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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
This a lot of bumps. You want to keep a thread on the Afghan war, you have some good points. Care to dig up some maps and casualty figures?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
This is getting bumps because it needs and deserves them. I keep meaning to get to this, but there's damned little to snark about in Afghanistan right now. It's a horror show, and it's not getting better.

Any bets on how long Karzai lasts?

Anyone remember what happened to Najibullah, the last "President" that was installed by a foreign power there? Let's just say Mussolini got off easy.

Mike

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means;
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
I think the bigger question is what would happen if the west pulled out...

back to the chaos and suffering that brought the Taliban to power?


or does the US need Afghanistan as a land base for the invasion of Iran?

which also has made me mad lately,

as far as anybody has been able to prove Iran is in compliance with both the NPT and IAEA treatys...

yet they have had to put up with the hysteria Obama started during the G20...


and Israel, throwing stones refuses to sign either treaty, submit to any inspection, and had exported nuclear weapons tech to South Africa .

Embargos = Bullshit




" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "

" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson


Lets party like its 1939

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
And all this makes the latest tiny tragedy all the more upsetting.

Some kid got fatally bonked by a box of coalition propaganda leaflets - which is kind of a sad echo of our entire doings there.

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_8560/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=7msUsAfb

FWIW - I think McChrystal is the wrong guy for the job, so does Gates, but there's no way to yank him unless he does something even stupider than usual, since he has seniority and political backing.
Ask WHERE, and you'll understand why I dislike him.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
I think the bigger question is what would happen if the west pulled out...

back to the chaos and suffering that brought the Taliban to power?


or does the US need Afghanistan as a land base for the invasion of Iran?

which also has made me mad lately,

as far as anybody has been able to prove Iran is in compliance with both the NPT and IAEA treatys...

yet they have had to put up with the hysteria Obama started during the G20...


and Israel, throwing stones refuses to sign either treaty, submit to any inspection, and had exported nuclear weapons tech to South Africa .

Embargos = Bullshit




" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "

" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson


Lets party like its 1939

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Right there with ya, Gino.

If Iran "must" open up its nuclear facilities, shouldn't Israel, France, Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India, Pakistan, et al, have to do the same?

Or are the rules different if the country happens to be our enemy du jour?

Mike

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means;
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Bump for further thought as well, many excellent points. a great number of them made by gino

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Frem:
My problem with McChrystal is that unofficially, he's in the same boat with Erik Prince, politically and morally speaking.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Mike,

Yeah, I was just not speaking in hyperbole, but there are some other excellent points like this one:

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Frem:
My problem with McChrystal is that unofficially, he's in the same boat with Erik Prince, politically and morally speaking.

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Yeah this was my gut reaction as well. I read the back and forth between him and Obama and it seemed like McChrystal was gunning for an all out hopeless cause here, almost reminiscent of the WWI generals. I just wanted to read more on the subject before commenting.

One thing doesn't take a lot of research to say:
We're getting our heads handed to us like everyone else, ever, and for a very obvious reason. No, it's not "they're crazy bastards" nor is it "Mountains! eek! run for the hills!"

It's the straightforward reality that you can't conquer total anarchy. Not easily. This is why we suck in Somalia as well. It's the same thing that defeated the Greeks and then the Romans in Germany and Russia.

Once you have an established power structure, that structure keeps control of the population. Capture that, and you capture the country. Obviously, we would have had fewer troubles in Iraq if we had not then tried to dismantle the power structure and build a new one in its place.

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But if you look at Nazi and Soviet conquest of Europe, it was relatively easy, because there was a very solid local power structure to take. Once you control Paris, Paris controls France. Not a lot else to be done. Once you control Kabul, you control Kabul, and that's about it.

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Bingo. And despite the protestations of some around this board, that's also what would make the U.S. damned hard to invade or defeat on our home soil. We tend to rally behind our "leaders" when threatened, but if invaded, we wouldn't *rely* on them; we'd for the most part fight to the last man to defend our families, our homes, and our land. Our "national" leadership only goes so far, and just under the surface there's a seething semi-anarchy, as has been witnessed over the summer at the town hall meetings.

