Tag: war

Counterproductive

After Qaddafi is shot dead, Mubarak is sentenced to life in prison:

For nearly 30 years he was the pharaoh-like ruler whose word was law; the plunderer of billions of pounds of government money and controller of Egypt’s brutal police state. On Saturday night Hosni Mubarak began a new life as a convicted murderer. A broken and humiliated man of 84, he was flown by helicopter to Torah prison – where many of his enemies had once been jailed – just two hours after hearing a Cairo judge pronounce a life sentence on him for complicity in the murder of 850 protesters.

Well, if Western leaders are looking to make sure that Assad and the remaining Arab dictators fight to the very last drop of their people’s blood, they’re certainly going about it the right way. If you want to get rid of a rat, always leave him a safe out.

Exit Europa

Most Americans want US troops out of Europe:

The Rasmussen polling organization is out with a shock poll that the entire Washington establishment needs to study: 51 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted all US troops out of Europe, now. Only 29 percent favored keeping the troops where they are. US troops have been in Europe since World War Two. In the Cold War, they not only kept the Russians out; they gave the rest of the Old World the confidence that Germany would not come storming back for a rematch. The presence of US troops helped give western Europe its longest era of peace since Roman times.

Since the end of the Cold War the US presence in Europe has made much less sense to the average American, but foreign policy junkies like yours truly think that it still serves a purpose. Not only do those troops provide security in new NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic republics; US bases in Europe are important in dealing with terror and other problems in the Middle East and without the US presence in Europe it is unlikely that NATO in its present form can survive.

Being a sophisticated foreign policy junkie, but not, apparently, a historian or an economist, Walter Russell Mead completely fails to understand the crucial point. It’s not that “the arguments for the US presence in Europe are credible, clear and compelling”, it’s something else that entirely supersedes them. You’re BANKRUPT, dude! The USA cannot afford to pay for the US presence in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in South Korea, or in Europe. It’s done. It’s over. Even the slow-witted American public has finally figured it out.

And the more Hispanics and other third-worlders that enter the country, the less the average American is going to give a damn about the wet dreams of foreign policy junkies.

RAF heroics

I don’t care if it’s true or not, it’s just funny:

[Y]ou can hardly eff and blind when addressing a leading independent school such as Brighton College. Not unless you happen to be a war hero like Douglas Bader, who reputedly treated the girls of Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies’ College (the uncertainty hints at urban myth, but we’ll let that pass) to a story of airborne derring-do in which one Fokker appeared on his tail, another Fokker attacked him from above… and so on, until the headmistress tried to staunch the pubescent giggling with: “Gels, I should perhaps explain that the, ahem, Fokker was a Second World War German fighter plane.” “Madam, that may very well be,” so legend has Bader responding. “These buggers were in Messerschmitts.”

Belatedly coming to their senses

Republicans finally turn against the decade-long military occupation of Afghanistan:

Support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low with the majority of Americans saying the U.S. should withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline set by the Obama administration, according to a new poll. The CNN/ORC International survey released Friday indicated only 25% of Americans favored the war in the Asian country. A majority of Republicans voiced opposition to it, for the first time since the war began in 2001.

I still find it amazing that Obama has gotten a pass for continuing the occupation, considering that the only reason he beat out Hilary for the nomination was because he was supposedly the anti-war candidate. Republicans may be stupid and slow to grasp the obvious, but the cognitive dissonance of the American liberal truly knows no bounds.

NRO turns against the Afghan occupation

Are these cracks in the neocon dam or just a sign that their attention is turning to Iran and/or Syria?

Today, in another war – as Mark noted — there’s been a spate of Afghan “friendlies” assassinating American and U.N. troops in the wake of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’s alleged murder of 17 Afghan villagers while they slept. This comes on the heels of widespread rioting over the incineration of Korans, which were used by Taliban prisoners to pass messages — and for which the U.S. profusely apologized. Restrictive rules of engagement hamper our troops even as a group of foolish senators – all of them irrelevant to today’s politics — proclaim the fight worth continuing.

This is not a Good War.

In other words, I’m with Andy: It’s time to wrap up this decade-long farce, time for both civilian leaders and military brass to take a long, hard look at the demoralizing mess we’ve made in Afghanistan, and to ask how America can avoid such mistakes in the future.

We might start by forgetting the concept of “nation-building” in places where there are no nations to build. The nation-state, it should be remembered, is very much a Western concept, forged over 1,000 years of often painful European history.

Of course, it is as foolish to believe that non-Western barbarians are going to magically be transformed into civilized Westerners by virtue of physical residence in the West as it is to think that barbarian societies will be magically transformed into Western civilizations by virtue of military occupation.

