Sully tags this Exum quote about the Bacevich TNR piece Mistermix discussed the other day (if it makes you feel better, I felt like a wanker writing that sentence):
If Bacevich was serious, he would consider not just the strategic risks to a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan — which is what he is apparently advocating — but also the moral costs to be paid by the Afghan people we leave behind. In that light, the moral economics of war are no more black and white than the strategic economics of war. We’re left with hard choices and trade-offs, and the public discourse is very poorly served by those who pretend they are easy.
I’m wondering if we will have a discussion about this sort of thing prior to the next invasion (and there will be one, because that is what dying Empires do), or if there will yet again be enough useful idiots to serve in the role I played before the Iraq war- shouting down those who say slow down, maligning those who don’t believe doctored evidence, uncritically spewing whatever bullshit is on the cable channels, and basically serving as cheerleaders for the powers that be. Because really, the discussion about the impact on the population if we leave should probably come BEFORE we’ve invaded and occupied a nation for ten years. And when they say “moral cost,” what they mean is “How many people will be slaughtered in the power vacuum created when we leave, and how many people who helped us will now be beheaded by a resurgent Taliban?”
Wish I could go back a decade and punch that John Cole jackass in the neck.
James Hare
It’s not really any better having been on the other side. If there was a medal for it, I missed out. All I have is this aching feeling the whole anti-war movement was a waste.
That and the coverage the tea partiers get makes me spitting mad. We were treated as damn near traitors.
I told you so isn’t really all that fun to say. You usually said something because you cared about the outcome.
El Tiburon
What ‘strageic risks’ are involved in a complete withdrawal? Is the Soviet Union going to re-invade and capture all their nuclear weapons?
Afghanistan is not now nor never has been a strategic risk to this country.
Seriously, what the fuck does this even mean? Could someone give me an example of a ‘moral cost’?
As far as I can tell what the Afghans would gain is Americans not bombing and killing them anymore. Hey, if the Taliban resumes power, so what? Not our damn problem.
We had the Taliban in power here for 8 fucking years. And we haven’t gotten rid of them yet; shit they may take over again shortly.
How about this moral cost: All the Americans and Afghanis who are losing their loved ones in this stupid clusterfuck.
danimal
Take it easy on yourself, Cole. The mainstream media wasn’t going to allow that type of civil conversation before Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) anyway.
The protests against the Iraq War DWARFED the tea party protests. Which ones got tons of publicity and which ones were carried on page A17?
Michael
The blog commenter ethics panel approves of your attribution example, John.
El Cid
First, a clear argument always has to be made that more would die in the invasion and ensuing destruction than in the chaos from withdrawal. I don’t think you could make the case that in Iraq more have died in post invasion violence than were killed by US invasion in the first place.
On this:
I’m actually most worried that the myth of the SURGE and of OUR NEW COUNTER-INSURGENCY STRATEGY will continue to be used to suggest we now know how to do these things right.
Restrung
Wow.
Short Bus Bully
This is what makes you worth reading. Well, that and all the hippie punching.
General Stuck
I”’m not too worried about withdrawing from Afghanistan, as I think with some support, the non terrorist supporting 50 percent of that country, will get their shit together. They will likely throw Karzai out, fight some amongst themselves until they pick a leader they can respect and follow and keep some stasis with the Taliban. We can watch to see terror training camps don’t pop up like before, and deal with that. And maybe provide some weaponry to the neo Northern Alliance, but it won’t become a huge security threat for the world, long as Pak holds together.
Iraq is another matter, and the invasion, or our mortal sin of clusterfucking the politics of that country has a real potential of creating regional war, and where we get a lot of the stuff that makes our SUVs go. The plutocrats and average Americans in love with our gas guzzling lifestye won’t stand for losing access to that oil. It’s only a matter of when and who we invade next in that sandbox.
geg6
Not to rub salt in the wound or anything, but I’d like to punch that asshole, John Cole, in the neck, too. Smart as you are, I still can’t believe you fell for that bullshit.
There is absolutely nothing that has happened in Iraq since 2003 that I didn’t see coming a hundred miles away. Nothing. And I say that with no smugness, just sadness. My friends who at the time were right there with you, Cole, and who now have similar regrets, don’t even discuss their “reasoning” with me any more because I’ve told them there was no excuse good enough to make up for the lives lost and ruined over this. Not to mention the ever increasing likelihood of the downfall of our own country that is a direct result of this fiasco.
El Cid
Not to mention that in Afghanistan, there was a civil war before the US invaded, the civil war is continuing, and will continue while we are there or after we leave.
Unlike Baghdad, though, I don’t think you can just let them finish ethnic cleansing of all the neighborhoods and pay off insurgents not to attack and call it a successful new strategy.
Jay in Oregon
@danimal:
Hell, you can get news coverage for having low attendance if you’re a Tea Partier…
http://ravenbrooks.com/2010/06/tea-party-moves-their-convention/
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/07/1719658/palin-speech-draws-fewer-than.html
cat48
The part of that posted the other day made me angry. Went sorta like “Bush was a true believer in the war whereas Obama’s is simply political posturing or something and he’s getting innocent men killed because of it. How the fuck does he know how Obama really feels…..does he spend a lot of personal time w/him or is he just guessing. I assume he is a “progressive” because they always assign the worst reason possible to Obama deliberately. “Truth to Higher Power” & all that shit.
taylormattd
It’s takes a very big person to write such admissions.
Davis X. Machina
Harkis. We’ve got our own now….
Amanda in the South Bay
Of course there are risks to a GTFO strategy. There are always trade-offs, but muddling through by saying “its complex” (like a sorta antidote to W’s thinking?) isn’t inherently better. If anything, it still seems like an invitation to an open ended occupation.
Mark S.
No one could have predicted that a country’s inhabitants would grow tired of an occupying army after a decade.
srv
Exum and folks really care about those brown people. Always did, from 9/11 on. Back when the Kurds were really getting gassed, not so much. And the Iranians that were geting gassed at the same time? Hell, never a peep, I mean, they weren’t even Arabs, so no foul.
Funny how their sense of pop morality works. Honestly, there’s a worse place in hell for them than Cheney. Cheney is just a fucking sociopath. Don’t know what their excuse is.
jl
There are options in between
1) GTFOOTRAGDTC (GTFO of there right away goddam the consequences)
and
2) unrealistic, bloody and massively expensive scheme to build an Afghan nation state and kill all unidentified ‘insurgents’ or ‘combatants’ or ‘bad guys’ or whoever does not run up to the US troops and our corrupt and unreliable Afghan toadies and ask how high they should jump for us.