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Yup. And agreed, Iraq should have been done far differently, if it was going to be done at all. Depose Saddam or run him into exile, then USE his higher-ups to restore a sense of order, and then SLOWLY start phasing them out in favor of more U.S.-friendly puppets. That's not to say I advocate puppet regimes, just that if you're going to do it anyway, at least let the people have a semblance of involvement and "choice" in the matter. Makes it easier to mollify them, don'tcha know...

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Gino, Dream:

Keep looking. Look into McChrystal's involvement in the cover-up of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death, which was used to make the man a hero (he already was) and as a recruiting tool for a war he was against (Iraq). According to some, that whitewash and cover-up of the way he died started with McChrystal.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I didn't mean a direct connection, I meant McChrystal privately has that same damned attitude.

You know, that the problem with Afghanistan is that it's fulla Afghans, a buncha rag-head sand ******s who are all going to hell anyway so might as well speed the process and oh what a shame we can't get em to kill each other instead of wasting our precious resources...

THAT attitude.

Besides the fact that he's climbed the ranks politically, using preparation H for lip gloss, there's big gaping holes in his public service record, and for a fact folks, they do NOT give out them stars for humanitarian reasons, so I find myself wondering what the bastard did back in Jan 2001 to get it.

Ponder the history of what it takes to "make one's bones" as a General - and the fact that Patton and McArthur did so by stomping on US Veterans at the behest of the government that screwed em - more often than not, it takes an act so monstrous that the "loyalty" of the person is undeniable.

And when poring over McChrystals record, all I got is questions, and no answers at all.

That in combination with a certain amount of known religious and racial intolerance regarding the man, makes me cynical and suspicious, his role in JSOC completely reeks of blackops, and he's buddy buddy with the same alphabet intel goons who're in my opinion the single greatest threat to our nation and it's people on the planet.

So yeah, I think he's the wrong guy for the job.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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his role in JSOC completely reeks of blackops

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Posted by DreamTrove:

And, of course, such "contractors" are under no treaty or bloodoath or anything they might actually honor to *not* turn around and then use that equipment against us.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Well, given the situation, really there's only two halfway decent options, and Ralston is a freakin flyboy, not to mention corrupt as it gets and blatantly in bed with general dynamics and the turks.
(see also: Sibel Edmonds)

Which leaves General Pace - whom we oughta drag out of retirement and put in charge of step by step disengagement of our forces from the area.

I know Pace is a sumbitch, and Gates hates the hardassed, ambitious bastard, but he's OUR sumbitch, and like Gates, will follow orders without regard to personal feelings on the matter.

Even with the inevitable friction between him and Gates, who kinda put a knife in his back to climb into the position he did, it'd still go better with a sand-eating marine in charge who has enough knowledge of the area and its inhabitants to not make the obvious, boneheaded mistakes every else has been - Pace is also less likely to sit on his ass in an air conditioned office back in washington and fly it by wire, he'll go OUT there, and start knocking the heads of staff officers on site till shit gets done.

That said, I hate Pace too, but he *IS* the man for the job, since you asked.

-F

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/asia/13military.html

From Oct 3rd, describes a new manual of operations having been written based on mistakes that were made in a July 2008 disaster at Wanat:

"More than a year has passed since an Afghan police commander turned on coalition forces and helped insurgents carry out a surprise attack that killed nine Americans, wounded more than 30 United States and Afghan troops and nearly resulted in the loss of an allied outpost in one of the deadliest engagements of the war."

"The handbook, “Small-Unit Operations in Afghanistan,” strikes a tone of respect for the Taliban and other insurgent groups, which are acknowledged to be extremely experienced fighters; even more, American soldiers are warned that the insurgents rapidly adapt to shifts in tactics."

"The manual includes a chapter titled “Cultural Engagements,” offering guidance to small-unit leaders on building relationships with wavering village elders and trust among distrustful village residents — a process that cannot be left to senior officers who may be back at headquarters.

