for a long time. As Lt Col David Kilcullen (one-time senior counterinsurgency advisor to Gen Petraeus) said on the Charlie Rose show, "there has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years."
In other words, we just have to stick it out. Fighting smart is important, but just being there is half the battle. As such, in my next update on Afghanistan I'll discuss the participation of our allies.
Posted by Tom at 7:34 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 22, 2008
Afghanistan Update - Canada
I've been ignoring Afghanistan for too long. Over the next few days I'm going to try and pst some of the articles on that war that I've been saving.
Today's Washington Times has a story about Canadian troops in Afghanistan. There is much in the story that is interesting, but this stuck out at me
...like many of the NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan, they find themselves in a two-front public-relations war — struggling for the cooperation of the Afghans as well as the support of a skeptical public at home. And in such a war, perceptions are as important as territory and body counts.The soldiers charged with defeating insurgents and restoring calm in Zhari District, just 21 miles west of Kandahar, say privately that their jobs have been made much more difficult by aggressive American military tactics.
The "hot-trigger" U.S. troops, they say, created unnecessary tension with the local populations whose support is essential to progress in the war on terror.
Equally damaging, they say, the Americans' indiscriminate use of air power and aggressive interrogation techniques that have eroded support for the mission among Canadian voters and taxpayers.
Poll after poll shows support for Afghan combat is dwindling in Canada, as it is in other countries that have taken significant casualties. Canadians account for more than one-third of the 220 NATO troops who have been killed since 2002 in the United Nations-endorsed action.
Ok ok, so the Canadians think they can do it better. Whatever. My hat is off to the Canadian troops who are there and who have served. If our commanders and their commanders want to argue about the best way to go about doing things that's fine with me. That's not the interesting part.
It's the part that I highlighted that gets me. I though that Afghanistan was the war that "our allies" were all supposed to support,.
Here are some recent polls of Canadians that I found doing a quick google search:
We're not at the critical point yet, but you can see the trend. bty, Canada has 2,000 troops in Afghanistan. Even though their population is much smaller than ours, at just over 33 million, 2,000 is not a huge number.
Forty-seven per cent of Canadians want our troops brought back from Afghanistan as soon as possible.... In Quebec, 57 per cent want the mission to end right away.The poll showed that only 17 per cent of Canadians want troops to continue in their combat role and 31 per cent said Canadians should remain in Kandahar but turn over the combat role to another NATO country.
We're talking about Afghanistan, not Iraq, if you need reminding.
In your view, is the Canadian mission in Afghanistan:___________________Apr. 2007_____Feb. 2007
A) A peace mission_____31%__________29%
B) A war mission_______57%__________53%
C) Not sure____________12%__________18%
Apparently it's a subject of great debate whether what we (or they) are doing in Afghanistan constitutes war fighting or peacekeeping. The Canadian public, you see, will support "peacekeeping", but is opposed to war missions.
67% of those asked believe the number of casualties suffered by Canadian troops is unacceptably high, even with whatever progress has been made in rebuilding the war-torn country.That is a five-point rise from a poll taken a little over a month ago.
Only 25% of respondents said the number of killed and wounded was acceptable.
Bruce Anderson, the CEO of Decima Research, says Canadians are clearly becoming more doubtful about whether progress is being made, in light of the deaths of 66 soldiers and one diplomat.
What in the world is going on here?
Poor Leadership: Another finding of the Angus-Reid poll cited above is that "61 per cent of respondents believe the Conservative government has not effectively explained the mission in Afghanistan." The Canadian public has obviously not bought into the notion that they need to fight in Afghanistan, not just stand around like "peacekeepers". This somewhat mirrors that situation in the U.S. with regard to Iraq. Conservative critics, including me, have said time and again that the Bush Administration has done a miserable job at explaining the stakes in Iraq. It looks like we have a similar situation in Afghanistan.
Ignorance as to the Threat: Most people in Canada and Europe, I think think that the only threat is from outright terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. Even here, though, they tend to think that if they only lay low they can avoid attack themselves. "It's an American problem because of their arrogant foreign policy" seems to be the attitude. As I have demonstrated, however, the entire West is in grave danger.
Unrealistic Expectations: As counter-insurgency expert Lt Col David Kilcullen said a few months ago "There has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years." People are still thinking in terms of conventional wars.
Pacifism Peacekeeping missions are fine when appropriate. But there is also a time for fighting. Too many Canadians seem to have degenerated into a moral smugness whereby they believe that peacekeeping missions are so morally superior that's all they will do.
What It's Not: I'm just going to preempt a criticism that often comes from the left: "It's George Bush's fault! If he hadn't invaded Iraq, hadn't been so arrogant..." This argument treats Canadians, and others, as if they were little children. It says that they are unable to reason, and that we must pat them on the head, smile, and say "now be a good Canadian and help us out".
To be sure, President Bush could make the case for Afghanistan better. No doubt Candians and others really do need the eduction about radical Islam Walid Phares is always talking about.