I did not particularly support the Afghan invasion after 911 bu thought that it could be justified, if the US had a good plan and had planned a good effort. But the US did not have the former and did not perform on the latter, and now it is a mess.
I don’t think simple comparisons to Iraq are justified. The Iraq invasion was stupid and criminal from its initial conception. The wisdom of Afghan invasion was arguable, IMHO.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
I’m a little more worried about the fact that their next-door neighbor, Pakistan, has nukes and large chunks of it are controlled by the Taliban.
But, hey, if we pretend real hard that we don’t need to worry about Pakistan falling to the Taliban, then maybe it won’t happen.
Eric U.
the problem with the way we have been occupying Iraq and Afghanistan is that our troops are still at war. In history, we used to switch over to an occupation force and they would stop looking for people to kill.
I was very much against invading Iraq, and that fact gives me very little satisfaction. I was in favor of invading Afghanistan, and the fact that Bush and Cheney screwed that up gives me no satisfaction. The sad fact is that the Taliban would take over again should we leave. I no longer delude myself into thinking I know what to do about that.
It didn’t take a genius to see that invading Iraq was a bad idea. GHWBush was against it, and Cheney was too.
Mike in NC
Going out on a limb here, I’m guessing a certain senator will be on 2 or 3 Sunday morning TV panel shows to offer his Very Deep Thoughts on a surge in Afghanistan and maybe a solution to what must be done about those pesky Mexicans to boot.
Pavlov's Dog
IIRC, there was some great flame wars between Atrios and the former version of JC in around ’02-’03. Atrios saved his best though for that Goldstein guy that always wanted to dick-slap people.
Restrung
“the moral economics of war are no more black and white than the strategic economics of war”
This blows my mind in a bad way. Moral economics of war in the days of US supremacy is irrelevant. So does JC’s assumption that there will be another invasion, and I’m pretty sure we all know where that one will be . (not saying he’s wrong) “Public discourse” is a shitty frame because everything in corporate media is (uhh) corporations trying to make money being media, and that’s just natural. Not their fault for being what they are, eh? But it’s how people get their news.
OK, I don’t have any answer other than we’re truly fucked for now. So here’s a kitty vid website. http://www.kittehroulette.com/
I just reminded me of a Star Trek NG episode where Picard’s mind is hijacked on the bridge and he experiences the life of someone on a dying planet.
Yutsano
Your chiropractor will love you forever for this statement. The contortions you’d have to go through to accomplish this would be legendary.
joe from Lowell
People always talk about our withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of abandoning our interests, including keeping them from exploding into violence among local factions, egged on by foreign terrorists.
What these people don’t understand – what they really should understand in with the Iraq example so fresh in our minds – is that the promise and reality of our withdrawal are tools we can use to advance our interests…as long as those interests aren’t imperialist domination.
The people who warned us that setting a timeline in Iraq would “embolden the terrorists” have been proven utterly and completely wrong. Exactly the opposite happened. Once we made it clear that we had no imperial aspirations in Iraq – that the occupation was ending, we weren’t going to maintain bases for regional force protection, and that the Iraqis themselves were going to be in charge of their country’s future – both the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies collapsed. A lot of the anti-government forces turned out to be merely anti-American forces, who were quite willing to make people with their countrymen. The foreign jihadists were only ever appealing to any Iraqis because they helped with the anti-occupation insurgency; once Iraqis lost that motivation to cooperate with them, the al Qaeda-types went down the tubes.
It’s certainly true that there could be a problem with our exit creating a power vacuum which the Taliban could fill, or that different factions could go to war in an effort to fill, but that’s more a matter of how we withdraw than whether we withdraw.
We need to do in Afghanistan what our withdrawal policy did in Iraq: use the promise and reality of our exit to promote political progress and reconciliation among pro- and anti-government factions. One thing is for sure – if we end up sticking around until we finally fly helicopters off the embassy roof again, there absolutely will be mass reprisals upon our exit. We have to leave, and we have to do so in a responsible, transparent, and predictable manner.
General Stuck
@Eric U.:
when the Taliban won the civil war after the Soviets pulled out they were fully backed and supplied by the Paki ISI, and the NA had no one helping them, and they still controlled the northern third of the country. The Taliban will likely control their tribal lands in SE Afghan… But the NA, with support, are just as good a fighters as the Taliban, if not better.
It will be the transition period after we disengage with land fighting that will be messy and probably bloody. But when the Afghans, without our tinkering, hopefully, starts doing things their way and picks their own leaders, not in the molding of a western army, they will hold their own. I think, at least for most of the country, including Kabul.
Viva BrisVegas
The time to “win” in Afghanistan was in 2002/2003, after that it’s just treading water until the helicopter evacuation from the embassy roof.
The question is not when to get out, it’s how many bodies we leave behind.
joe from Lowell
These assertions that the Taiban will surely take over when we leave are misplaced, too. It’s possible, but consider:
When the Taliban took over the first time, they were backed by a regional power (Pakistan) while their opponents were on their own. This would not be the case after our withdrawal. The Taliban would be on their own, while the anti-Taliban forces would be backed by a global superpower.
Second, just in case people have forgotten, we didn’t overthrow the Taliban. The forces of the late Ahmed Shah Massood overthrew the Taliban, with Americans providing support in the form of air power, intelligence, and material. There were about 1000 American troops in the whole country when the Taliban were driven out of Kabul.
In other words, just providing support to the anti-Taliban forces was enough to allow them to wage a successful offensive war against an army playing defense. But now, we’re supposed to believe that a much-more-powerful Afghan government force backed by America and NATO couldn’t successfully fight off the Taliban? I don’t buy it.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
You’re right. We can never rest against the awesome power of the ninjas. Not for one minute.
joe from Lowell
Viva BrisVegas
The time to “win” in Afghanistan was in 2002/2003
And we did! We helped drive the Taliban from power, smashed the fighting force al Qaeda had developed there, routed them from their bases, killed a lot of their leadership, and denied them the support they had enjoyed from a sovereign state.
Mission Accomplished!
The problem is, that wasn’t the Bushies’ mission. Their mission was to take over a country, install a client state, and expand our power as if this was the 1600s and we were playing Great Game, colonialist geo-politics. That’s why they made up the notion that al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism amounted to a competitor like the Soviet Union.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Twin suicide bombs kill 62 in Pakistan
Wow, those imaginary ninjas sure manage to get some destruction done, don’t they?
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, and the main reason they cite for bombings?
Us. The US military’s influence in Afghanistan and the Paki govt support for our intrusive actions incountry.
