COMMENT ON: Obama’s Afghanistan Plan: 30,000 Troops, No Endless Committment

December 2, 2009 at 8:42 am (politics)
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Read the Article I’m commenting on at HuffingtonPost

Full Text of The President’s Speech on Afghanistan

This and his remarks about Pakistan remain the most salient reasons for the President’s action.

“Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now – and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance – would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.”

It can be assumed that the full force of right wing will be focused on trashing him while a comparable group from the left will do the same. Both will forget that the President has said the same thing from the start.

What the President did not say as strongly as he might have, is that this is a battle comparable to WWII. We are fighting the same irrational and lethal force. The impunity of both Taliban and Al Qaeda stops at no boundary. If this is the case, it is naive to assume that we can walk away. It is a matter of trusting the President’s judgment.

Pacifists were ultimately willing to take up arms in WWII. Because they came to understand the stakes. The stakes are as high now.

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Using Money To Make Peace — Toward A New Kind of Warfare

August 20, 2009 at 9:14 am (politics)
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OK, laugh.

But we are pouring lives and billions down the drain all over the world and money could accomplish a whole lot more with less expense and fewer (or even no) lost lives.

I’m serious. Dig this.

In Pakistan they figure if they more than double certain sorts of aid (the kind that educates people not to be terrorists) it becomes economically viable for corrupt officials to gravitate to our side. Yes, I am talking bribery. Carrots. The point is, it is cheaper than making weapons and training soldiers to become targets. And I bet it accomplishes more.

I propose a contest.

Try using money for a month to do what you want to get done militarily. Compare the costs. I will bet you that a million spread here and there, say to build a needed bridge or purchase 100 donkeys or buy some seeds, will outperform a bunch of soldiers with guns every time. You get what you want on the cheap.

I am not saying disband the service. I am saying have a fair contest. If money (aka smart bribery, aka targeted help) works better than ammo and soldiers, then turn the soldiers into smart bribers. It’s that simple.

Money has worked forever to buy peace, i just has not penetrated the military mind or, for that matter, the political mind. If we can bail out a bunch of Wall Street good for nothings with billions, we can surely risk this experiment.

Face it, you will do the same thing I am proposing anyway. The only problem is you will combine it with military stuff and that will more than cancel out the positive effects. You will say you are doing the money thing, but you will be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Get the hell out of AfPak militarily. Stop playing that this is a war. It is a slow suicide mission. Every military thing you do strengthens the will of a proud and stubborn people. How smart do you need to be to figure that out?

Nope.

Go the cash route. Cash with strings. Cash with observers — soldiers who are learning to function in some other way than as killers and targets. I am not saying do not defend against the Taliban. Sure, set up a perimeter that is clearly not part of an offensive maneuver. Or begin to withdraw to the point that it will be obvious that you do not intend to fight.

President Obama is very wrong on one single point. (I never say such things. You read this and forget it.) He is wrong in saying that the only way we can stop Al Qaeda is by doing what we are doing, wasting millions of dollars and daily lives on a pipe dream. The way to stop Osama and Company is with a combination or ridicule and proportional retaliation for any actual attacks.

For example, if Osama, or whoever is in charge, launches a killing attack somewhere, do something bad enough in the area where the planning is going on so that they will think twice about their strategy. No one is going to fault a proportional response. A teargas in the caves sort of thing.

What we have now is not proportional. It is silly.

We need to unite geeks and soldiers and play this like a non-lethal war game. Money has a value. It can be used to achieve lots of things. We are pouring it down a bottomless drain if we think we can win AfPak without going through a major attitude adjustment.

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COMMENT ON: What Would Be the Result of Quitting AfPak?

August 13, 2009 at 4:22 pm (politics)
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I am sorry this post got buried as we should have had a discussion of this. I wish HP had a better way of dealing with new posts — like posting their presence for a full 20 hours and at the top rather than at the bottom where they fall off the page.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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What Would Be The Result of Quitting AfPak?

August 10, 2009 at 2:24 pm (politics)
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I do not really agree with my question — assuming it is meant seriously. I think most of us feel we need to be operating in AfPak.

But something is telling me to ask it. Here are my answers:

1. We would take a potential 50,000 US troops and others out of harm’s way. If we use 9/11 as a measure (moral calculus), we would be saving the lives of perhaps as many (or more) as were killed back then.

2. We could say we are not in the business of extending democracy to nations that prove incapable of maintaining it. We might be aware that, even in the US, it is not an easy thing to maintain a democracy.