Some will say that without Iraq we'd be concentrating on Afghanistan, but I don't think so. Frankly I think the anti-Iraq crowd would just as soon ignore Afghanistan too, so as to get on with their objective of putting us all under the rule of the EPA. I think that most Democrats just want the whole "War on Terror" to go away.
Am I being too hard on the Canadians? Maybe, but I don't think so. Mind you I am eternally thankful for what Canada has done. I just fear that sooner or later we're going to shoulder more of the burden of Afghanistan too.
Posted by Tom at 8:29 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
August 1, 2007
Here's an Idea Guaranteed to Stir Up Trouble
Let's invade Pakistan.
So says Barack Obama in a speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars this morning
...let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.
What exactly Obama means by "act" he doesn't actually say. Maybe he just means a strike with a Hellfire missile from a Preditor drone, maybe special forces lifted in by helicoper, maybe an invasion by the 10th Mountain Division... who knows.
Either way, Obama seems not to understand the import of his words.
The speech is full of tough talk. Obama sounds like a regular warmongering conservative through most of it, full of threats and intimidating talk. It's also full of several outright lies, such as his claiming that the Bush Administration followed a "a deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11." But never mind that for now. Jim Geraghty "Fisks" the speech brilliantly over at NRO. I don't have the time tonight to go through it line-by-line.
The main thing that strikes me about the speech is that typical of the left these days it's always to fight another war, to send troops to another location, to talk tough to someone else. Wherever it is we're fighing, he's against it. But boy he's tough when it comes to doing something else. Call me cynical, but I rather think that this speech today is more a response to Hillary's criticsm than anything else. If by some accident he does become president something tells me that the Democrat left will make sure that none of these strong words become action.
It all reminds me of the latter stages of the Cold War, when most Democrats could be counted on to oppose whatever weapons system was currently being proposed by the Pengagon; but in favor of something that was safely years down the road.
Instead of going on, I think that John Podhoretz has it about right so I'll just quote him
Obama is full of it. This country is never — never — going to stage a major military action against Pakistan. Pakistan is a nation of 170 million people that has nuclear weapons and whose admittedly problematic and troublesome regime has, to some extent, cooperated with the United States in the war against Al Qaeda both in ways we know and ways we have no idea about. The concern that this strategically vital county might become an Islamic fundamentalist state is, should be, and will be paramount in every and all discussions about how to conduct the fight against Al Qaeda.What's more, every serious person knows the United States won't invade Pakistan, even with Special Forces — since the reason we cancelled the proposed action against Al Qaeda in 2005 is that it was going to take many hundreds of American troops to do it. This isn't 15 people dropping like ninjas in the darkness. It's an invasion, with helicopters and supply lines and routes of ingress and escape. It would have had unforseen and unforeseeable consequences, but it would have been reasonable to assume the Pakistanis would have turned violently against the United States and hurtled toward Islamic fundamentalist control.
If the evil Bushitler Cheney Rumsfeld Monster wouldn't do it, nobody will do it. And you can bet there isn't a single person in line to run a Democratic State Department or Democratic Defense Department who would give the idea three seconds of thought. Obama is using Pakistan to talk tough, in the full knowledge that he will never actually pull the trigger.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff is hanging on by a thread. An attack into Pakistan would stir up an already unsettled hornets nest. If he were to be overthrown it is possible that radical Islamists would fill the void. This would be sending us from the frying pan into the fire. Just as the Shah was bad but Khumeini worse, it's hard to see a good outcome to a revolution in Pakistan.
For some reason I can't upload a map of the region tonight, but if you go and find one you'll discover that we can't get to Afghanistan without flying over Pakistan. Close that route off and we're screwed. The only other route from the Persion Gulf is over Iran, and I rather doubt they'll grant permission.
What I Would Do
There is no doubt that al Qaeda and the Taliban are in the Waziristan section of Pakistan, that this is a problem, and that as such we need to do something. That Obama doesn't seem to get that it's not so simple as making aid to Musharraf contingent on acting in the region, he is right that it is a problem we need to deal with.
I think that David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post, has found the best idea
The best answer I've heard comes from Henry Crumpton, a former CIA officer who was one of the heroes of the agency's campaign to destroy al-Qaeda's haven in Afghanistan in late 2001. After retiring from the CIA in 2005, he served as the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. He resigned from State in February and is now a fellow at the EastWest Institute and a private consultant.Crumpton argues that the United States must take preventive action but that it should do so carefully, through proxies wherever possible. The right model for a Waziristan campaign is the CIA-led operation in Afghanistan, not the U.S. military invasion of Iraq. Teams of CIA officers and Special Forces soldiers are best suited to work with tribal leaders, providing them weapons and money to fight an al-Qaeda network that has implanted itself brutally in Waziristan through the assassination of more than 100 tribal leaders during the past six years. It would be better to conduct such operations jointly with Pakistan, but if the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf can't or won't cooperate, the United States should be prepared to go it alone, Crumpton argues.
