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Permanent Wars, Perpetual Killing, Political Calculations

   President Harry S Truman casts his vote, Independence, Missouri, 1950

What part of change did you not understand?

President Barack Obama plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan over six months, an accelerated timetable — with an endgame built in — that would have the first Marines there as early as Christmas, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

U.S. troops are expected to start leaving the region "well before" the end of Obama's first term, the AP reported Tuesday. A senior government official told NBC contributor Col. Jack Jacobs that the president believes that a transition from American-led combat to Afghan leadership of the effort will begin in July 2011.

With the full complement of new troops expected to be in Afghanistan by next summer, the heightened pace of Obama's military deployment in the 8-year-old war appears to mimic the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, a 20,000-strong force addition under former President George W. Bush. Similar in strategy to that mission, Obama's Afghan surge aims to reverse gains by Taliban insurgents and to secure population centers in the volatile south and east parts of the country.

What the President should have done is this--he should have fired Gates, Petraeus, Mullen, Odierno and McChrystal and he should have found new blood to lead American forces out of the region and reduce our military footprint around the world. He should have engaged in a diplomatic blitz against Iran and Pakistan, using the carrot and the stick to trade stability for whatever these countries want. Ten billion dollars in aid for Iran in exchange for a promise to stop supporting terrorism in Gaza and to stop trying to weaponize nuclear material. Ten billion dollars for Pakistan in exchange for eliminating al Qaeda and removing Taliban-sympathies from their unofficial way of doing business. Twenty billion dollars versus another trillion, and another several thousand dead and wounded Americans is a bargain I would take, any day. We have no business in that region with that many troops. If we need to hunt down and kill various elements of al Qaeda, then all we need is the will to trade a few billion dollars to the regimes of Iran and Pakistan to look the other way while we go in and kill whoever we need to kill.

We need to end our lack of meaningful engagement with Iran, and kill them with kindness. We need to fight the narrative and change the rules of the game. How can Iran preach anti-Western nonsense when the West is paying to help them feed and clothe their people? How can we, in this day and age, reject the rule of law, economic engagement, and the power of the velvet revolution? You see that assclown over there in the headdress with the beady eyes and the stirring speech about the evils of Western Democracy? Prove him wrong. Show him that we don't bring remote controlled bombs and economic sanctions. Walk over and give him fifty bucks, a hug, and a laptop with a wireless connection. When he struggles, filch a copy of the list of names he has of suicide bomb ring organizers and weapons procurement officials and then go give them a hug with a belt that has a pneumatic knife in it , okay? Okay. And, Pakistan? Pakistan, you need a hug, too, you goofball. You need help getting rid of kleptocrats and bureaucrats and madrassas. We're here to help with that.

How hard is this to figure out? It's great that we have drones that can fire missiles into cars and kill people. What this has caused our enemies to do is to stop talking on cellular phones and to start making sure that they have children with them at all times. Why? Because they like the din and chatter? No. Because they want to die surrounded by little kids so that someone can point to how evil we are. Thus, the narrative continues unabated. What happened to killing the honorable way, face to face? Our enemies are mostly cowards at the management level. They don't have the stones to do the suicide bombing themselves. Let's help them cowboy up and find some courage to do their own dirty work.

This President refuses to change the game. He wants to be popular. That makes him ridiculous. Here's where his entire presidency has just gone off the rails--never, ever believe the generals. If past American presidents had all listened to their generals, we wouldn't even be alive right now. We'd be smoldering atoms blowing across a moon landscape still on fire. We'd be involved in fifty wars in fifty colonial outposts right now. The business of America would be COIN and war and shipbuilding right now. The best presidents fired generals.

To wit, President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur. He was threatened with impeachment for doing so. He threw General MacArthur under the bus and laughed the whole time he was backing it up, again and again, and he made himself the most effective leader this country has had since Teddy Roosevelt.

Do you know how many impeachment resolutions were leveled against Harry Truman? Twelve (there might be more, but I'm trying to get through this without blowing a gasket). You see, Harry Truman didn't give a good Goddamn what anyone thought of him--he did what was right for this country. He led us to war, and when that war needed to be cooled down, he fired the man who was trying to heat it up and he left President Eisenhower the means by which he could find a way to stop the shooting. Truman didn't abandon the South Koreans, he saved them, and all these years later, you can't find anyone who doesn't doubt that Truman made the right choices against overwhelming odds and overwhelming force. Like it or not, Truman did the right thing nearly every time he had to make a tough decision, and he left office one of the most reviled and hated men in America. His approval rating was 22%, just under that of a disgraced and resigning Richard Nixon.