The manual describes how to train better for the defense of remote forward operating bases in harsh Afghan terrain, especially in contested areas where the loyalties of local people are uncertain. The detailed “how to” lists include instructions on such battlefield techniques as deploying mortars more effectively than soldiers did at Wanat, where they did not take into account terrain that provided cover for attackers."

Sadly, it sounds like 8 years in and we're still learning the hard way and basically "tweaking."

I don't buy the "winning hearts and minds" there's nothing to suggest that we can, and certainly if it is possible we're looking at how many more years to gain trust? Do we think the Afghans are that easy?

Also -

a) ask a military person what the solution is and you'll get a military answer - what general is going to say "we can't win this one."

b) "mix with the Afghan people" sounds like what a military guy would say to the new liberal president and his liberal followers - it's nicer. Sounds like a stall imho.

And just happened yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?hp

"KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents besieged two American outposts in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, American and Afghan officials said, killing eight Americans and two Afghan policemen in a bold daylight strike that was the deadliest for American soldiers in more than a year (Wanat)."

It does feel like we're being played.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Pizmo: Yup. Ask for another 20,000 troops here and 60,000 there, and before you know it, you've got 500,000 American soldiers on the ground in hostile territory. Sound familiar?

More importantly, I have yet to hear a comprehensive answer for what exactly constitutes a "win". At what point are we able to say "That's it - mission accomplished; let's go home."? You know that no one has an answer when they refuse to give you one. What I'm hearing now, and ALL I'm hearing lately, is things like "well, we don't want to pick a 'date-certain' for withdrawal..." and things like that - the EXACT SAME things we were told about Iraq when it was realized that what we had there was a clusterfuck of biblical proportions, with no way out and no end in sight.

We are now hearing more support for a "surge" in Afghanistan, with lots of backslapping about how "successful" the surge in Iraq was, and all they're talking about in terms of this "surge" is more boots on the ground. It wasn't the number of soldiers that helped in Iraq - it was the fact that we actually started paying the enemy cashy money to stop attacking us. Nobody likes to talk about that aspect of it, but the plain simple fact of it is that there were people there who were getting tired of the infighting, and we took advantage of the situation by offering them cash to not kill us. So far, I'm not hearing anything of the kind coming out of Afghanistan.

Mike

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means;
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams

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By Peter W. Galbraith
Sunday, October 4, 2009

Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press. In effect, I was being told to remain a team player after being thrown off the team. Nonetheless, I agreed.

As my differences with my boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, had already been well publicized (through no fault of either of us), I asked only that the statement announcing my dismissal reflect the real reasons. Alain LeRoy, the head of U.N. peacekeeping and my immediate superior in New York, proposed that the United Nations say I was being recalled over a "disagreement as to how the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) would respond to electoral fraud." Although this was not entirely accurate -- the dispute was really about whether the U.N. mission would respond to the massive electoral fraud -- I agreed.

Instead, the United Nations announced my recall as occurring "in the best interests of the mission," and U.N. press officials told reporters on background that my firing was necessitated by a "personality clash" with Eide, a friend of 15 years who had introduced me to my future wife.

I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back many months if the stakes were not so high. For weeks, Eide had been denying or playing down the fraud in Afghanistan's recent presidential election, telling me he was concerned that even discussing the fraud might inflame tensions in the country. But in my view, the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai.


I also felt loyal to my U.N. colleagues who worked in a dangerous environment to help Afghans hold honest elections -- at least five of whom have now told me they are leaving jobs they love in disgust over the events leading to my firing.

Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

The election was a foreseeable train wreck. Unlike the United Nations-run elections in 2004, this balloting was managed by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC). Despite its name, the commission is subservient to Karzai, who appointed its seven members. Even so, the international role was extensive. The United States and other Western nations paid the more than $300 million to hold the vote, and U.N. technical staff took the lead in organizing much of the process, including printing ballot papers, distributing election materials and designing safeguards against fraud.