"The United States has an obligation to defend itself and its citizens," says Crumpton. "We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack."
Crumpton proposed a detailed plan last year for rolling up these sanctuaries, which he called the Regional Strategic Initiative. It would combine economic assistance and paramilitary operations in a broad counterinsurgency campaign. In Waziristan, U.S. and Pakistani operatives would give tribal warlords guns and money, to be sure, but they would coordinate this covert action with economic aid to help tribal leaders operate their local stone quarries more efficiently, say, or install windmills and solar panels to generate electricity for their remote mountain villages.
This is a long-term plan but makes a lot of sense to me. CIA paramilitaries, mostly made up of ex-Special Forces and SEAL veterans, could do a lot of damage to al Qaeda and the Taliban. Crumpton's plan seems loosely modeled on the Vietnam-era SOG ("Studies and Observation Group") and other such operations.
So let's go get al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, but let's do so as quietly as possible.
Update
Looks like Obama's stirred up trouble in Pakistan with his comments. Nice guy, but not ready for prime-time.
Posted by Tom at 8:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 17, 2007
The War The "Allies" Are Supposed To Support
I thought that Iraq was the bad war, but that we were all supposed to agree on the need to win in Afghanistan. So why this AP story "NATO allies question Afghan troop surge"?
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is getting a lukewarm response to his plea for NATO allies to send more troops and aid for a spring offensive in
AfghanistanIn his first meeting of NATO defense ministers, Gates said the U.S. made no additional commitments for more troops of its own. Gates recently extended the tour of a brigade in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has 27,000 troops — the most since the war began in 2001.
U.S. and NATO military leaders in recent months have repeatedly called on alliance members to send reinforcements and lift restrictions on where their troops can serve. On Thursday, Gates secured smaller offers from some nations, but he met resistance from key allies.
France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.
Well isn't that special.
So what excuse reason did our "allies" give?
"When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they had 100,000 soldiers there and they did not win," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters.
Well no, but they were trying to make the place one of their communist-ruled satellites. If you think Afghan Muslims(the only kind there are) are wary of the US, try an athiest ideology. In case the good German Minister didn't notice, we more or less let the Afghans set up their own government and rule themselves. We're also funding the reconstruction of their country. So it's not the same.
This is not the first time we've been betrayed by NATO. I first reported on this in September, quoting Stanely Kurtz who wrote on The Corner that
This is not a matter of military incapacity. It is a deliberate refusal of our so-called allies to fight. Supposedly, Europe was with us on Afghanistan. Who but the most radical leftists and pacifists opposed that action? Yet our NATO allies are plainly unwilling to involve themselves in a fight that they themselves said was justified and necessary. If Afghanistan collapses, it will prove that Europe has entirely lost the will to fight.
Just a few weeks ago the Bush Administration requested$10 billion more for Afghanistan, and agreed to send more troops there ourselves to show that we were willing to step it up as well. In fact, 3,200 troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade are being diverted from Iraq to Afghanistan. Yet our "allies" have refused to commit more money or troops.
I thought that Afghanistan was the war that we were all supposed to agree was the one we had to win?
Some will no doubt say that the reason why the Europe won't contribute more troops or money is bad diplomacy by President Bush. If that's the case then our "allies" are operating at the grade-school level; "please talk nice to us or we don't do the right thing". And they want us to listen to their advice on what to do about Iran?
So rather than pass stupid and harmful resolutions in Congress, maybe our lawmakers could spend their time trying to find ways to get Europe to help us a little bit.
Posted by Tom at 12:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2007
So the anti-war crowd's new line is that they want to win in Afghanistan but not in Iraq.
Sure.
Last night at the State of the Union speech the Democrats didn't stand up when the President called for victory in Iraq.
How long before they won't stand up when there's a call for victory in Afghanistan?
But the anti-war crowd insists that no, they really and truely want to win in Afghanistan. It's just Iraq that they oppose.
And I believe them, too. I believe that right now that short of the International ANSWER/Code Pink left, they do want to win in Afghanistan. I believe that they want to win, as long as it is politically expedient, that is. Because as soon as it isn't, they'll want to cut-and-run there too.
Supporting the war in Afghanistan has become the latest tool to oppose the war in Iraq.
"We support more troops in Afghanistan!", we are cheerfully told.
Sorry, but I ain't buying it.
Iraq is important in a way that Afghanistan will never be. It is the center of the Middle East, where Afghanistan is a sideshow. I'm not going to review the good reasons we had to invade, suffice it to say that a loss there would be devastating to the West.
Defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy in Afghanistan. It will also lead to a "redeployment" of forces by the jihadists, who will shift their forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. Do the Democrats realize that a pullout from Iraq will lead to increased attacks on our forces in Afghanistan? Are they ready for additional casualties there?
More to the point, are they willing to commit the money and resources necessary to win in Afghanistan? Sure, leaving Iraq will free up money. But my guess it that before it can be "redeployed" to Afghanistan most of the money be eaten up by domestic spending, with the big-spenders in the GOP happily going along with it. How long before they decide that money can be saved by pulling out of Afghanistan too?