How many times did they try to impeach President Bush again?

This President is too terrified to do anything that will make him unpopular. He is in over his head, he is enthralled by the generals, and he has pissed away his chance at making a difference. There are some who say that he campaigned on escalating the Afghan war. Really? He campaigned on a lot of stuff, and none of that has come to pass. Who would believe a politician with a pocket full of promises, anyway? And, besides--who's naive enough to think that a man who never served in the military wouldn't try to run to the right of a man who ran as a war hero?

The decision to announce a drawdown on American forces in the summer of 2011 is laughable. Really? You're going to start pulling troops out at exactly the same time that your Republican opposition is going to start finding candidates for the Presidency to run against you? How political of you! What if the situation on the ground demands that American troops stay in the quagmire you've created? What then?

Right. Anything to stay popular, anything for political gain, anything at all.

President Obama, you're no different than President Bush. You are no Harry Truman, that's for sure.

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Swisslam

The clerics did not give approval to "Little-old-lady-who."

[Newstory: Swiss vote to ban construction of new minarets.]

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Phillip Carter Walks Away From the Obama Administration

Phillip Carter

This is far more devastating than I think people realize. Phillip Carter's resignation from the Obama Administration is a crucial loss on the road to applying the rule of law to the situation at Guantanamo and to the detainees in American custody. This is ten times more devastating than the resignation of Matthew Hoh and it is a troubling sign for the future of this Administration:

The Pentagon's top detainee affairs policy appointee has quit the Defense Department just seven months into the job, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and Iraq War veteran, had been an outspoken critic of Bush-era war on terror detention policy as an attorney and blogging commentator.

He got the job of U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs in April, months after President Barack Obama pledged to empty the detention center at Guantánamo. He quit without explanation just days after Obama confirmed in aninterview with Fox News in Beijing that his administration would miss its Jan. 22 Guantánamo closure deadline.

The development apparently took the Department of Defense by surprise. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to say precisely when Carter submitted the resignation, or where he last traveled in a job that took him frequently to Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

As of yet, I don't see where Carter has spoken out publicly. He could be entirely on board with the Obama Administration, and may have, indeed, resigned because of another issue.

Carter is a known blogger and writer on the issues at hand, leaving his Intel Dump blog at the Washington Post in 2008 after rising to prominence as one of the early voices opposing the Iraq War, where he served. He was not a contractor or a temporary employee, like Hoh. He was a fairly prominent political appointee with a sterling resume:

Phillip Carter was appointed as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy on April 27, 2009. In this capacity, he is responsible for developing policy recommendations and coordinating global policy guidance relating to detainees. Mr. Carter practiced government contracts and national security law with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.  His practice included work with major defense and aerospace firms, focused on government contracts compliance, export controls, security issues, and contractor support to overseas contingency operations. 

Mr. Carter wrote amicus curiae briefs in the landmark national security cases FAIR vs. Rumsfeld and Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, and has participated in various working groups studying the issue of private military contractors on the battlefield.

Mr. Carter served nine years in the Army, in the active, reserve and National Guard components.  During his military career, he served in a number of military police, civil affairs and infantry units, including duty in the Republic of Korea, Iraq, and in the United States. From 2005-2006, he served as operations officer for an adviser team embedded with the police in Iraq’s Diyala province, where he worked closely with the Iraqi police, provincial courts, jails, and government, as well as the State Department-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, to establish and promote the rule of law.  Mr. Carter’s military awards include the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation (2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Achievement Medal (1 Oak Leaf Cluster), Iraq Campaign Medal, Korean Defense Service Medal, and Combat Action Badge.

The Obama Administration has either lost a talented and dedicated member or it has gained a very eloquent and credible critic of a highly unpopular policy, and we will know soon enough what Mr. Carter thinks of what has been going on. So far, he has resisted appearing everywhere and anywhere with his breathless assessment.

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The 1st Clue is Dr Hasan Shouting "Allahu Akbar"

Col. Mustard... in the daycare center... with a suicide vest.

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Much More Than a Hunch

C'mon, sing along:

Till the one day when Osama made a Fatwa
And they knew it was much more than a hunch,
That this group would somehow form Al Qaeda.
That's the way we all became Jihadi Bunch.
Jihadi Bunch... (repeat)

Key: 1. Ali Abd al-Aziz  2. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed  3. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi  4. Osama!  5. Baraq Hussein al-Bhama  6. Ariq al-Dur  7. Walid Bin Attash  8. Lone Crazy Gunman  9. Ramzi Bin al Shibh

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PJTV - Louder With Crowder - Rockin' in Fidel's Backyard: The Real Guantanamo Bay

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If Obama Had Been FDR

Oh, and about that little to-do in Nanking: We understand and respect cultural diversity and are not so arrogant as to judge.

