Tag: Surge

More Afghan Thoughts

The speech was made….troops will go to Afghanistan (was there any doubt?)……McChrystal gets his demand for 40,000 more troops so that we can win the war in Afghanistan……McChrystral?   Is this the same McChrystal that lied to the family of Pat Tillman and the country so that his death and memory could be used as a recruiting too?…..anyway, the president has bowed to the Right and has fallen into the mind set that we can successfully leave Afghanistan in 18 months……Remember that….this is a statement to appease the doves while massaging the genitals of the hawks….

Mission statement?….we, meaning our troops, will be training the Afghan army and police to step up and take over the defense of their country……a noble endeavor…..the police?….the police is more corrupt than the Afghan president’s brother….the army?…..1 in 4 of the army can read and write…..they do NOT have the will to step up and take on the fight……

BTW, all this advisers and training has a familiar ring to it, at least for me,…..it was the mission in Vietnam….and we see how much of a brilliant success that was….(that was sarcasm)…….

All in all……the US will be in Afghanistan for years and years to come……there is NO way out…..if they stick to a failed policy of training the un-trainable…….wed can look at Iraq and say what a glorious surge it was…..indeed but sad to tell you people……Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq…….as far as the surge will be concerned…..we are basically agreeing to an open end commitment….regardless of what the prez has said……and we are asking our allies to fall into the same trap that we are laying for ourselves……

The only thing that we can be assured of….is that it will cost billions upon billions and all we will accomplish is the deaths of Americans and Afghans……..troops will remain and the mission will be altered to fit the rhetoric…..

How Shall We Pay For The Troop Expansion?

Okay sports fans…you heard the president last night…..more troops for Afghanistan…..by the time all is said and done it will most likely be in the neighborhood of 50,000….that is the troops and all the support to get them there and keep them there…..

Before we talk money…I would like to ask a few questions…..if there is NO open end commitment why do we keep sending troops?  Is it an escalation to termination?  Just a few question that need a proper answer…..

On both sides of the aisles of Congress there is a concern on just how will the country pay for the extra troops in a time of massive deficits that grow hourly….

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the same show: “I believe there will be a separate accounting. … We may wish to discuss higher taxes.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin has proposed a war “surtax” to pay for additional spending in Afghanistan. While that proposal isn’t likely to be approved, it has started a debate on how to pay for the troop surge in ways that don’t add to the deficit.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, (D., Mich.), said he didn’t support a general tax increase “in the middle of the recession,” but was open to boosting taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year. He said Mr. Obama should address the budget issue in his discussion of his Afghan war plan.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R., S.C.), said he would prefer the country pay for the troop surge by cutting spending elsewhere. What was needed was to “prioritize American spending,” he said.

Lots of of answers to just how to pay for the “surge”…..but my favorite comes of a Repub….go figure…..Sen. Graham of South Carolina…he also said that the government would have to look to cutting other programs to pay for the troops, like health care…..

Cuts in health care?  As usual the Repubs are willing to let people in this counbtry DIE so they can send more Americans to their deaths…..nice politics……but has anyone told them that they are looking like idiots when they say stuff like this?  So it is somehow a good plan to deny Americans health care so that a war a can continue……No matter how I say it ….it still sounds like a moronic bonehead move to me…..

Candidates Play Politics?

NO! Say it ain’t so!

In his most direct challenge yet of his Democratic presidential rival’s Iraq policy, Sen. John McCain suggested yesterday that Sen. Barack Obama had crafted a war strategy designed to further his own political advancement.

McCain also intimated that Obama skipped a visit of wounded U.S. troops in Germany last week because it would not generate sufficient publicity for his campaign, a charge that the Republican made the centerpiece of a new television ad.

Obama’s call for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, McCain said, “was political” and was made “in order to help him get the nomination of his party.” In a different interview, McCain said that “Senator Obama just views this war as another political issue with which he can change positions.”

Wait! And McCain is not? Please stop this! It is ALL politics from taking a crap in the morning to the last line said before bed. There is no difference! Just move on and talk about something real.

Apparently, this is all McCain has in his favor or why else who he be stuck in the “surge” groove.