If you think for one minute that some border bombing is equivalent to the power and tactical military action it would take to defeat the Paki Army and intelligence services….sheesh.
Mnemosyne
@joe from Lowell:
Exactly. I don’t think any rational person is saying we shouldn’t leave. I sure as hell am not. I think most rational people are saying we need to leave in a controlled way so as to leave as little chaos behind us as possible.
I know it’s emotionally satisfying for El Tiburon and Corner Stone to scream about how we need to just pick up all of our troops and bug out of the country within the next 48 hours, but that’s not good for anyone, including us.
Restrung
joe from Lowell, this thread is yours, afaic. Thanks for the insight. Much appreciated.
back to the kittehs
Platonicspoof
Rory Stewart wrote this about his own suggested strategy in Afghanistan (Dec. 2009):
Iraq and Afghanistan are FUBAR (R=recognition in my usage here, since my native country hasn’t been destroyed by unjustified war or endless war).
Likewise, we all suffer tragic delusions from within and from without, the best we can do is dump as many as possible, one reason I watch your blog, Mr. Cole.
Mike E
@jl:
right up to that fiasco in Tora Bora, then it was “So long, and on to Iraq to avenge Poppy!” Sort of a sneak preview of upcoming incompetence.
Anybody remember Slate’s Saddam’o’meter that humorously/tragically measured the inevitable onset of Shock’n’Awe? Maybe the best thing they’ve ever done IMO
General Stuck
@Corner Stone: A large portion of the Pakistan public idolizes OBL, and embraces the idea if an Islamic state for Pakistan. The bombings are just to fuel instability and over reaction from the government. It is the populace that makes Pak government vulnerable to being overthrown. Not the ninjas by themselves.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Good thing there’s never been a coup in Pakistan. And it’s not like one almost happened last year, either.
Yep, Pakistan is completely stable and there’s no reason to think that our leaving tomorrow would have any effect at all. I’m so glad I have you here to tell us these things.
david mizner
In various places Bacevich has considered the costs of withdrawal and, like any reasonable, honest person, has found them small compared to the costs of staying. In the piece in question he acknowledges that “good choices are hard come by.”
In any case, no one who takes issue with Bacevich’s charge of amorality is tackling the heart of his argument, which is that Obama demonstrably doesn’t believe in this war:
joe from Lowell
Mnemosyne,
“Bad for us” isn’t a bug to some people, it’s a feature. “Bad for our allies,” ditto.
It’s always 1968 somewhere.
wilfred
We’re all Hegelians, now. Our mission is to create a new breed: Greco-Latin Afgans.
You’ve made enough penance, John.
Mnemosyne
@david mizner:
Define “believe in this war.” I can’t even tell from Bacevich’s article how he would define it, much less determine whether or not Obama fits Bacevich’s standard.
If by “believe in this war” Bacevich thinks that Obama should declare that we will stay forever and ever or until we “win,” whichever comes first, then you’re probably right. By that standard, Bacevich must think that Nixon was the real monster when it came to Vietnam since he knew it couldn’t be won, right? Right?
Like I said yesterday, it’s another manifestation of IOKIYAR. It was fine for Nixon to stay in Vietnam until it was a strategically good time to do what he said we needed to do (withdraw) but it’s morally reprehensible for Obama to do the exact same thing.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
I want my country to stop killing people in the ME and the region and now I’m a traitor?
Thanks Sully. I’ll start forming my Fifth Column now.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
Can’t you borrow the time machine that President Obama used to start the recession in 2007 and fake his birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
That’s great, wonderful!
Well, so much for that idea.
Viva BrisVegas
@joe from Lowell:
No it wasn’t. The Bushies mission was to mobilise the country for war by making an attack on the country most connected to 911, then pivot off that as soon as possible into an full fledged attack on Iraq.
Afghanistan and bin Laden were irrelevent to the the Bush war aims. Iraq was the objective, Afghanistan was just the speed bump they had to drive over to get to it.
Afghanistan has zero strategic value to the US. Always has, always will.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
The expected main outcome of our leaving the region would most likely be us killing less people in the region.
There was a coup in Iran too. In 1979. Thirty years ago. Remember that one? Wonder why that happened…hmmm.
The coup you cite here in Paki was 10 years ago.
david mizner
@Mnemosyne:
As I said the other day, I don’t really care whether Obama believes in it. What matters is that he’s twice escalated an unwinnable, immoral, and self-destructive war.
Bacevich’s point is that Obama’s combined escalation-withdrawal betrays a disbelief in the mission. He’s suggesting that absent domestic politics considerations, and perhaps the internal politics of the military, Obama would’ve already begun withdrawing. To Bacevich, fighting a war you know is wrong is worse morally than fighting a wrong war you believe is right.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple, not least because in many areas of the War of Terror, Obama has been at least as hawkish as Bush.
joe from Lowell
David Mizner,
I manifestly don’t believe in the Iraq War. I was against it before it even happened, before it was even voted on. I want out.
I think Obama “manifestly” wants out of Afghanistan – but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about that.
Mnemosyne,
I don’t think Nixon was ever against the Vietnam War, any more than Bush was ever against staying in Iraq forever. They both just said some pretty things about leaving once we win for political cover. I don’t consider the comparison to Obama in Afghanistan apt at all. Both Nixon in Vietnam and Bush in Afghanistan were forced to leave by political events (the Democratic Congress cutting off money, and an emboldened – heh – Malaki demanding we sign the SOFA).
When did either Bush or Nixon, on their own, set a date for the withdrawal to begin, as Obama has done? For that matter, what wars did either Bush or Nixon actually start ending, to make their announcements of their desire to bring the troops home credible, the way Obama is drawing us down in Iraq? What wars did Bush or Nixon ever actually oppose, the way Obama opposed invading Iraq?
I don’t think the Obama/Nixon comparison is right at all. Nixon was McCain, not Obama.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mnemosyne:
And do you have any proof for your implied assertion that our presence in the region is enhancing the stability of Pakistan? Or is it just enhancing the stability of Pakistan the same way that the US bombing of Cambodia enhanced the stability of the Lon Nol regime, because you know how well that worked out for the Cambodians.
david mizner
@Mnemosyne:
Nothing is destabilizing Pakistan more than the American presence there.
El Cid
I see that there’s an assumption that a US presence in Afghanistan is aiding Pakistan’s stability. I’m not convinced. I think the main threats to Pakistani stability are within Pakistan, where the US is not occupying.
El Cid
@Wile E. Quixote: Sorry if I doubled, or maybe wasn’t there when I commented.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: Not to mention we have to fire al-Maliki for praising that cleric Fadlallah who praised Hizbullah.
david mizner
@joe from Lowell:
“I think Obama “manifestly” wants out of Afghanistan – but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about that.”