3. We could say that our intention is to protect our own citizens at home and abroad and that our response to any terrorist acts will be swift and proportional. In other words if someone pulled something off in the US or killed Americans abroad, we would be prepared to make an immediate response, limited by moral calculus.

4. We could argue that it simply has not worked — even with the best will in the world — to try to change a country that has not been able to change itself. And that henceforth we would contribute heavily to create a greater UN capability to assist any country that wishes to grow democratic institutions, have elections, etc.

5. We could argue that the present course in AfPak is so reminiscent of other military failures in the past, that even though we mean well, we have no confidence that this helps.

6. We could suspend drone attacks and use them for proportional responses in the event of further acts of international terrorism. We could internationalize this process to share both costs and responsibility.

In essence we would be doing what I believe we should have done after 9/11. We didn’t and look what happened. Nothing says that eight years from now we might not be saying the same thing about a costly and failed AfPak strategy.

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A Year To Do What We Failed To Do In 8

May 14, 2009 at 9:43 am (politics)
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I do not know who bothers me more, Republicans who are being consciously or unconsciously hypocritical or Democrats who adapt the stratagem I now associate with Arianna Huffington and the New York Times — the frequent substitution of nit-picking for serious consideration.

THE CAUSE FOR THIS COMMENTARY — THE POSSIBLE DEMOCRATIC ULTIMATUM TO PRESIDENT OBAMA TO ACCOMPLISH HIS OBJECTIVES IN AFPAK IN A CALENDAR YEAR — NYT DECLENSION

Serious consideration might take into one’s purview the following points:

1. It took Bush II eight years to ruin the notion of a rational opposition to terror. Should it take less than two or three years to actually arrive at a true evolution of the globe beyond the woes of fundamentalism cum opportunism run rampant?

2. The change in generals in Afpak signals a willingness to engage only in physical strategies that have a high probability of dealing firmly with the most determined and dangerous elements of the terror apparatus ranged not only against us, but against the whole world. This should spare us more sights of the ambush of NATO troops along treacherous stretches of Afghan roads, not to mention aborted efforts to “get” Al Qaeda of the very few attempted before Bush 11 obeyed his trainers and walked into the maelstrom of Iraq.

3. When will we understand that Obama is all process and unfolding, not single-bandaid solutions? This myopia on the part of allegedly intelligent observers is creating a brake on things and making the parlous state of journalism more and more a fate devoutly to be welcomed. A new journalism of process will emerge.

4. Other elements of the strategy that is unfolding will likely be a radical internationalization of the conflict accompanied by massive education regarding its nature and importance and the mobilization of a much more competent international apparatus for dealing with it than we presently have.

Terror, genocide and the deleterious effects of inhumane migration and refugee survival efforts are all linked, are all issues on the table, are all likely targets of a concerted Obama effort. For anyone in Congress to be nit-picking about time lines is a predictable but sad indication of the narrowness of vision that penetrates even the precincts of the marginally better party.

The fact is that Obama might well be out of Afpak in a year or at least on a time line that is acceptable to the American people. But this post is not about that. It is about biindness in the deepest prophetic sense.

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Will Talibanization Ice The Taliban?

May 12, 2009 at 6:07 am (politics)
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This May 10 Washington Post piece by Pamela Constable suggests that, contrary to my own sense of alarm about the Talibanization of Pakistan, there may be strength in a simple reality within Islam, its tolerance and affirmation of differing approaches to how one acts. Here is the paragraph that underlines that:

“Islam is our identity and our system of life, but variety and choice are part of it. People should dress modestly, but women don’t have to cover their faces and men don’t have to grow long beards,” said Khurshid Ahmad, an Islamic scholar and national legislator. “The Koran is very clear that there should be no coercion in religion. You cannot cram it down people’s throats. This is where the Taliban destroyed their own case.”

Apparently Al Qaeda is now seeing Pakistan as its theater of operations, hoping to chip away at the country’s pluralism and presumably to win the prize that would come with the victory of Talibanization — a nuclear arsenal.

If these things are true, it underlines the following as likely US responses:

1. Vocally back the forces of religious tolerance. Vocally meaning so the whole world hears.

2. Move toward a radically international and updated peace-keeping posture, eschewing our largely unilateral and therefore Herculean posture. We will cut of our nose to spite our face if this is simply a continuation of Charlie Wilson’s War.

3. Develop cooperative strategies with Pakistan for the targeted diminishing of the Al Qaeda infrastructure. Alias: Making any drone efforts cooperative and not just us.