Now, as a matter of record, I think that more troops in Afghanistan would be useful. But anyone who's even taken a cursory look at the situation there knows that as with Iraq it's pretty complicated, and solving it is not just a simple matter of sending more troops.
Besides, the issues in Afghanistan are larger than troop numbers. Let's quickly go over a few of the issues that are preventing a complete victory.
This past summer Pakistan signed an agreement with the Taliban essentially ceding control of North Waziristan to them. Two years ago they signed a similar one giving up South Waziristan. Waziristan is in northwest Pakistan and borders Afghanistan. I can't find the link as present, but have read that the Taliban have 20+ bases there, and al Qaeda at least 5.
So we just go in and take them out, right? Not so fast. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sits precariously atop a government that is full of anti-American and pro-Taliban Islamists, all of whom would like to overthrow him. Fifty years ago, when Pakistan was formed, it's goverment made a de facto agreement with the tribes of their wild northwestern mountainous
regions. This agreement effectively said "you don't bother us and we won't bother you. You don't support people who want to overthrow us and we'll let you govern yourselves."
It worked out fine until the US discovered that Osama bin Laden was probably hiding there, and we asked the Pakistani government to go and get him. They tried to do so, and thus effectively broke the fifty-year old agreement.
The Pakistanis didn't find OBL, and Musharraf was afraid that if he pissed off the tribes and Islamists too much they'd overthrow him. Since his army was being beaten by the tribes who were aided by the Taliban we chased out of Afghanistan, they decided to do the prudent thing and call a truce.
So if we simply flood Waziristan with American troops, we run a serious risk of all hell breaking lose in Pakistan and Musharraf being replaced with a radical Islamic government. Did I mention that Pakistan has nuclear weapons?
My point here: Since the anti-war crowd isn't willing to take risks in Iraq, what makes you think they'll take risks going after the Taliban inside Pakistan?
If this isn't enough for you to digest, there's the fact that we've been betrayed by our NATO "allies". The reason has more to do with changing demographics in Europe than anything else.
If you want one more vexing problem that won't be solved by adding more troops, there's the issue of the poppy fields. The Taliban make a ton of money off the stuff, and getting rid of it isn't easy. Similar to the situation in Central and South America, farmers grow the stuff because they make more money on it than with traditional food crops. Destroy the crops and they'll trade their plow for a gun and come after us. The only way to solve it that I can see is outbid the Taliban or find another more profitable crop for them to grow.
Will the anti-war crowd be willing to spend the money necessary to get rid of the poppy fields? How long before we're told that we need it here at home for a school lunch program?
Bush's Fault, Too
Although I'm sure some readers won't want to believe this, I do go after both sides when I think they are wrong. I make no secret of my distain for the anti-war left, and think that for all our mistakes the neo-cons are mostly right. But I've gone after the President for screwing things up both domestically and in Iraq, and I'm going to do it again.
Here's the bottom line: Bush fooled around for several years, letting Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Casey continue on with their "light footprint" strategy. It didn't work. Last year saw the bombing of the Mosque/Golden dome and an escallation in sectarian violence. A year ago he should have fired his generals, if not Rumsfeld, and demanded that more troops be sent while he still had the political capital to do so. Now, finally, he's woken up, but at the political 11th hour.
The President gave a great speech last night, clearly and persuasively laying out the case for victory in Iraq. As with a change in war leadership, he should have done this a year ago.
We shouldn't be surprised that he's lost so much support. The American people want to win, but what they hate is a politician that doesn't seem to have the will to win. Now, the truth may be that Bush had the will but simply bought into the "light footprint" strategy, legitimately thinking that it would work. Perception, however, counts, and many Americans perceived that "light footprint" as a lack of will. Now at the final hour he's decided to send more troops, but many are so fed up that they won't give him one last chance.
There's also the fact that there aren't many more to send, because Bush and the GOP congress spent 6 years increasing domestic spending instead of building up the military.
Back to Iraq
The bottom line is that we're there in Iraq and a victory there for the Jihadists would be devastating for both the Middle East and entire Western world. The communist victory in Vietnam emboldened the Soviet Union for another 10 years. Let's not have another round of Carterism, please.
The most immediate effect of a withdrawal would be a slaughter in Iraq, and then an Iranian influenced or controlled Iraq. The Sunni Arab states would be in an uproar, so if you think there's instability now just wait until we pull out. And then, of course, there's the fact that parts of Iraq would become terrorist training centers. All of this would solve nothing, but would rather only mean fighting by American troops at a later date.
At least the Vietnamese didn't come after us here at home. The Jihadists want to convert the world to Islam or destroy us if we refuse. Laugh if you like but it's the truth. So if you think we've lost a lot of people in Iraq so far, we'll lose a lot more later if we don't win now.