Well then you agree with Bacevich that Obama wants out.
But while he thinks the best way to leave is to leave, you think the best way to leave is to stay (and increase the numbers of troops there.)
joe from Lowell
Corner Stone,
When I want to call someone a traitor, or any other insult, I’m not oblique about it. Settle down, nobody’s called you a traitor, as much as you seem determined to think so.
I don’t think Jane Fonda was a traitor. I don’t think the people who sympathized with the Sandinistas against the Contras were traitors. I think they were right. We shouldn’t have done such evil things in those two countries, and we certainly shouldn’t hold a grudge against the people who resisted us.
Where I think you go wrong is thinking this is still 1968, the Taliban are the VC, and the decision to go into Afghanistan was the Gulf of Tonkin.
ColleenSTL
Longtime lurker here! I am totally a DFH, yet you host my favorite blog. Another fav is Sully. I find myself with a deep respect for those willing to admit how grossly they miscalculated in their support for these wars. Since I’ve only been lurking here for a couple of years, I missed where you explained the moment (or process) in/by which you came to this realization. Perhaps others can recount for me? It’s more than just curiosity; I yearn to know what reaches people and what makes one person come to terms while so many others double down….
Sgt. Jrod and his Howling Commandos
Don’t you understand? The only thing keeping Pakistan from launching nukes at every free nation on earth is the US occupation of Afghanistan. This is glaringly obvious to anyone who’s not a dumbass hippie firebagger argle-blargle.
Indeed. We should give it another six months, then see how it’s going.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
You’re right. I’m an emotional git. I like to get naked, dance round my Peace Tree in the full moonlight and scream SURGE!! at the top of my lungs 21 times.
But somehow I can’t reconcile having 88K troops, 110K contractors and SURGEing 30K more troops and an undisclosed amount of contractors with any notion of leaving.
Or are you A Believer in The SURGE in Afghanistan?
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: Not to mention none of the people our foreign policy was slaughtering in the hundreds of thousands to millions over those decades ever attacked the domestic US. Well, unless you count our ally Pinochet who sent his covert action agents to blow up their targets in Washington DC.
General Stuck
@Viva BrisVegas: Joe is right about the overall vision, or insane ideology if you will, of the neo cons that is to establish military based colonies in unstable places, their own version of world wide hegemony for American style democracy. And you are correct that 9-11 was used a an excuse and Afghan. as a pivot point to go after Saddam and his oil, plus to install another military colony to dispense democracy, and a peace that was beholden to us. It is a sly version of imperialism dressed up in a pretty dress of democracy, which is largely popular amongst the world states in the west and many in the streets where it doesn’t exist. And then there is oil.
But proud people don’t like to have things foisted on them by outside interests, and especially not by the bullet, even something they may desire in theory. This is the part the arrogant neo cons ignore, and why so many have died for their version of world peace, that really isn’t peace but brings permanent war.
As to whether Afghan is a place where we have interests. I say yes, given Pak and it’s nukes, which should be the worlds concern when they exist in unstable places. And to see that Afghan isn’t turned in to another terror training state. Other that those two things, that is about it.
Our interest in the ME is more complicated, of course.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The Pakistani government doesn’t have the ability to prevent all terrorist attacks within Pakistan, any more than the US government has the ability to prevent all terrorist attacks within the USA. That doesn’t mean that the Taliban is in any way a danger to take over the national government. Their resorting to terrorists attacks, rather than direct attempts to take over the government, is evidence that they lack the military strength or popular support to rule the country, and bombing people in the big cities isn’t making them any more popular.
El Cid
@General Stuck: I don’t think anyone is arguing that any amount of US ‘success’ in Afghanistan will extend to that much of the nation’s territories. Even if there is a limping nation-state apparatus installed in Kabul, there will indeed by plenty of areas left in which non-state forces can proliferate.
joe from Lowell
Roger Moore,
I think Obama’s ongoing withdrawal from Iraq, his support for a timeline going back to 2006, and in particular, his forsaking any troop presence of permanent bases to allow us to influence Iraq and project force throughout the region, demonstrate pretty conclusively that this administration’s goals are not imperialist domination.
You know, one of the most important insights that anti-imperialists throughout the ages have made is that leaving a country that a great power has taken over, occupied, and taken responsibility for running, is hard, even if the power later comes to regret the invasion and genuinely want to leave. This is one of the most important points to raise, as John says, before such an invasion.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
If you can make some kind of coherent argument that logically demonstrates my thinking along these lines, I will never comment here again.
This comment has to be one of the most “LOLwhut??” pieces I have ever seen.
joe from Lowell
Viva Bris Vegas,
I don’t think the Bushies saw it that way. I think they consider any ground presence for us to station troops in the Islamic world to be a good move. I think they saw which country is on Iran’s eastern border as well as they saw which country is on their western border. And, I think they genuinely did see al Qaeda running around under the protection of a sovereign government to be a threat and, being imperialists who think in obsolete, great-power, nation-based terms, though that the best way to address that threat was to take over the country.
wilfred
Thus Mirabeau: “I am here by the will of the People; I shall leave only by the force of bayonets.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark S.
@Roger Moore:
I’m no expert on Pakistan, but that’s my general impression as well. I don’t think the Taliban is popular outside of some of the tribal regions, and Pakistan has never really controlled those regions to begin with. And yes, there have been several coups, but they have been one set of elites knocking off another, not some populist nutso fundamentalists a la Iran.
Corner Stone
@ColleenSTL: The Terry Schiavo debacle amongst other things.
But how the R’s handled that episode was critical for Mr. Cole.
Others will suggest you do some archives searching, and that’s actually a good idea. They are a pure treasure of awesomeness.
joe from Lowell
Wow. You know, central Asia has its own history and politics and everything, completely outside of us.
Do you imagine that the main outcome of the British leaving Uganda was the British killing fewer people, too? How about India?
I think what you mean is, the main outcome of our leaving the region that you care about would most likely be us killing fewer people in the region.
General Stuck
The world was a bloody warring place before the United States was conceived. And it will go on being that once we fold up our poker tables and disappear into the dustbin of history.
That does not excuse bonehead excursions into other countries that ignites and perpetrates that bloodshed, but it does not negate the other bloodletting that would have occurred, and didn’t because there is a superpower lurking around.