Part of my job was to supervise all this U.N. support. In July, I learned that at least 1,500 polling centers (out of 7,000) were to be located in places so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police had ever visited them. Clearly, these polling centers would not open on Election Day. At a minimum, their existence on the books would create large-scale confusion, but I was more concerned about the risk of fraud.

Local commission staff members were hardly experienced election professionals; in many instances they were simply agents of the local power brokers, usually aligned with Karzai. If no independent observers or candidate representatives, let alone voters, could even visit the listed location of a polling center, these IEC staffers could easily stuff ballot boxes without ever taking them to the assigned location. Or they could simply report results without any votes being in the ballot boxes.

Along with ambassadors from the United States and key allies, I met with the Afghan ministers of defense and the interior as well as the commission's chief election officer. We urged them either to produce a credible plan to secure these polling centers (which the head of the Afghan army had told me was impossible) or to close them down. Not surprisingly, the ministers -- who served a president benefiting from the fraud -- complained that I had even raised the matter. Eide ordered me not to discuss the ghost polling centers any further. On Election Day, these sites produced hundreds of thousands of phony Karzai votes.

At other critical stages in the election process, I was similarly ordered not to pursue the issue of fraud. The U.N. mission set up a 24-hour election center during the voting and in the early stages of the counting. My staff collected evidence on hundreds of cases of fraud around the country and, more important, gathered information on turnout in key southern provinces where few voters showed up but large numbers of votes were being reported. Eide ordered us not to share this data with anyone, including the Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-backed Afghan institution legally mandated to investigate fraud. Naturally, my colleagues wondered why they had taken the risks to collect this evidence if it was not to be used.

In early September, I got word that the IEC was about to abandon its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. After I called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing me of foreign interference. My boss sided with Karzai.

Afghanistan is deeply divided ethnically and geographically. Both Karzai and the Taliban are Pashtun, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group, which makes up about 45 percent of the country's population. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main challenger, is half Pashtun and half Tajik but is politically identified with the Tajiks, who dominate the north and are Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group. If the Tajiks believe that fraud denied their candidate the chance to compete in a second round, they may respond by simply not recognizing the authority of the central government. The north already has de facto autonomy; these elections could add an ethnic fault line to a conflict between the Taliban and the government that to date has largely been a civil war among Pashtuns.

Since my disagreements with Eide went public, Eide and his supporters have argued that the United Nations had no mandate to interfere in the Afghan electoral process. This is not technically correct. The U.N. Security Council directed the U.N. mission to support Afghanistan's electoral institutions in holding a "free, fair and transparent" vote, not a fraudulent one. And with so much at stake -- and with more than 100,000 U.S. and coalition troops deployed in the country -- the international community had an obvious interest in ensuring that Afghanistan's election did not make the situation worse.

President Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy for the country work. However, the extensive fraud that took place on Aug. 20 virtually guarantees that a government emerging from the tainted vote will not be credible with many Afghans.

As I write, Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission is auditing 10 percent of the suspect polling boxes. If the audit shows this sample to be fraudulent, the commission will throw out some 3,000 suspect ballot boxes, which could lead to a runoff vote between Karzai and Abdullah. By itself, a runoff is no antidote for Afghanistan's electoral challenges. The widespread problems that allowed for fraud in the first round of voting must be addressed. In particular, all ghost polling stations should be removed from the books ("closed" is not the right word since they never opened), and the election staff that facilitated the fraud must be replaced.

Afghanistan's pro-Karzai election commission will not do this on its own. Fixing those problems will require resolve from the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan -- a quality that so far has been lacking.

galbraithvt@gmail.com

Peter W. Galbraith served as deputy special representative of the United Nations in Afghanistan from June until last week.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Oh I don't doubt that McChrystal is tryin, but he's gettin in his own way, I worry that his prejudices are tripping him up, and really, how DO you pull off the insane, impossible, and ridiculous ?

Same problem Gates had at the beginning of this, and one reason I do respect him, cause no matter how stupid the orders, he will at least TRY to carry them out without getting too political about it - problem is that he's ambitious, and yeah, he did climb into that chair on a knife planted solidly in Pace's back, which I am sure Pace ain't too damn happy about.