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Fleshing Out A New Peacekeeping Force

May 6, 2009 at 7:15 am (politics)
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The Afghanistan-Pakistan situation has pressed me to consider something that can hardly be original, but which needs to be articulated now. When I have spoken of a U.N. peacekeeping force for the 21st Century I have no interest in encouraging the sort of after-thought, rag-tag forces of the past, despite the fact that their presence has often been positive and saved lives.

We need to envision and create an international force that is capable of minimizing the effect of terror efforts and protect zones where weapons of mass destruction are present.

The reason this should be a new international force that operates with U.N. approval is that our present NATO form of internationalism is a charade. We have nothing like the international commitment needed to actually sort out the issues of global terror and move beyond ineffective and potentially disastrous military solutions to the problem. NATO does not include Japan, China, Russia or India. It does not suggest to the world a full international commitment.

I am talking about a stepped-up operation that will be capable of making it very hard for nations like Sudan to run roughshod over its people and for countries like Pakistan to risk the loss of control that would protect the world from terror-sponsored nuclear blackmail.

People will say that this is a silly idea because of their sense of the U.N. as an ineffective bureaucracy, but this ignores such realities as the organization’s good performance during recent years in facilitating elections in difficult situations. It also ignores the fact that the U.N. is a key player in two huge sectors of international activity which are, themselves, problematic and in need of radical reform. I mean the refugee and humanitarian missions. The former in particular represents a solution which is itself the cause of many ills. The latter has obvious problems, among which is a demonstrable failure to do more than create holding actions in the face of genocidal forces.

There is another issue I wish to note. It is true that drone attacks on Al Qaeda in Pakistan are hardly popular, but we are dealing with an open, criminal ideology which employs religion and resentment and hatred to motivate a still-growing movement that can only be defeated by understanding and facing down its absurd premises. This cannot be done unilaterally and it cannot be done without the exercise of superior power. A military, on-the-ground solution is hardly superior. Even if the Obama troop escalation should prove efficacious, it would only be a temporary chip off a block where every chip creates double the volume in lethal response.

It is said that most Pakistanis abhor the Taliban. While this is true, it hardly means that the bulk of Pakistanis will resist a force which has shown the ability to simply take over whole regions by ousting the landlords and creating alliances with leaders — community organizing, in a word. Power in a vacuum. Fear in the face of weak resistance.

The ideology of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is what needs to be attacked. And drone attacks represent a better avenue than on the ground warfare. If that becomes a chosen method of a fully internationalized movement which is as committed to fighting the legitimate causes of poverty and resentment as to thwarting terror, then we will have reason to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, FATIMA BHUTTO SKEWERS PAKISTAN PRESIDENT ZARDARI AND ACCUSES HIM OF FEEDING THE TALIBAN

Her salient conclusion:

In the year that Zardari has been president, Pakistan has become a third front in the war on terror. We are not safer, our neighbors are not safer, and we have not made any strides toward fighting fundamentalism.

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Two Countries — One War

May 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm (politics)
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Just as the world is beginning to see that there is an Afghanistan and a Pakistan, the Taliban (the local terror group) sees its mission as conducting one war in two countries. Protected by people, geography and the Taliban, Al Qaeda conducts a patient, long-term global war.

If you want a snapshot of this situation, the New York Times has obliged today.

CLICK HERE TO READ Porous Pakistani Border Could Hinder U.S.

CLICK HERE FOR THIS COMPANION PIECE FROM WASHINGTON Advances by the Taliban Sharpen U.S. Concerns

I find it impossible to arrive at any conclusion that could spell:

Wisdom in throwing troops into ground war on unfamiliar and hostile ground;

Wisdom in believing that we can pay our way to victory by essentially bribing folk to be on our side;

Wisdom in believing that we as a nation can turn this thing around by ourselves.

We’ve demonstrated that Pakistan has not told the truth about its nuclear program. READ HERE

Successive posts at Huffington Post and here have argued that Afghanistan is impossible to control by military means. The British have failed. The Russians have failed. And we will fail.

What is most needed now is an immediate effort to create a UN force that will see as its mission the containment of terrorist aggression and the protection of nuclear properties. This should require at minimum an emergency Security Council meeting and a declaration by us that the situation has changed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. We cannot approach this unilaterally. And as I point out in the piece referenced above, we cannot run this as yet another peace keeping mission.We need an evolution — a new and better-trained force that can deal with 21st Century reality.

Ultimately we may have no recourse but drone attacks and international supervision and protection of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Neither can be achieved as a unilateral act of the US. The only way is to give this situation the gravity it deserves and focus urgent international attention on a war that is now preparing for a fighting season in two adjacent nations.

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