So what to do. Pull up stake and withdraw into our borders and let shit happen in a nuclear world? There will not be peace just because we sunbath inside our largely ocean protected shores and pretend it’s not happening. And sooner or later in a world with terrible weapons, we will be affected by the eternal violence and aspirations of malevolent humans. Or, do we elect smart leaders to engage the world, with military interventionism as a last resort, or only option left?
joe from Lowell
Wow.
Have you ever read anything about Pakistan? Any other than stories about what the terrible, terrible Americans are doing there, I mean?
joe from Lowell
Don’t blame me, I voted for Chalabi.
Heh.
joe from Lowell
Bacevich didn’t say that Obama “wants out.” He said that Obama “doesn’t believe in the mission.” He rules out the possibility that Obama believes in a mission different from the one Bush was pursuing there.
Actually, both Obama and I seem to recognize what you and Bacevich do not – that there are options other than “immediate bug-out” and “Why not 100 years? Why not 1000?”
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
Do you mean in 1962?
Are you seriously comparing 1962 Uganda to 2010 Pakistan?
Dr. Morpheus
@joe from Lowell:
Uh, those same anti-Taliban forces are being back by a global superpower right now with air and ground forces in the field along side of them.
But the Taliban seems to be winning anyway.
How is your magic US withdrawal pixy dust going to turn all these anti-Taliban forces into super ninjas and be able to defeat the Taliban when they can’t do it now?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
I don’t actually think that Obama is interested in Afghanistan (or Iraq) as Imperial bases, but I do think the crowd who got us involved there did.
I remember thinking in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency that we could defuse the situation there by publicly stating that we would leave once there was a stable democratic government. That had, after all, been our nominal justification for being there once the WMD failed to materialize. It seemed like an obvious strategy for convincing the nationalists who wanted us out of the country that their interests were best served by helping to get the government off the ground rather than trying to blow us up. It also would have been a perfect excuse for declaring victory and going home. I had trouble understanding why on earth somebody in the Bush Administration didn’t do something like that, until I finally realized that they had no intention of leaving Iraq and were never going to create an easily met set of conditions for leaving.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
Yep. And when we stop droning people and their govt stops getting paid to let us drone people they can probably get back to not having us drone people.
joe from Lowell
Personally, I don’t put a great deal of stock in the “Pakistan will fall” thesis.
The jihadists are hugely unpopular there. They’re a ragged collection of foreigners and a few hillbillies living out in the wild west. If they actually made any effort to take over the country, the vast majority of the population and the entire army would be against them, and they’d be smooshed like a bug.
joe from Lowell
As Roger Moore said,
Now that Pakistan is a democracy again, there isn’t even an opposition that could conceivably make common cause with the jihadists, as was at least theoretically possible under Musharrif.
It really ticks me off when I think about how the Bushies told us that Pakistan would elect al Qaeda in a heartbeat if the country wasn’t a military dictatorship – at the same time they were pretending to give a crap about spreading democracy as a way to reduce terrorism. Hypocrites.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: I wouldn’t argue that the US presence in Afghanistan is the most destabilizing element in Pakistan — for that matter, the notion of a ‘stable’ Pakistan shouldn’t be countenanced rather maybe a sliding scale. But I do think the US role has over the years been quite negative for Pakistan’s, um, semi-stability of government, and the occupation of Afghanistan and bombardment of zones in both nations quite harmful to that controlled instability. It doesn’t have to be the sole or major factor, but it is a very significant factor.
There are pretty good arguments that US pressure on Pakistan to attack Taliban and ‘Taliban’ elements in rural and tribal areas has greatly increased anti-state forces within Pakistan itself — again, a completely unsurprising result. Such activities have also created floods of refugees out of these areas, which, as frequently happens, create areas in which anti-state forces can act and recruit. US drone attacks likewise lend strength to resentment and recruitment.
As in Iraq, suicide bombings in Pakistan are now a much, much more serious threat, something which arose with this internal military campaign.
joe from Lowell
Corner Stone,
Oh, you’re so coy!
The expected main outcome of our leaving the region would most likely be us killing less people in the region.
Yeah, and the main reason they cite for bombings?
Us. The US military’s influence in Afghanistan and the Paki govt support for our intrusive actions incountry.
Hey hey! Ho ho…!
You aren’t fooling anyone, you know.
BTW, it’s just precious how you just accused me of misrepresenting you, after your little drama queen performance when you pretended I’d called you a traitor and compared me to Andrew Sullivan.
Dr. Morpheus
@Mark S.:
India is certainly concerned that the Taliban might get a hold of Pakistan’s nukes.
And the ISI is known to be sympathetic to the Taliban (it was they who backed them in Afghanistan in the first place). And the Taliban isn’t the only regional radical group, there’s the lovely Lashkar-e-Taiba. Who apparently also received material support from Pakistan’s ISI.
But what do they know compared to the wisdom of armchair generals like Cornerstone?
joe from Lowell
No, Afghanistan. We’re not actually occupying and running Pakistan; hence, no possibility of setting off a power vacuum.
And I’m only comparing 2010 Afghanistan to 1962 Uganda in that one particular sense – that there were consequences to exit quite beyond the occupying power no longer killing people.
El Cid
@Dr. Morpheus: It should be kept in mind that the force under the title “Taliban” in Pakistan were formed separately from the Afghanistan force using the same word (which is just plural for “students”, meaning religious scholars, anyway).
joe from Lowell
Dr. Morpheus,
No, they’re not. They’re just surviving.
Seriously, if our troops were in their position, would you be talking about how we’re winning?
1. Shove your unwarranted condescension up your ass.
2. Read what I wrote, and try again. Hint: see if you can figure out the difference between what I wrote that anti-Taliban government could do, and what you are calling “defeat them.”
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore,
It’s interesting to think about what might have happened if Jesus W. Churchill had run the Afghan and Iraq wars the way his father had run the Panama and Gulf Wars.
But, of course, he had no intention of doing that. My first realization came before the war, when the wingnuts at National Review were writing about moving our “provocative” bases from Saudi Arabia and replacing them in Iraq.
joe from Lowell
That’s the difference between us, Corner Stone.
I care about what happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and you care about standing up against the bad ol’ USA.
Wile E. Quixote
@Dr. Morpheus:
Ah yes, Corner Stone is an armchair general while you of course are a font of wisdom. Tell me Doc, enlisted yet to go to AfPak to fight the Taliban and the ISI? Please, enlighten us all on your brilliant strategy to bring stability to the AfPak region.
joe from Lowell
But I’d better not DARE suggest your thinking is stuck in 1968.
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
I think you have to divide things into the Bush/Musharrif era and the post-Bush/democratic era. The democratic government is serious about fighting back against the Taliban and al Qaeda, and is our ally against them. They are making the war against the Taliban legitimate among the Pakistani public. This matters.