And another thing: Can you lower the floor a bit? Our president wants to bow more deeply.

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Plan to Fail

Not to decide is to decide.

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Keeping Up With the Security Situation in Afghanistan

Did you know it was getting this bad? The Government Accountability Office warns us that the security situation in Afghanistan is getting worse each day [pdf alert]:

Developing a self-reliant Afghanistan is a key end-state goal articulated in the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, which notes that achieving such an outcome will enable the United States to withdraw combat forces and make a sustained commitment to Afghan political and economic development. While U.S. and international development projects in Afghanistan have made some progress, the deterioration of security has impeded efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country. In particular, U.S. officials have cited poor security as having caused delays, disruptions, and even abandonment of certain reconstruction projects, while also hampering management and oversight of such efforts.

For instance, the administration’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has identified the need for more security in order for civilian personnel and contractors to do their work in Afghanistan. Similarly, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. forces in Afghanistan testified in his June 2009 confirmation hearing that improving security was a prerequisite for the development of local governance and economic growth in Afghanistan. The following list provides some specific examples of how the security situation in Afghanistan hampers U.S. efforts:

•Development programs delayed or abandoned.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staff in Afghanistan cited security as a major challenge to implementing development projects. According to USAID, programs ranging from road reconstruction to power generation and agricultural development face significant cost increases and have been delayed or abandoned due to a lack of security. For example, because attacks prevented contractors from working on an Afghan road to the Kajaki dam, USAID terminated the road contract after it had spent about $5 million on it. USAID further noted in its comments on this report that supplies for the Kajaki dam project must now be flown in due to the deteriorating security environment. Additionally, DOD has reported that, although progress has been made in completing construction of the "ring road"—Afghanistan’s major highway—a lack of security has increased the risk of using Afghan roads.

•Disruption of supply lines.

Supply transportation operations in Afghanistan continue to depend on treacherous overland routes. Although sensitive equipment is flown in by plane, supply convoys moving overland from Pakistan have been subject to repeated threats and attacks.

•Development of Afghan security forces impeded by security problems.

U.S. officials have reported that efforts to train ANSF have been hindered by security problems. For example, despite the fact that the Afghan National Army is charged with defeating the insurgency and terrorism, Afghan National Police are often reassigned from their training courses to provide immediate assistance with the counterinsurgency effort, thus delaying the completion of their training. Additionally, DOD officials have indicated that distributing equipment to police in the field has been challenged in part by the unstable security situation.

•Counternarcotics operations challenged by insurgent activity.

About 98 percent of Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation is concentrated in the southern provinces where insurgent activity has been heaviest. Recognizing the nexus between the drug trade and the insurgency, in December 2008 DOD adopted policies that allow the U.S. military to increase its involvement in counternarcotics operations.

•Oversight of ongoing programs restricted.

Afghanistan’s security situation has contributed to U.S. funds being expended with limited U.S. government oversight. For example, USAID officials told us their ability to monitor and evaluate ongoing programs has been restricted by security constraints. In comments on this report, USAID noted that due to deteriorating security in southern and eastern Afghanistan, monitoring of the delivery of health services has been significantly hindered or stopped in some areas. Similarly, State officials told us that poor security has considerably inhibited the oversight of counternarcotics efforts outside Kabul, including programs such as opium eradication, alternative livelihoods, and public information.

Bear in mind, this report has likely been overtaken by events. The security situation in Afghanistan may improve as winter approaches and shuts down insurgent movement and activity. What is needed is a political solution, not a military solution. Pouring more troops into Afghanistan for a spring offensive is going to be a popular option in the weeks and months ahead. The problem is, where do you get the troops? What do you do when the enemy reacts accordingly and doesn't fight conventional battles and goes to ground?

Here's a look, by the way, at where your money has gone in Afghanistan:

How effective has the expenditure been up to this point? The answer is, not very. But it's not just money that isn't working--it's the opinion of USAID that the security situation has caused their efforts to fall behind as well:

Given that the GAO can't keep up with the events as they evolve, how can anyone be confident that the policymakers have timely information and can make informed decisions?

I cannot be confident of that after reading a GAO report ending with August data here near the middle of November.

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Gwynne Dyer on Fort Hood and the Military

Gwynne Dyer writes on the Fort Hood shootings, and the larger issues plaguing the US military. He hits particularly on the giant escalation in suicide rates (now 4 times higher than in the civilian population) and the radicalizing of Islam resulting from what we are doing. It's a good commentary we don't find in our media often.

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