Posted by Tom at 8:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 14, 2006
Betrayed by NATO
I found this post by Stanley Kurtz at NRO's The Corner particularly interesting
The magnitude of NATO’s failure in Afghanistan is emerging. In retrospect, it’s clear that yesterday’s posts about Norway were preliminary indications of the unraveling scandal. Yes, this failure of the NATO alliance is nothing short of scandalous. American and British troops are stretched to the limit, while the Taliban surges. Behind the scenes, it turns out that our supposed allies in NATO have been shirking their troop obligations in Afghanistan for well over a year. The developing problems in Afghanistan have much to do with this failure. The Telegraph rightly asks, “Has NATO Betrayed Britain on Afghanistan?” In the Independent: “Blair: We need help to stop Afghan failure.” In “Nato nations refuse to commit more troops,” the Telegraph details the minuscule numbers involved.This is not a matter of military incapacity. It is a deliberate refusal of our so-called allies to fight. Supposedly, Europe was with us on Afghanistan. Who but the most radical leftists and pacifists opposed that action? Yet our NATO allies are plainly unwilling to involve themselves in a fight that they themselves said was justified and necessary. If Afghanistan collapses, it will prove that Europe has entirely lost the will to fight.
Sadly, this is more along the lines of Spain’s capitulation to terrorist blackmail. The same Spanish government that pulled out of Iraq is now among those now refusing to fight in Afghanistan. Fear of internal terrorism by Muslim immigrants likely has much to do with the reluctance of the other Europeans to fight. More broadly, this shows that the West as a whole lacks the troops needed for the war on terror. The failure of will and capacity here is obvious to our enemies, who can only be spectacularly encouraged.Again, this is Afghanistan, where we’ve been happily multilateral, not Iraq. If NATO cannot fight here, what good is it? Given a chance to help us, in circumstances where we are in agreement, our European allies have simply failed. Can the Europeans seriously hope to bargain Iran into giving up its nuclear weapons when it can’t collectively scrounge up 2,500 troops, all of whom were supposed to have been committed more than a year ago? Bin Laden is laughing. Ahmadinajad is doubled over. And NATO is just plain over.
Here is John Kerry’s response: an utterly unconvincing attempt to blame the United States for the problem (says Kerry, we should goad the Europeans by sending more troops ourselves). And here’s Captain Ed on the issue.
Now that's funny, I thought that we were all supposed to be unified on Afghanistan. I was told that it was only Iraq that set us apart. To be sure, most European armies are pretty small, and they don't have much in the way of logistical support capabilities. But we're not asking for vast numbers here. This isn't Desert Storm, we don't need armored divisions. The truth, I think, is rather simple; most Europeans think that they can avoid terrorist attacks by Muslim fascists if they don't get too involved. In other words, it's a policy of appeasement.
To be fair, Britain and Italy have been pulling their weight, both countries already having troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan (Italy having pledged them to Lebanon as well). The rest of Europe should be ashamed of themselves.
Posted by Tom at 9:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2006
The Word from the Generals
Via Powerline, interviews with the Generals running the war in Iraq.
In one Hugh Hewitt interviews General John Abizaid,,commander of CENTCOM. The second is a DOD press conference with Lt. Gen. Sir Robert Fry, deputy commander of the Multinational Forces-Iraq and the senior British representative in Iraq.
Both interviews are especially interesting in light of some good news about Baghdad. Both ABC News and The Washington Times are reporting significant drops in sectarian violence in the capital as a result of Operation Together Forward, the ongoing joint US-Iraqi effort to stabilize the situation.
Following are excerpts from each interview. First is Hewett's interview with General Abizaid,
HH: Can you begin, General, by giving us an overview of the situation in Iraq as of mid-August, 2006?JA: The situation in Iraq right now, as you've seen, of course, there's an awful lot of sectarian violence, particularly in the Baghdad area. We've found it necessary to move additional troops down into the Baghdad area by extending some forces that we were going to redeploy to help shore up some of the work that the Iraqi Security Forces are doing. We're putting additional Iraqi Security Forces in the field there as well. It's very clear to all of us that have been serving in this region that Baghdad's the key to Iraq, and that we've got to get the levels of sectarian violence down in order for Iraq to stabilize. We're confident it can be done. We've seen some changes already that are somewhat positive. It's still too early to say, but the combination of Iraqi Security Forces and our forces, along with some measures being taken by the new government, we're confident can, over time, move Baghdad in the right direction.
HH: General Abizaid, are you confident as well that victory is possible in Iraq? And what will that look like?
JA: Yeah, no, I'm very confident that victory's possible, not only in Iraq, but in the broader Middle East, if you consider victory being a Middle East where extremism is not tolerated, and doesn't have a chance of going mainstream in the region. I certainly think that in Iraq, there'll be violence after the time that American forces depart. I think that the sectarian issues are deep, but they don't need to be fatal. I believe that over time, as you build institutional capacity and the Iraqi government, and especially in the Iraqi armed forces, that Iraqis will be able to do more and more of the day to day security work. And as that happens, we'll be able to bring our forces down.