But, yes, violence promotes instability. The situation is a double-edged sword.
joe from Lowell
@ Dr. Morpheus,
The story you linked to was about infiltration by sleeper agents, not the coup situation that was the subject of the conversation.
Also, it’s from 2007, the era of the military dictatorship. Musharrif was infamous for tolerating extremists in the ISI. The democrats seem to recognize that they are the enemy.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: Yes, I understand that there are different types of activities by the US on the different Pakistan regimes, pre- and post-Musharraf. However, many of the most intense military operations in rural areas have been after Musharraf and they continue now, along with US drone attacks, and it has been that which has led to more of a particular type of instability and terrorism support.
In this case, it matters less if an urbanized voting population thinks the Pakistani Taliban (not directly related to the Afghan Taliban) are ‘legitimate’ or not. I’m not suggesting that the current government has to be on ‘the side’ of these newer terrorist forces, but rather that their actions too are worsening the situation, and largely — and quite obviously to the Pakistani public — at US behest.
salacious crumb
John, dont know if you heard of this new movie “Restrepo” that just came out made by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. They both follow the troops in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan and made a documentary about it.
Tim was on C-Span the other day. And there was something he said that struck me. The only other person who advocated what he did is Ahmed Rashid a well known Pakistani journalist who wrote the best seller “descent into Chaos” about the failure of the West to take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild Afghanistan right after 9/11.
Tim stated that if we really want to measure success in Afghanistan we need to start doing so in 2007 and not 2001, because pretty much after 2001, the Bush admin forgot Afghanistan and diverted ALL its resources into Iraq. so really Afghanistan had nothing going for it until the situation went from bad to worse in 2007 and Condi was forced to fight with the Pentagon to divert more resources in Afghanistan.
John Bird
We were on opposite sides on that one, but John, you’re all right. I wish our elected officials could bring themselves to utter something close to this sentence.
matoko_chan
@El Cid: dude the Talis are going to be PART of the government we leave behind. Petraeus is negotiating with them as we speak.
Petraeus and crewe talked O into letting McC run for that hailmary COIN pass. You better believe O took pre-payment in blood for that. We just won’t hear much about the Taliban peace package until after november.
El Cid
Issues of Pakistani relations with non-state armed and violent forces continue, and within the purview of politicians and parties as well.
El Cid
@matoko_chan: I’m not unaware of the likelihood that one of the most powerful forces in the country of Afghanistan, a force which includes a wide variety of Taliban leaders of different outlooks, will be a major part of an Afghan nation-state or there will be no thing that can be sensibly called an Afghan nation-state at all.
Mostly, though, I think I was speaking of the Pakistani groups calling themselves “Taliban”, which are not the same as the Afghan Taliban.
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
I appreciate your use of the phrase “a certain type of instability.”
Central Asia is to instability what British Columbia is to marijuana.
I’m thinking about the type of instability that could conceivably lead to the jihadists gaining power within Pakistani politics, either through legitimately winning support among the population, or through a coup. You know – the kind of instability that could plausibly end with the jihadists ending up with nukes.
That’s not happening. The Pakistani public sees the jihadists as the enemy more now than they did before. Ditto the military and government.
But you are right about there being other types of instability – the crowds of refugees, for instance. That’s not good for any government.
matoko_chan
@John Bird: they won’t even admit on that abu muqawama thread that the Bush Doctrine was failsauce from the gitgo. More democracy in MENA means more Islam.
they wond admit that COIN has failed in afghanistan, even though the data prove that COIN generates more terrorists than it kills.
the NBER quants are out on revenge kill stats.
and they won’t admit it…..they are still squawking about girls going to school and hijab.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
There are many differences between us you fucking punk bitch.
And you do not give one fucking shit what happens anywhere outside of your masshole existence.
Don’t try and fool anyone here that you think the reason we’re still in Afghanistan is for humanitarian reasons.
Fucking jerkoff.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
And you keep saying you’re not calling me a traitor, all the while actually calling me a traitor.
It’s interesting how intellectually deficient you are.
We already knew you were morally deficient.
BTW, how are those conversations with Pinochet coming along?
joe from Lowell
I haven’t been a punk since Kurt Cobain was alive, and you need to settle the fuck down.
You don’t know me.
Aw, cripes, you’re not going to go all Troofer-Pipeline Conspiracy on me now, are you?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
And they might have more success if we weren’t perceived as blowing people in Pakistan up willy-nilly with Predator drone attacks. That’s not to say that we can’t do any good there militarily. But we need to be coordinated enough with what the Pakistani military is doing that the Pakistani people see us as their allies in the fight against the Taliban rather than a bunch of cowboys who violate their sovereignty and kill their citizens at random.
Helping out the elected Pakistani government with the Taliban might also help that elected government to bring ISI under effective civilian control. That would do at least as much to boost long term stability as eliminating the Taliban. Reining in ISI would probably improve long-term stability in Afghanistan, too, since they’ve been big supporters of the Afghani Taliban from the get go.
joe from Lowell
I’ve never called you a traitor. Stop whimpering about how unfair it is for me to notice that you put criticism of the United States and opposition to its actions before any other principles or interests. You aren’t a traitor; you’re just provincial in your outlook, and as a result too quick to label the United States the cause of anything that happens. You’re also too attached to a narrative that casts the United States as the bad guy, and any American retrenchment a victory for peace and justice.
And I still haven’t the foggiest idea why you think the phase “conversations with Pinochet” is supposed to bother me.
salacious crumb
@joe from Lowell: I kinda disagree with you. The Pakistani military, especially the ISI wing, have helped the US with one hand while stabbing us in the back with another. They have always used Taliban as a proxy against India and intend on keeping them once we leave, so that they can use the Taliban to create more chaos in Afghanistan as well as using it as a training ground to launch more terrorist attacks. If I fault the Obama administration, its that I have not seen his plan as to what to do with Pakistan, which in many ways has become the ground zero for terror. Most Afghanis and even US commanders say that all the Taliban people come from Pakistan and openly recruit in the Pakistani cities. Yet the government or the military does nothing. The Pakistani public may be coming to the realization that the extremists in their midst have become a Frankenstein out to destroy them, but the military still thinks it can tame this monster and use it as a foreign policy tool
joe from Lowell
Roger Moore,
I agree, although I think we have made progress in that direction over the past year or so.
I think a lot of the “cowboy” was actually an effort to put pressure on the Pakistani government – keep your back yard clean, or we’ll do it for you.