Brzezinski Warns On Afghanistan

Listen to this man–the day of the Iraq Invasion he warned the US of what was to come and the man was dead on (no pun intended).  An article in Examiner.com by Jay McDonough:

wrote a post a couple weeks ago outlining Juan Cole’s concern over the emerging U.S. strategy to send more troops to Afghanistan in light of the increasing level of violence and a resurgence of Taliban influence.  From that post:

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.

Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

Beware.

Former National Security Advisor, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, is expressing concerns as well:

“I think we’re literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy,” Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. “When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets.”

However, Brzezinski noted that just as the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country, the U.S.-led forces may now be making similar mistakes. He said that the conduct of military operations “with little regard for civilian casualties” may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion regarding the West’s role. “It’s just beginning, but it’s significant,” Brzezinski said.

His own program for improving the state of affairs in Afghanistan — where U.S. casualties have surpassed those in Iraq for two months now — revolves around pragmatism. He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin since “it all ends up in Europe.” Moreover, he thinks the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is “not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon.”

Many historians believe the 9 year long Soviet-Afghan War became one of the factors leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The resistance from the (U.S. backed) Afghani Mujahadeen forces took the Soviets completely by surprise and was a significant embarrassment to the mighty Soviet army.  From a paper by Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash (The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union):

The war impacted Soviet politics in four reinforcing ways: (1) Perception effects: it changed the perceptions of leaders about the efficacy of using the military to hold the empire together and to intervene in foreign countries; (2) Military effects: it discredited the Red Army, created cleavage between the party and the military, and demonstrated that the Red Army was not invincible, which emboldened the non Russian republics to push for independence; (3) Legitimacy effects: it provided non-Russians with a common cause to demand independence since they viewed this war as a Russian war fought by non Russians against Afghans; and (4) Participation effects: it created new forms of political participation, started to transform the press/media before glasnost, initiated the first shots of glasnost, and created a significant mass of war veterans (Afghansti) who formed new civil organizations weakening the political hegemony of the communist party.

The Soviets had no idea what they were getting into when they invaded Afghanistan.  Nine years later, they were forced to retreat with the tail between their legs.

I just wish I had more confidence the folks currently running the show are, at least, thinking about these issues.

McCain Misfires–Again

First, I want to say that there is a wealth of stuff on both sides of this election, but, unfortunately, the person who claims the most experience and knowledge on national security and foreign poilicy, just keeps misfiring.  His latest is the timeline of the surge.

Asked about Obama’s contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the addition of thousands of U.S. combat troops that were sent to Iraq contributed to the improved security situation there, McCain scoffed.

“I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened,” McCain told “CBS Evening News,” adding that Col. Sean MacFarland was contacted by a major Sunni sheik.

“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening,” McCain said, referring to the U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Anbar province. “I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”

The problem with McCain’s statement — as Obama’s campaign quickly noted — was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.

McCain’s mistakes on the Shia/Sunni thing, his mis-speak on Czech Republic and now the “surge” that he is so proud to support is gonna eventually come back to bite him in the butt.  Difficult to continue to claim experience in all these fields when one does not have a grasp of the events.  This is something that Obama has been accused of in the past and now that all this has come to light, he (Obama) will be painted as a naive twit by the McCain attack machine.

The “Surge” Has Ended!

The U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq that President George W. Bush ordered last year has ended after the last of five additional combat brigades left the country, a U.S. military spokesman said on Tuesday.

The remaining troops from that brigade departed over the weekend, leaving just under 147,000 American soldiers in Iraq, the spokesman said.
The current number is well above the 130,000 troops in Iraq when Bush ordered the deployment in January 2007. The Pentagon said last February it expected 140,000 troops to be in Iraq once the five brigade drawdown had finished.
Bush sent 30,000 extra soldiers to Iraq last year to quell sectarian violence between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs that threatened to tip the country into all-out civil war.

U.S. officials say the buildup helped cut violence in Iraq to four-year lows. Other factors were a decision by Sunni Arab tribal leaders to turn against al Qaeda and a ceasefire by anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was accused of carrying out sectarian killings.

So we have our success and cannot that be a win the war sign?  If so, when can the rest of the troops come home?