Next is Lieutenant General Robert Fry at the DOD briefing. I found this one to be a bit more interesting. General Fry talked about many issues facing Iraq, and the questions were varied. But since the question of whether or not the situation in Iraq constitutes a "civil war" or not is oft-discussed, I thought I'd just excerpt that part of the interview.
GEN. FRY:...The second point I made was about the scale of the enterprise that we're involved in here in Iraq, and I think that still is at the very top of the list of what we're doing here. We're involved in trying to transfer -- transform a whole society, to take it from autocracy to liberal democracy, to take it from something which is entirely state controlled in economic terms to bring it to the disciplines of the market. And perhaps as importantly as anything now, we've got a free and sovereign and competent government to deal with. So I think that all those dimensions make life here complicated. ...Now, something I didn't mention last time but will mention this time is the rather contentious issue of civil war. With the valedictory message of the erstwhile British ambassador being leaked as he was leaving Baghdad, it seems to cause an awful lot of comments, both in London and also in Washington as well. And I'd just like to offer my views on where we are on that issue.
In my judgment, we are not in a situation of civil war, and I think that we collectively have a lot of experience in what civil war looks like. I know what a civil war looks like from experience in the Balkans and parts of Africa. I also know what sectarian violence looks like from all the time that I've spent in Northern Ireland, and it seems to me it's the second of these two conditions rather than the first that we confront here in Iraq at the present time. But if you want to pick me up on my assertion, I'd be delighted for you to do so.
...Q:Sir, this is Pam Hess with UPI... What difference does it make from a military perspective whether or not you call it civil war or sectarian violence? Does that change what you do? And is that difference -- does it even matter? Back here, when we look at the number of deaths and the level of violence, what difference does a label make?
GEN. FRY: Well, I think it makes a great deal of difference in this particular case. If you have a civil war, then typically and characteristically, you have the collapse of the central institutions of government. In an absence of government, there's the possibility of chaos. You also tend to lose the instruments of security, and if the army takes part on one side or the other, then, of course, that can have equally significant implications. So I don't think we're talking about labels or military semantics here. I think we're talking about qualitative differences.
There is a very intense sectarian conflict going on, but it is geographically defined. It is not resulting in the mass movement of population, which is characteristically what civil wars do. And it's still being conducted in an environment which has the central institutions of the state functioning. Now, that's the situation that I recognize at the present time. I do not see that as civil war, and neither do I draw glib differences between civil war and sectarian conflict. I think the differences are very substantial and still in existence in Iraq today.
Both generals are cautiously optimistic, as is Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the main source for the Washington Times story cited above. Overall, the violence in the capital has dropped 20-33%, depending on whose numbers are cited. Obviously, we've had reason to be optimistic before, only to see setbacks. The next several months will tell.
For Additional Information: Bill Roggio of the Counterterrorism Blog has an excellent summary of the situation in Baghdad. Kirk H. Sowell of ThreatsWatch says that we're now in Phase II of Operation Together Forward. Both of them are also cautiously optimistic, but warn of dire consequences if we do not succeed.
Posted by Tom at 9:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 7, 2006
Barry McCaffrey on Afghanistan
Last month I reported on Gen Barry McCaffrey's(ret) visit to and report on Iraq. It was a very positive, with a few caveats.
Accoding to this post on the National Review blog, he just got back from Afghanistan, and once again give an upbeat assessment. I cannot find this anywhere else on the Internet, so if any readers have McCaffrey's actual report, or a news report on it, please put the link in a comment if you would.
According to Rich Lowry, here are McCaffrey's main observations from his trip:
• Afghanistan has in the short space of five years moved from a situation of mindless violence, cruelty, poverty, massive production of drugs, the absence of government, and isolation - to a nation with a struggling democratic government; an exploding economy; a rapidly growing, disciplined Army; a vibrant free press, and active diplomatic and economic ties with its neighbors and the world. The 30 million people have showed almost unbelievable gratitude for the actions of the international community and have welcomed a significant foreign presence with great hospitality and trust.
• Opium production has been dramatically slashed by 48% just in the past year. In less than three years, 4.4 million refugees have flooded back into the nation. 95% of the refugee camps in Pakistan have been closed. A Constitution has been adopted.•A President has been elected who is a Statesman of enormous integrity, vision, and courage. A Parliament has been elected with representation from every walk of political life - and a greater percentage of women than any other democracy in the world. The road network and transportation infrastructure have gone from absolutely nonfunctional to a rapidly growing network that is beginning re-vitalize the economy and trade with its neighbors.
• Massive amounts of international and private foreign aid are pouring into the country. The totally destroyed educational system is beginning to function. The agricultural and livestock system has grown enormously. The irrigation system destroyed by the Soviets is coming back.
•The security situation is so dramatically changed for the better that no platoon-sized unit has ever been defeated in battle. U.S. Forces routinely operate in squad sized units.• As one US Army Aviation Brigade Commander told me - “I have been flying over this country for three combat tours since 2001- the change for the better is almost unbelievable - I can see it with my own eyes from 500 feet.”