It does seem to me – perhaps I’ve just missed it – that we’re carrying out fewer strikes that we were at the beginning of Obama’s term, and that we’re hitting the right targets more when we do, both of which suggest closer coordination with the Pakistanis.
Although, no doubt, we could do better.
salacious crumb
@Roger Moore:
agreed
joe from Lowell
salacious crumb – if that is your real name *glares* –
Progress!
But, yeah. I think the incorporation of “Taliban” elements into the post-war government can help accomplish not just the reduction of the Afghan Pashtun insurgency, but can also help reassure the Pakistanis that that government won’t be an Indian cat’s paw.
matoko_chan
@El Cid:
they are not completely separate either.
the word taliban means student in pastun, from the arabic talib, and all taliban follow the teachings of Imam Ahmed ibn Mohammed ibn Hanbal and the Hanbali School of fiqh of Sunni Islam.
like a lot of sauds.
there are also bloodkinship ties extending across the border from intermarriage.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
This is why you fucking moron:
Conversations with Pinochet
You didn’t even know Pinochet had been dead for freakin years when you posted this!! This was in Jan 2010!
And we’re supposed to listen to any fucking thing you say about foreign policy?
matoko_chan
@salacious crumb: well the ISI is just filling the moat of afghanistan with taliban crocodiles.
the last thing the Pakistanis want is Uncle Sam bringing his wonderful COIN across the border to help them.
salacious crumb
@joe from Lowell: I don’t understand why anyone, aside from Pakistan, thinks the Afghanistan govt is, as you say, India cat’s paw. For the time that Pakistan had control of Afghanistan via Taliban it did nothing but destroy the country. But India has built roads, power generators, schools, medical facilities far more than anything Pakistan ever did. I have yet to see any article or evidence that would suggest that India has nefarious intentions to use Afghanistan as a puppet govt and thus antagonize Pakistan that way.
salacious crumb
@matoko_chan: help whom? the Afghanis?
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
Please, do us a favor and explain how biging out is not good? We are not making any progress, unless you count the senseless deaths of more innocent lives.
I am waiting on your explanation.
srv
Whaaaattt? Who let the crack out? Milhous loved him some war and the Dems made Kissinger sue for peace? Wow.
And could anyone, anyone, explain how Pakistan is more stable today than on 9/10? I mean, if US support is so fabuously important to stabilizing a country of 166 Million with the 7th largest army in the world from the Taliban that they fund, I think we all deserve pictures of the daiseys that sprout eternally from Stuck’s ass.
You people are like Tea Baggers who think MS13 is going to overthrow the US or something. Or AQ is going to swim the Atlantic and rape our wives and make our daughters were veils.
You do not live in any reality. Have any of you actually ever talked to, or met a Pakistani?
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
The more Drone gets, the more Drone does
El Cid
@matoko_chan: Yes. I am aware there are connections. I am aware that the term extends from the triconsonantal roots T-L-B, from singular Talib to plural Taliban. I didn’t suggest they were 100% isolated, in some sort of a vacuum.
srv
CS, these people are just silly. They think that the propaganda stopped on 1/21/09 or something. McChrystal, the emo Patrick Bateman, could put on his emo-pants and talk about how bombing wedding parties was skull-fucking the war effort, and then these folks would not check the next page for the latest wedding party casualties.
General Stuck
@srv:
Be nice now, and those are little plastic Unicorns, not daisies.
And to demonstrate that you don’t know wtf you are talking about, there was a military coup in 99 that put Musharriff in power. The history of Pakistan politics has been a cauldron of instability from it’s inception.
OBL and AQ and their influence on the Taliban is what is fueling the instability in Pak, not us. The Arab wahabists have installed in them the militants dream for a hegemonic Islamic state, beginning with Pakistan. You fuckers think everything that happens in the world is because of us. Sometimes it is, but most times these countries and religious conflicts are internal to them. And have been going on before we were a country, and certainly before we were a superpower. In many cases we have made them worse, but we didn’t cause them.
You think OBL does what he does because of resentment for our actions. The resentment is there, but it is not what motivates him and others to pine for an Islamic world order. They thought that up all on their own.
matoko_chan
@salacious crumb: the pakis….i should have put scare quotes around the help.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: to pine for an Islamic world order
check, its not just the US….its the whole Big White Christian Bwana thingy. And they are conservative fundamentalists, like the teabaggers. they want to go back to a time when muslims ruled, like the teabaggers want to go back to a 200 year old originalist constitution and an electorate of anglo-saxon protestants.
There are subsects of Deobandis and Barlevis among the talis….
Roger Moore
@salacious crumb:
Does it really matter whether anyone other that Pakistan believes that? After all, it was Pakistan, not anyone else, who created the Taliban in the first place and who were their main source of support. As long as ISI thinks that India is up to no good in Afghanistan, they’re likely to continue trying to destabilize the Afghani government. It doesn’t matter whether India really is up to something or whether anyone else believes that they are.
cleek
“we” ?
who’s this fucking “we” ?
nobody reading or writing any of this discussion is anywhere near the people who are in charge of this war. the only “we” here are us spectators. oh, sure it’s all done in our name, but “we” are irrelevant.
Yutsano
@cleek: I believe the exact line you’re looking for is, “What’s this we shit white man?”
terry chay
@joe from Lowell:
Actually quite the opposite. Obama, I believe, authorized a large expansion of the Pakistan drone program (the one run by the CIA and of questionable legal/ethical ground). This is coupled with secret cooperation with the government of Pakistan (on intelligence sharing and authorization to kill targets that are deemed as destabilizing Pakistan) means that many of these drones have some targets chosen based on Pakistani intelligence and actually fly out from a base inside Pakistan!
The reason for the escalation is quite simple and an ugly calculus: the drone attacks are working, and are currently the only truly effective program the U.S. has in the region. (You know this because drone attacks are the only thing that Obama’s COIN/Central Asia team seems unanimous on.)
The thing most people don’t seem to understand, which becomes obvious when you parse through the articles written about it is that in the areas of the actual strike, the drones are relatively popular; in areas outside of the strike (worldwide and in the rest of Pakistan) the drones are quite unpopular. It is also quite possibly illegal (it’s unclear since Al Qaeda/Taliban are non-state actors, so this sort of puts them in a legal limbo that Bush used very effectively and now Obama is doing the same). That also explains why the Pakistani government is publicly against it while secretly supporting it.
(I’m not sure how many civilians are dying in this. I think Pakistan’s numbers are bullshit, but so are the U.S. numbers in the other direction. So that means it’s somewhere between 1 Al Qaida/Taliban for every 15 civilians or the reverse. My guess is it’s probably better than 50-50—maybe about 2 Taliban for every civilian—still an atrocious number.)