But since it’s taken 11 years for these brilliant commentators to recognize the obvious in Afghanistan, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for them to do the same in America.

I know! (raises hand)

Victor Davis Hanson asks a multiple-choice question concerning American strategy in Afghanistan:

Somehow the U.S. finds itself in a position of having to apologize for the inadvertent burning of terrorist-desecrated Korans; of not expecting an apology from Karzai (a recipient of the 2004 Liberty Medal) for the murdering of U.S. troops by their supposedly friendly Afghan counterparts; and of again having to apologize for a horrific mass murdering spree by a lone, rogue gunman, who, nonetheless, off-the-record, is said to be emblematic of the frustration of U.S. troops. Our troops are largely forgotten by the administration and the public, cannot trust fully those on behalf of whom they are risking their lives, and are not sure what the U.S. mission has become. When an invading and occupying force apologizes so repeatedly to the resident population, it is a sign that locals have lost any fear of its unpredictability and lethality, or respect for its proven record of reconstruction and humanity, or for its own sense of self-confidence in its mission.

So what now?

a) To escalate is politically impossible and strategically nonsensical.

b) To leave abruptly is to admit defeat and cede complete control of the country de facto to the Taliban, and to confess that the previous human and material cost was wasted, while relegating millions of pro-Western-reform Afghans in the major cities to Taliban reprisals or refugee status. (I assume that at this point the Afghan Security Forces would not fight on, or at least not fight very well, alone against the insurgents.)

c) To continue with the present policy of announced withdrawal dates, and a final departure in two years, punctuated by periodic apologies to the Afghans when their customs are abridged, or civilians killed, in the hope that the Karzai government and its successor by 2014 will come to a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban, one that will not nullify all the gains achieved in the last decade — a dubious proposition at best.

The answer is (b), VDH. The answer is (b). No one is fooled when the defeated occupation force “refuses to admit defeat”. All that refusal does is square the stupidity. Not only was all of “the previous human and material cost” wasted, people like me have been telling people like you that for years!

And as for the “pro-Western-reform Afghans”, screw them. Don’t even think about bringing them over here, or you’ll soon discover that they’re a hell of a lot closer to the Taliban than they are to the West.

Winning hearts and minds

Surely Obama can simply apologize for this mass murder and make everything all right; that worked so well after the Korans were burned.

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say. He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead.

If this isn’t a sign that the occupation of Afghanistan has to end, and end now, I don’t know what more is needed. It’s a little hard to pretend they hate us for our freedoms when our soldiers are invading homes and murdering children.

Al Qaeda and Afghanistan

This is what happens when you don’t go home when the game is over:

ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Carney when was “the last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda.” Carney didn’t have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense Department and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.

I queried those agencies Tuesday and got an answer today. According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011—ten months ago. However, there was an “Al Qaeda foreign fighter” captured near Kabul in May 2011, and an “Al Qaeda facilitator” captured in the Paktiya province on January 30 of this year.

By comparison, there have been 466 coalition fatalities since April 2011.

This can be spun one of two ways. But regardless, either the Coalition of the Willing – love those bizarre Bush administration names – has won the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home or it is losing by a 466-1 ratio and should promptly retreat before it ends up getting wiped out.

A new energy source discovered!

At least when the United States loses its next war, there won’t be any great mystery why; between all the women, the foreigners, and the gays, is there even any room for the conventional soldier?  I imagine that today, considerable electricity could be generated at Arlington, what with the way all the members of the Corps who are buried there are presently spinning in their graves.

Those who support the foolish notion of homosexuals being permitted to not only serve in the military, but serve openly, often like to point to the Sacred Band of Thebes as a justification for homosexual military service.  In response, I simply point out that the Sacred Band was a separate unit, removed from the rest of the Theban military, and managed to last all of 40 years before it was wiped out by Philip of Macedon at Chaeronea.  So, I’m a little dubious this is the historical precedent American military commanders would be wise to follow.

Winning hearts and minds

When your nominal ally’s soldiers are shooting your troops, I think it’s safe to say that the “hearts and minds” strategy isn’t working:

An Afghan soldier, apparently angry over the burning of Korans at a U.S. air base, fatally shot two U.S. troops and wounded four others, Afghan officials said. The International Security Assistance Force said in a statement two military personnel were killed in eastern Afghanistan Thursday by “an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform” but didn’t identify the troops’ nationality.

CBS News said an Afghan official said the dead and wounded in the attack in the eastern province of Ningarhar were American. The official said the shooting seemed to be motivated by the burning of Korans at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, but did not elaborate.

And they say it’s Ron Paul whose foreign policy is insane?