As with Iraq, a positive assessment from someone with the background to know. Another post on NRO does caution that we should "take his figures(on opium) with a grain of salt". Maybe so, but even so that does not change his conclusion that we are succeeding.
If I can find his actual report I'll post the link and excerpts.
Meanwhile, StrategyPage offers a similarly positive view
There are now about 23,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, an increase of about 3,000 from last Fall. So far this year, 13 have died in combat (plus twelve from other causes). More NATO troops continue to enter southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban are trying to carry out a Spring Offensive. But the police and foreign troops have kept the Taliban on the defensive. Meanwhile, increased coordination with Pakistani troops just across the border has resulted in more Taliban raiding parties, based in Pakistan, getting hit on both sides of the border.
Some will counter with the observation that "warlords"(a media-invented term) still run parts of the country, and will ask why the Taliban are active at all. StrategyPage points out that
As it has always been, the reach of the government is weak in most of the rural areas. This is what makes it possible for the Taliban to still operate. Afghanistan has always been a place where the tribes, clans and villages were pretty much little worlds all to themselves. Outsiders, especially armed ones, are not welcome. If the government comes in with goodies or other help, that is accepted appreciatively. But most of Afghanistan doesn't know from central government, and never has.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Tom at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 29, 2005
Burning Bodies in Afghanistan: Two Views
This past week a story appeared in the media about some US soldiers in Afghanistan who were allegedly buring the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. On Thursday Fox News reported that
Islamic clerics expressed outrage Thursday at television footage that purportedly shows U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban (search) fighters to taunt other militants and warned of a possible violent anti-American backlash.
On Friday, the BBC added that
The US military has launched a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct by its troops in Afghanistan, including the burning of Taleban corpses.The move came after an Australian TV station ran footage of what it says was US soldiers burning the remains.
The footage shows other troops apparently taunting residents of a nearby village, which they believed to be harbouring the Taleban.
The act of burning corpses is regarded as a sacrilege in Islam.
If true, does this act create a problem for the United States? Is it something that we should be concerned about?
To help answer this, let's consider the responses of two writers that I have come to respect; Michael Yon, and the editors of StrategyPage.com
James Dunnigan is editor-in-chief of StrategyPage.com, with Austin Bay and Adam Geibel as contributing editors. Al Nofi is senior editor and columnist. All are widely-aclaimed writers on military and political matters. In an October 25 editorial, they conclude that the action will have
...no impact in the Islamic world. That's because, in the Islamic media, stories like this are invented daily. You can check out the English language sites for media in Islamic countries for examples. Some wild stuff there. The Moslems who hate us won’t change their minds because of two burning bodies. Those Moslems who are down on Islamic terrorists won’t get very upset about two of them getting torched, even though cremation is frowned upon in the Islamic world (even for Islamic terrorists who burn fellow Moslems to death in the course of their operations, which explains al Qaedas sagging poll numbers.)
The impact of such actions by our troops may, however, hurt us at home because politicians will overreact:
It will hurt in those parts of the world where there is more concern for burned up Taliban than in the Moslem world. That's largely in the Western world, especially among some American politicians and pundits. How will this hurt? Congress can call for more “oversight” of U.S. military operations. The troops are already irked at the lawyers added to some staffs over the last decade. The lawyers are their to veto operations if there is too great a chance that the action will offend someone in the world and, ultimately, someone in Congress.
The real problem, they conclude, will probably come from local Afghanis
If the bodies were burned as a result of some psychological warfare operation, or just to clean up the battlefield, and the act offended the local Moslems, the troops will pay a higher price than any official investigation (which is already underway) can hand out. The troops have to deal with angry, and heavily armed, people every day.
Michael Yon is a free-lance imbed with the US Army in Iraq. His experiences are widely quoted on popular blogs, such as Belmont Club. He is the author of Danger Close, and, from his website, "His dispatches have the benefit of his life experiences without drawbacks based on deadlines or demands of marketplace."
While Yon does not directly address the issue of the "burning bodies" in his last dispatch, he does have some things to say about the issue of treatment of prisoners which does have some bearing on the matter. He considers the letter we intercepted which had been sent by Usama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is in charge of Al Qaeda operations in Iraq. From this letter Yon concludes that
The author implies that most Muslims have a heart even for those they might once have considered enemies, warning that great numbers of Muslims who may have been supporters will instead turn against the terrorists because they do not approve of slaughtering hostages. Cynical westerners hearing that Muslims are generally peaceful people roll their eyes in disbelief, casting them in the general direction of the most recent homicide bomb attack. But here a top terrorist apparently takes pains to point out that devout Muslims are averse to slaughtering people. When Muslims react in anger about what we did at Abu G and other prisons, they are not merely posturing; they are deadly serious. Just as the terrorists lose support when they slaughter our people, we lose support when we abuse anyone.
Who is right? Both, perphaps, in their own way?