My guess is even if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan, the drone strikes will only increase—the two are actually unrelated and the latter is actually more in line with U.S. strategic interests (Pakistan being a nuclear nation and Afghanistan meaning not much). Personally, I object to drone attacks inside Pakistan. They’re a Pandora’s box—once we open it, we can’t close it. We’ll regret this eventually.
But don’t fool yourself into think that these aren’t highly effective—if they weren’t Obama wouldn’t have escalated it to high heaven.
El Cid
@cleek:
There are far too many comment threads here (and elsewhere) in which this is completely forgotten.
El Cid
@terry chay: Interestingly the US and Pakistan have been planning to Pakistanize drone strikes, transferring drones and operations to the Pakistani government, so as to tamp down on resistance and anger based on US intervention directly on Pakistani soil.
With over 3 million refugees, most from Pakistan’s US-urged military anti-terrorist crackdowns in rural & tribal areas, drone attacks themselves are rarely the direct cause but often seen as part of that assault on those populations.
matoko_chan
@terry chay:
But what that means to COIN is up to 32 terrorist influence nodes are created for every single terrorist influence node destroyed. COIN is based on SNT (social network theory).
Remember 30k Taliban are pwning 340k NATO, US coalition and afghani forces right now.
So it isn’t like we are just running in place, we are running backwards.
Can’t do both COIN and drones, because of the Dragon’s Teeth Axiom.
COIN is vastly more expensive, vastly less effective, so I expect that will stop.
Corner Stone
@terry chay:
Civilians being killed at a ratio to “bad guys” (and I use scare quotes because we have absolutely no info to support who is who in this realm anymore), makes drone strikes popular with the peoples somehow?
They encourage the result of never knowing if they are going to die, or have their loved ones die in a market or building for nothing more than the sin of being in the same range as a “bad guy” when the drone sees them?
They like that outcome?
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: nah, its more bullshytt.
The reason the conservatives have to demonize al-Islam is because almost 6000 american troops have essentially died for nothing…..so far.
The Bush Doctrine could never work…..democracy promotion in MENA just means muslims get to vote for more shariah law. More democracy means more Islam.
So what we are really there for NAOW is to stop fgm, stoning, and so little afghani girls can go to school.
Are you heartless enough to tell the troops and their families they are dying for nothing?
I’m not…..it would crush their moral utterly.
History will point this shit out.
meanwhile, O is doing his best to get us out without actually having to tell the electorate the truth…..they won’t want to hear it.
Dont feel bad Cole. I punch myself in the neck everyday.
That is how I start my stage 3 meditation practice.
dhikr, remembrance.
joe from Lowell
Exactly, Corner Stone. Why am I, or anyone else, supposed to care that I forgot a fact seven months ago?
You carry it around like Gollum with the ring. Heh heh heh – remember that one time joe from Lowell forgot something? Heh heh heh. I hate that guy.
Get a life, you loser.
joe from Lowell
@salacious crumb:
Thing thing you have to keep in mind is that “But they’re the good guys!” makes no difference in international politics. The fact that India is in Afghanistan doing good is something that could increase India’s influence there. Imagine if suddenly, in 1962, the Soviets started to send a lot of engineers and money into Mexico to build water plants, schools, and medical clinics. Do you think the U.S. would have been happy about that?
joe from Lowell
@srv:
Are you actually completely unaware of the fact the the Democrats cut off funding for action in Vietnam? Really, you didn’t this?
I’m embarrassed for you.
joe from Lowell
@terry chay: I looked up the data, and the number of strikes is about the same since the early months of the Obama administration, but the death toll is quite different. We’re killing a lot fewer people per strike, and the 20 or 30 people killed strikes – the ones with no actual militants killed – have disappeared.
The ratio of militants to civilians has improved dramatically since Obama took over from Bush, even as the total number of strikes has increased, suggesting we’ve gotten more careful and/or have better intel for the strikes.
joe from Lowell
Again, no, they’re not. They’re managing to survive. They’re not even almost fighting us to a draw.
Again, if the positions were reversed and we were in the Taliban’s place, you wouldn’t be talking about how we were winning.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell: Dig LTG Dave Barno’s op-ed in the FT.
He’s headed for the sharp edge of the conflict right……how many more govmint troops is he going to ax for?
We have already lost, Joe.
Game ovah.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell:
lawl……thass what they are reporting.
the truth is sumpin’ else.
btw, linkage?
joe from Lowell
Your own piece doesn’t even say that, and that’s the best you could dredge up to support your claim.
You are, clearly, very excited at the prospect, but no, we have not lost.
The first part was from the Wikipedia page on the air strikes.
The second part was analysis I did based on the military’s review of drone strikes, released about two months ago. They listed strikes by month going all the way back to when Bush launched the first ones, and also listed civilians and militants killed. In short, the number of civilians killed was cut in half after Obama took office, and the rate of civilian deaths was cut by 2/3 – and this is after Obama escalated the use of the strikes.
How much of that is from stricter rules of engagement, and how much is from better targeting intel, there’s no way to tell, but either one is good news.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell:
nah, im just honest, and i don’t do magical thinking…..ever.
We have already lost….consider any one of LTG Barno’s set of four tactics–he says fail in any one and its game over.
First, he[Petraeus] must defeat the Taliban strategy— given that Petraeus is currently opening talks with the Taliban, i think this is highly unlikely. Petraeus is not exactly dealing from a position of strength.
Second, Gen Petraeus must create unity among the fragmented players on our side— hahahahahahaha!
Third, he must convince President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan people to take greater ownership of the war.— lawl Karzai has already committed 200,000 troops and police…..he doesn’t HAVE any more.
Finally, Gen Petraeus must help persuade a Pakistani government and military that is now hedging its bets.— a good part of this thread including the esteemed commentary of El Cid has been about the double game the ISI and the Pakistani gov’t are playing. good luck with that.
The “find the nail, drive the nail” strat is not working….we’ve been missing and hitting our thumb for nine years.
What don’t you get Joe? There is no “winning” in Afghanistan.
Our teeth are broken and our purse is empty.
Do you want to throw another trillion dollahs and 5000 soljah deaths into the Graveyard of Empires and wind up with another Iraq? Iraq is an islamic state with religious political parties and shariah law in the constitution, that declared a national holiday when american troops moved out of its cities. The Iraqi government is still informed by islamic jurisprudence.
The only thing we got for our blood and treasure was 100000+ dead iraqi civilians and the deathless enmity of dar ul Islam.
retards.