Thing is, if you're GOING to do something this insane and try to make it work, you need an officer who is going to get out there on the ground and kick the staff officers hard enough to dislodge their head from the brown-round, and a chair polisher like McChrystal ain't gonna do that - you can NOT do this from washington, and you can't do it from an air conditioned office in the capital neither - you have GOT to go into the teeth of it, hands on, and for that (no offense you Army grunts) you need a fuckin Marine.

Of course, we *could* use the GOTH plan Gates came up with a while back, and write the whole situation off - I got no problem with that, but I am sure some would.

-Frem

GOTH Plan = GO To Hell plan, what you do when it all goes to hell on you, not that you can plan it too deeply, but having SOME idea of what to do in advance is handy.

Basically, 48 hours, spike and ditch any equipment that cannot be handed off to friendlies and recovered, and get the troops stateside ASA-F-P, then sort it out once they're here.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Oh I don't doubt that McChrystal is tryin, but he's gettin in his own way, I worry that his prejudices are tripping him up, and really, how DO you pull off the insane, impossible, and ridiculous ?

Same problem Gates had at the beginning of this, and one reason I do respect him, cause no matter how stupid the orders, he will at least TRY to carry them out without getting too political about it - problem is that he's ambitious, and yeah, he did climb into that chair on a knife planted solidly in Pace's back, which I am sure Pace ain't too damn happy about.

Thing is, if you're GOING to do something this insane and try to make it work, you need an officer who is going to get out there on the ground and kick the staff officers hard enough to dislodge their head from the brown-round, and a chair polisher like McChrystal ain't gonna do that - you can NOT do this from washington, and you can't do it from an air conditioned office in the capital neither - you have GOT to go into the teeth of it, hands on, and for that (no offense you Army grunts) you need a fuckin Marine.

Of course, we *could* use the GOTH plan Gates came up with a while back, and write the whole situation off - I got no problem with that, but I am sure some would.

-Frem

GOTH Plan = GO To Hell plan, what you do when it all goes to hell on you, not that you can plan it too deeply, but having SOME idea of what to do in advance is handy.

Basically, 48 hours, spike and ditch any equipment that cannot be handed off to friendlies and recovered, and get the troops stateside ASA-F-P, then sort it out once they're here.

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

You want a go to hell plan, something that may help the US both save face and maybe turn the situation around?

Dig through the files on the Afghan government, I'm sure they must exist, and have a real good look at who has been involved in the heroin trade, who has committed or ordered atrocitys and or torture, every asshole who committed a crime...

Pick a day and round them all up, fold that government on the basis of the fraudulent election and pass over all the evidence and accused to the ICC for trial.

Declare a unilateral ceasefire, and reorganize... The Taleban, I think would likely lay low until they figured out what was what, and then you make somekind of amnesty offer that would allow them to help shape their country. A parliamentary style government could be formed over say six months, including the people fighting you now because the system you installed was corrupted.
Then, pull out... militarily, politically, economically. Everything.


Meanwhile, Obama signs on to the ICC and along with the Afghan files, he turns over ALL the files on the alphabet thugs, politicians, lawyers, and CFR types and allows indictments and trials on them at the Hague. No findings that it wasn't against American law, no Presidential pardons later.

Better still, clear out GITMO and turn it over to the ICC for their use in this matter ( probably a shortage of cells at the Hague ) it would tickle me to hear that Cheney was sharing a cell there with Wolfie.

This wouldn't solve every problem, but it sure as hell would give pause to any reoccurance

and maybe then you could change the way you deal with Israel...

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The key line : Mr Eide responded by saying he had the full backing of the international community and the US administration.


So the US is a co conspirator in the election fraud then?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:


So the US is a co conspirator in the election fraud then?

Could well be. If nothing else, it now APPEARS that we're complicit, or at least complacent. Neither helps our cause, as far as I can see.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
sounds like a nice fantasy. Of course, as much as I'd like to see the CFR rounded up and sent to Gitmo, I suspect they would assassinate Obama first.

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