On the one hand, the amount virulence of anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda coming from much of the Middle East is staggering. One only has to peruse a few translations of it from the invaluable MEMRI to get an idea of how bad it is. Also, we must unfortunately acknowledge that both liberal and conservative politicians at home will sieze on this and demand greater ovbersight, which will hamper our efforts in the field.
But is Yon right that such actions add fuel to the propaganda fire? Perhaps.
My initial take is that we should avoid incidents such as the "burning bodies" one as much as possible. We also have to realize that such things are going to happen in war no matter how much "oversight" we build into the process. Indeed, such things are part of the inevitable consequences of going to war in the first place, which is why such a decision must not be taken lightly.
This does not mean that we just shrug off such incidents as "these things will happen" and let it go at that. As the editors of StrategyPage point out in the article cited above, "Soldiers sent to Afghanistan go through many hours of cultural sensitivity training. They already know that one misstep can destroy lots of good will, and that in turn means fewer Afghans will pass on useful (often life saving) information, and more will fell inclined to take shot at Americans." In other words, Mr and Mrs Politician, there's no need for more of your "oversight", so lay off, please.
Between StragegyPage's conclusion that "stuff like this has no impact in the Islamic world" and Yon's view that "just as the terrorists lose support when they slaughter our people, we lose support when we abuse anyone", I think that both overstate their case, but in the end I am closer to Yon's position. Propaganda matters.
What do you think?
Posted by Tom at 2:14 PM
July 12, 2005
Perseverence, Past and Present
Last week I wrote about Osama bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa, which was essentially a declaration of war on the United States. The other day Wretchard discussed it's significance in a way that I somewhat missed.
The fourth SEAL, who survived, evaded superior numbers until he escaped. Sixteen more Special Operations soldiers died in an attempt to reinforce the recon team when their MH-47 was shot down. The US response to the loss of the recon team was not to run but insert hundreds of troops into the area to find the missing men and possibly to complete the unfinished mission. The Al Qaeda might ask themselves what manner of men these are, who fight to the death rather than surrender, and who though injured evade over high and cold mountains until they have outdistanced their unwounded pursuers. It's not an idle question. One of Osama Bin Laden's strategic assumptions when he wrote contemptuously of the US in his 1996 fatwa was that he was facing cowards.
(from bin Laden's Fatwa) But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.Bin Laden understood and accepted that American logistics, technology and science would be superior to his own. What he was less prepared to believe was the possibility that their fighting spirit would be equal or greater than his. Sixty two years ago the Imperial Japanese Navy fought the USN for three straight days and nights in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal, from November 12-15, 1942. Both sides fought at point-blank range in some cases. Two USN Admirals, Scott and Callahan, died in a single night. Still the IJN and USN came on. Only after the USS Washington sank the battlecruiser Kirishima on November 15th did the Japanese break off. But it was not the material loss that shocked the Japanese: losses were about even on both sides; it was the realization that USN would not give up.
It is the canonical assumption of those who set out to conquer the world that all men are not created equal: that there are ubermensch and untermensch, men of divine descent and mongrel races, jihadis and infidels; that somehow these differences in quality will allow the chosen few to dominate the many. Yet in each case these beliefs have proven wrong, whether in the snows of Russia, the waters of Ironbottom Sound, or in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Posted by Tom at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Perseverence, Past and Present
Last week I wrote about Osama bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa, which was essentially a declaration of war on the United States. The other day Wretchard discussed it's significance in a way that I somewhat missed.
The fourth SEAL, who survived, evaded superior numbers until he escaped. Sixteen more Special Operations soldiers died in an attempt to reinforce the recon team when their MH-47 was shot down. The US response to the loss of the recon team was not to run but insert hundreds of troops into the area to find the missing men and possibly to complete the unfinished mission. The Al Qaeda might ask themselves what manner of men these are, who fight to the death rather than surrender, and who though injured evade over high and cold mountains until they have outdistanced their unwounded pursuers. It's not an idle question. One of Osama Bin Laden's strategic assumptions when he wrote contemptuously of the US in his 1996 fatwa was that he was facing cowards.
(from bin Laden's Fatwa) But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.Bin Laden understood and accepted that American logistics, technology and science would be superior to his own. What he was less prepared to believe was the possibility that their fighting spirit would be equal or greater than his. Sixty two years ago the Imperial Japanese Navy fought the USN for three straight days and nights in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal, from November 12-15, 1942. Both sides fought at point-blank range in some cases. Two USN Admirals, Scott and Callahan, died in a single night. Still the IJN and USN came on. Only after the USS Washington sank the battlecruiser Kirishima on November 15th did the Japanese break off. But it was not the material loss that shocked the Japanese: losses were about even on both sides; it was the realization that USN would not give up.
It is the canonical assumption of those who set out to conquer the world that all men are not created equal: that there are ubermensch and untermensch, men of divine descent and mongrel races, jihadis and infidels; that somehow these differences in quality will allow the chosen few to dominate the many. Yet in each case these beliefs have proven wrong, whether in the snows of Russia, the waters of Ironbottom Sound, or in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Posted by Tom at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
